Greenspan Is Right (GOP has media tell us to cut Social Security)

[papau]

Opinion: Greenspan Is Right-- Act Before Social Security Goes Boom http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hodge27feb27,1,4120975.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Excerpt: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's recommendations to cut baby boomer Social Security benefits is just the opening shot in what will be the most contentious and consuming national public policy battle of the 21st century." (Paul Hodge in the Los Angeles Times; one-time registration required)

Bush: No Social Security Cuts for Retirees http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1702086
Excerpt: "President Bush says his administration won't cut Social Security benefits for retirees or those about to retire. Bush's comments follow calls from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to reduce the federal deficit through adjustments to Social Security and Medicare. Greenspan did not suggest cuts for current beneficiaries, but did urge lawmakers to raise the eligibility age for retirees. Hear NPR's Jack Speer." (National Public Radio)


Pension Coverage Lessons for the United States from Other Countries http://research.aarp.org/econ/inb80_intl_coverage.html
Excerpt: "While the United States has instituted numerous pension policy innovations over the past twenty years, including notably 401(k) plans, pension coverage has remained stagnant at roughly 50 percent of workers. Frustration over the failure of pension policy to increase coverage has raised the issue of what can we learn from other countries, some of which have considerably higher pension coverage rates than the United States." (AARP Research)

Opinion: the Heritage Foundation's Take on Greenspan's Social Security Remarks http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6609-2004Feb25.html
Excerpt: "No country has a 'perfect' system, but 29 countries across the globe have already created personal retirement accounts and the results have been almost uniformly positive. These countries range from Australia to Sweden to Switzerland to Slovakia. No system is perfect for the United States, we'll have to develop our own, but there is an awful lot that we can learn from them." (David John in the Washington Post)

Opinion: the Real Threat to the West from the Eastern European Countries (this is real bull shit lies - techcentral makes Drudge look like a truth teller)

http://www.techcentralstation.com/022704E.html
Excerpt: "Most East European nations are implementing dramatic tax-rate reductions and fundamental tax reform. Several nations also have shifted toward private pension systems, thus lowering long-run government liabilities and greatly boosting the sustainability of pro-growth tax changes." (Eccentrics)

http://www.ntu.org/main/press_release.php?PressID=560&org_name=NTU
New Coalition of Citizen Groups Cautions Congress: America Needs Reform, Not Bailout, of Pension System
(National Taxpayers Union) "beware of deceptive legislation in the Senate that "shifts the burden from underfunded corporate pension programs onto the backs of taxpayers."

[papau]

1. The comments/press releases saying Greenspan wrong get no media!

http://www.pensions-r-us.org/

Ad Hoc Coalition to Restore Retirement Security
(Coalition for Retirement Security)
Twelve grassroots activist groups, representing hundreds of thousands of working and retired Americans, fired off a letter to presidential candidates today to urge them to pledge to stop companies from breaking pension and health insurance promises.

Members of the Ad Hoc Coalition to Restore Retirement Security are asking candidates to pledge to protect promised pensions and health insurance benefits by supporting a new "Fulfilling the Promises" agenda.



http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=145-02252004

Greenspan 'Rash and Wrong' on Social Security Deficit, Says Former House Aging Committee Staff Director
2/25/04 4:16:00 PM

To: National Desk
Contact: Bob Weiner or Jeffrey Buchanan of Robert Weiner Associates Public Affairs, 301-283-0821 or 202-329-1700
MIAMI, Feb. 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Bob Weiner, former chief of staff of the House Aging Committee under Claude Pepper (D-Miami), asserts that "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's testimony today calling for reduced social security benefits is rash and wrong and based on an incorrect myth of a Social Security deficit." Weiner points out that "the Trust Fund is solvent for 39 years -- the trustees even added a year to the projected solvency last year -- and that baby boomers aren't booming with babies themselves, having record low births. In addition, people are working longer, paying into the system. The fund will actually be even more solvent with fewer withdrawals down the road."

Weiner asserts that "what many political leaders and 'flamethrowers' are actually doing -- now uncharacteristically including Greenspan -- is using solvent Social Security money to reduce the overall federal deficit." Weiner is calling for "the same courage today that Claude Pepper displayed 25 years ago in fighting against benefit reductions such as delaying eligibility, reducing the cost of living allowance, and voluntarizing the program."

