Call Congress
Urge your Representative and Senators to reject President Bush’s plan to divert Social Security payroll taxes to individual accounts.
1 -888-355-3588
SOME THINGS TO CONSIDER
1 -888-355-3588
SOME THINGS TO CONSIDER
- President Bush is pushing a plan to privatize Social Security by diverting a portion of workers’ payroll taxes to individual accounts. This would obviously create a big hole in the financing of Social Security. To make up this hole President Bush is proposing to make huge cuts in benefits payable to future retirees.
- Under the current Social Security system, initial benefits for retirees are calculated based on the wages earned during their working careers, updated accordingly to the average growth in wages during that period. This ensures that retirement benefits keep pace with the rising standard of living, and that Social Security benefits will replace an adequate percentage of a workers’ pre-retirement income.
- President Bush wants to change this formula for all future retirees, regardless of whether they chose to have a portion of their payroll taxes diverted to an individual account. The President wants to calculate initial benefits for all future retirees based on the rise in consumer price during their working careers.
- Since prices generally rise more slowly than wages, this would result in sharply lower benefits for future retirees.
- Currently more than two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for half or more of their income. Older women living alone, African-Americans and Latinos rely on Social Security to an even greater extent.
- Thus, the drastic cuts in Social Security benefits proposed by President Bush would result in a sharply reduced standard of living for millions of senior citizens, forcing many into poverty.