For Immediate Release
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
Statement by AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee on Recommendations of the Social Security Commission
Although President Bush's Social Security Commission has not officially released its final recommendations, the Commission's track record and draft report clearly show that the intended beneficiary is Wall Street, not Main Street. We at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, believe strongly that the Commission's proposals for privatizing Social Security would lead to benefit cuts for average Americans and a huge windfall for investors.
The Commission — filled with privatization advocates — recommended that a significant portion of worker paycheck contributions be siphoned off from Social Security and placed in individual investment accounts. But partial privatization of the system eliminates the guaranteed retirement, disability and/or survivor's benefits on which one in four American households depends. Converting to a new system would also cost the program $1 trillion over the next decade promised to future beneficiaries, while Wall Street investment firms rake in billions of dollars in transaction fees.
This scheme would leave the Social Security trust fund depleted by 2024, which is 14 years sooner than under current projections. With the Commission refusing to use general revenues or increase taxes to pay for privatizing the system, the only remaining possibilities would be large benefit cuts achieved by raising the retirement age and slashing average benefits by 40 percent for workers under age 55.
For these reasons, AFSCME calls upon President Bush to scrap the Commission's biased recommendations and launch a serious, bipartisan effort to negotiate common sense solutions designed to protect the promise of Social Security for future generations.
