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Dear Working Families e-Activist,
You're going to
hear a lot of claims about President Bush's blue print to
privatizing Social Security in his State of the Union address.
Here's the truth.
- Privatizing Social Security will not mean more money
for you. Privatization will cut benefits by 30 percent even
for workers who don't choose to have private accounts. That adds
up to $152,000 lost by the average worker who lives 20 years
beyond retirement. And if you do choose a private account, the
government will take back 50 cents for every $1 in your
account—on top of the 30 percent benefit
cut.
- Privatizing Social Security is not really
voluntary. You'll get the benefit cuts even if you don't
want a privatized Social Security account.
- You won't be in charge of your privatized Social
Security account. Politicians will hand-pick Wall Street
firms to control the investment accounts—paving the way to
corruption and Enron-ization of Social
Security.
- Retirees can't pass privatized Social Security account
money on to your heirs. The accounts will be converted to
annual payments.
- We have time to strengthen Social Security the right
way—not by slashing benefits. Social Security can pay
full benefits until 2042 even with no changes at all. We should
strengthen Social Security with commonsense
approaches—like requiring Congress to pay back money it
has borrowed from Social Security or rolling back the most
egregious tax breaks for the very wealthy.
You
won't hear the word "privatization" coming from President
Bush—because his pollsters and spin doctors know America's
voters oppose privatizing Social Security. He'll call it
"personalizing" Social Security. No matter what word spin he
uses, the reality is this: Privatizing Social Security will cut
benefits, add $2 trillion to the federal deficit in just the
first 10 years, push seniors into poverty and replace guaranteed
retirement income with "personalized" risk.
Take action to protect Social Security by signing the
petition:
www.unionvoice.org/campaign/ProtectSocialSecurity/
Please share these facts with people you know by
forwarding this message to your friends, families and
co-workers.
Thanks for all you do for working families.
In
solidarity,
Working Families e-Activist Network
Feb. 02,
2005
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