Newsline: March 2005
The Battle Over Social Security
Phony Worker Retirement Alliance Exposed
 They call themselves the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, but the members of this organization are not workers. The “Alliance” is a coalition of stockbrokers and representatives of Wall Street and financial firms who are behind President Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security. If the effort is successful they stand to make massive profits at the expense of investors and America’s workers.
Social Security privatization long has been a pet project of Wall Street, which stands to collect the largest windfall in American financial history. Under Social Security privatization, Wall Street firms would reap some $940 billion in fees over the next 75 years, according to University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee. Behind closed doors, some of these firms are lobbying and strategizing with the Bush administration about privatizing Social Security.
Last month a member of the Alliance, the brokerage firm Edward Jones, pulled out of the group after labor protesters, retirees and activists rallied outside the firm’s corporate headquarters in St. Louis on February 8 and bombarded its offices with thousands of E-mails demanding the company drop its support for privatizing Social Security. The brokerage firm had been a member of the Alliance since its inception in 1998.
Whether or not you choose to participate in Bush’s private accounts plan, privatizing Social Security will force drastic cuts in retirement benefits for America’s workers.
Privatizing Social Security will:
Slash guaranteed benefits as much as $152,000.
Take away 70 cents in retirement benefits for every $1 in a private account and return the money to government coffers.
Prohibit you from controlling the money in your private accounts. Politicians will pick Wall Street firms to control your investment accounts, a process corrupted by politics.
Saddle our children with $4.9 trillion in debt over the next 20 years alone, most of which we would owe to foreign countries such as China and Japan.
Privatizing Social Security would destroy the most important family security effort in America’s history. Don’t let it happen!
Sources: AFL-CIO.
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