WP: Voters Voice Sentiments on Social Security

[Bleacher Creature]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42024-2005Mar16.html

By Joshua Partlow and Jay Mathews
Thursday, March 17, 2005; Page B01

President Bush's plan to add private stock and bond accounts to Social Security never made much sense to Beverlie Ludy. For that matter, all the talk she was hearing of an "ownership society" smacked of a greedy, "me-first" attitude she didn't like.

So last month, on her lunch hour as a counselor for low-income families in the Charles County school system, she drove to a town hall meeting in La Plata sponsored by Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) to get something off her chest.

"We are losing the concept of citizenship," Ludy, 58, told an audience of more than 150 predominantly middle-aged people at the College of Southern Maryland. Ludy lives on Cobb Island and, as someone "not in the world of pensions," expects to rely heavily on Social Security when she retires. But "the objective isn't for me to get some retirement, it's for the people who don't have other retirement resources to not go hungry in old age."

<SNIP>

It's nice pointing out every once in a while that there are people out there who still get it.

[Melodybe]

1. Nice, too bad it isn't front page news, thanks for nothing WP

[Bleacher Creature]

2. It was on the front page . . .

Of the METRO SECTION!!!

Liberal media my ass.

[whistle]

3. The shrub continues to hold his town meetings two in Florida....

...today, spreading misinformation about the situation with social security and puffing up his own program with all kinds of claims but no specific plan on the table. His misinformation includes:

- Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program so all of the money they take in goes right back out

- There is no Social Security trust, that money has all been spent and there are only paper notes (inferring they can't be collected)

- Social Security will be bankrupt before those going into the system today (19 year olds) can collect

- Regardless of what fix is adopted, all of the seniors who are on social security now will continue to get their check, nothing will change

- The future demographics simply make it impossible for social security to survive

- Social Security private accounts will be an investment nest egg for American who adopt that part of his plan

- No one will be forced to invest in private accounts and social security will remain a social safety net

Without a specific plan with projections and numbers, Bush can't be held accountable for any of his claims. It is a total snow job designed to divide the young and the old.