The plan to cut your benefits
President Bush advanced the centerpiece of his Social Security privatization proposal during his State of the Union address in February.
His general plan would:
• Divert about one-third of your Social Security payroll tax, starting with
an annual limit of $1,000, into a private investment account. The limit would
go up about $100
per year.
• Reduce Social Security benefits for all future retirees.
• Force the federal government to borrow trillions of dollars resulting in higher taxes and interest rates for all Americans.
And those are just the first steps. Many proponents would actually like to completely privatize this important social insurance program.
“I don’t know much about the stock market, but I know it doesn’t guarantee anything. You don’t know what the market is going to do. I wouldn’t want to work all my life, get ready to retire and see the stock market go down all of a sudden.”
Jason Helms, 32,
vice president of UAW Local 336,
ThyssenKrupp,
Fostoria, Ohio
“If you say ‘The sky is falling!’ often enough and it’s echoed often enough on Fox News and some media, people start to believe it’s true.”
Kim Gandy, president,
National Organization for Women
