Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law 73 years ago today. That piece of legislation has proven to be one of the most successful in the nation’s history and it is so woven into the national fabric that Senator Barack Obama has called it “the cornerstone of the social compact in this country.”

It is so successful for a number of reasons but, most importantly, because it works. Before Social Security, the poorest people in the country were the elderly. Social Security turned the United States into a society where getting old meant that, after a life of work, a person could retire with security. The current statistics reaffirm just how important Social Security is for our retirees. Twenty percent live solely off of the program’s benefits, and 65 percent depend on it for more than half of their income.

Now, more than ever, our nation’s retirees need a secure safety net. The economy is in shambles, people are losing their homes, gas and food prices are skyrocketing, and inflation is hitting its highest point in almost twenty years. Social Security is about the only thing that they can count on.

President Bush and Senator McCain support privatizing Social Security, a plan that would tie retirees’ benefits to the risks of the stock market. The recent economic plunge highlights the problem with this plan: markets are cyclical, but an elderly person’s ability to pay their bills shouldn’t be.

In addition to risking retirees’ benefits, privatization would impose an even higher financial burden on Social Security. The changeover costs alone would reach into the trillions, and it would throw the solvency of the entire system into doubt.
And on top of everything else, it would leave retirees with less. Despite the fact that Senator McCain claims that converting to personal accounts would be “voluntary,” even those who choose not to risk it would have their benefits slashed.

So if everybody loses out privatizing social security, then why do it? Well, as it turns out, privatizing would be a bonanza for Wall Street, whose lobbyists have been pushing for it for years.

Senator McCain recently referred to Social Security as a “disgrace,” and his voting record shows that if he is elected president, he will try to privatize and dismantle the system. As with so many of his other policies, McCain is following Bush’s lead, and ignoring the needs of working people.

Social Security is no disgrace. On its birthday we need to call on John McCain to come up with policies that make sure it will always be available, not ones that will do away with it once and for all.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Politics, Economy/Budget, Presidential Campaign .