Weiner remembers "Pepper's outrage in 1978 at Carter Commerce Secretary Juanita Kreps' statement about increasing the retirement age to 68 for full Social Security retirement benefits. Pepper demanded and got a meeting with Kreps. Senator Pepper kept saying he would 'fight it to our death.' Kreps asked, 'Even (delaying the start) to the year 2000?' He vehemently exclaimed, 'Yes!' Kreps finally responded, 'Well, I haven't made the proposal anyway.' That's how it's done, and that's the courage we need from somewhere now," Weiner asserts.

Weiner points out that "the baby boom is a short transitional factor. The 'boomers' aren't booming with babies themselves. The high birthrate of 2.9 which they represent (births from 1940-1969) is followed by their own parenting rate of 2.1 per woman (1970- 2000). Moreover, since 1990, there is a 10 percent increase in women having no children at all. The Social Security trust fund will later be making money by leaps and bounds with fewer people withdrawing from it.

"Moreover, if the economy improves -- as both parties are calling for and the President claims it will -- the taxes from workers will reduce or curtail the federal deficit as was the case in the 90s," Weiner says.

"Even if a short term fix is needed -- my own January 13 statement from Social Security says that under current economic conditions, payroll taxes will be enough to pay 73 percent of scheduled benefits by 2042 -- I have never heard any of the doomsayers report that soon thereafter, the boomers' own low baby- producing rates will mean that suddenly the system following them will be awash in funds - and that therefore the system should be then triggered to give more back to compensate. In fact, again at worst, assuming no economic improvement, the averaging out makes the system about right as it is, other than a possible short-term congressional loan down the road far under what we're now paying for the Iraq War or in tax breaks for the wealthy.

"It is time to quit scaring our seniors with false claims. Social Security should remain the third rail of American politics -- it should stay untouched," Weiner concludes.
Robert Weiner was staff director of the U.S. House Aging Committee, chaired by Rep. Claude Pepper (D-Miami), 1975-1980, and advisor to Pepper until Pepper's death in 1989. He is president of Robert Weiner Associates Public Affairs and Issue Strategies

[KoKo]

2. This needs a huge fax campaign and alliance with any organizations which

will work their butts off lobbying against Greenspeak's proposal. Apparently folks can't depend on the AARP, so it will have to be new grassroots organizations which will take the Repugs on and remind our Dems that this is something they must hange together on.

Thanks for putting the links together on this. I hope it stays kicked...although we have dwindling numbers of folks here who really care about this, with many having alrady given up assuming SS won't be there for their retirement and others who can't imagine retirement where they might need some help because it's so far away. But, it touches all of us and the parents of those too young to care. :scared:

[The Zanti Regent]

4. Join the Alliance for Retired Americans

http://www.retiredamericans.org/

A REAL alternative to the assholes running AARP into the ground!

[UpInArms]

3. neither the GOP nor Greenspin possess a lick of sense

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15598-2004Feb28.html

Does Alan Greenspan have amnesia <"Fed Chief Urges Cut in Social Security," front page, Feb. 26>? More than 20 years ago he co-chaired a commission to ensure the solvency of Social Security. That commission recommended stiff increases in the payroll tax to create a surplus that would help fund the retirement of baby boomers down the road. The higher payroll taxes, which put a heavy burden on lower-to- middle income taxpayers, were signed into law and remain in effect to this day.

But in 2001 Mr. Greenspan endorsed a fiscally irresponsible income tax cut that effectively gives away the Social Security surplus he created primarily to high-income taxpayers. Now he suggests that those tax cuts be made permanent, while we reduce the enormous deficits that they've created only through cuts in spending, especially on Social Security.

<snip>

Mr. Greenspan's bias toward income tax cuts at the expense of everything else reflects only his personal preferences, not a judgment based on a careful reading of the economics literature. Perhaps it is time for his pronouncements on economic policy to be taken with a large grain of salt.

...a bit more...

[indepat]

5. Hopefully the Chairman is becoming a bit senile rather than just

a duplicitous, mendacious, dis-ingenious, shilling partisan w***e.

[UpInArms]

6. the "chairman" has always been

a duplicitous, mendacious, dis-ingenious, shilling partisan w***e.

If you have evidence to the contrary, please advise.

So far, I have witnessed that he has consistently supported right-wing partisan attacks on the population of this country.

His policies have been counter to anything that remotely supports the middle and working classes of this country.

He advocates the abolition of the minimum wage, he advocated the increase in the FICA in the early 80s (to "offset future claims"), he decreased interest rates through each of the BFEE's administrations, he increased rates through the election year of 2000.

So, tell me how is this piece of slimy shit not a duplicitous, mendacious, dis-ingenious, shilling partisan w***e?