Challenged in tonight’s (Monday night's)Senate debate over their support for privatizing Social Security, candidates Todd Akin, Sarah Steelman, and John Brunner doubled-down on their extreme plan to convert this crucial safety net relied upon by more than a million Missouri seniors into a private Wall Street-based account system.
Pressed by one of the debate’s moderators on how such a privatized system would impact American seniors who are more susceptible to financial scams, all three candidates insisted that they continue to support some version of a privatized Social Security system.
“With more than a million Missouri seniors relying on Social Security, you’d think protecting Social Security benefits would be a no brainer for Todd Akin, Sarah Steelman, and John Brunner—but tonight they made crystal clear that they’d rather abandon our seniors to the whims of the stock market than take even a modest step toward ending huge tax giveaways to big oil companies and corporations,” said Erik Dorey, McCaskill for Missouri spokesman. “Greedy, reckless behavior on Wall Street is what brought the American economy to the brink of collapse just three years ago, and Missouri’s families are rightfully anxious about Todd Akin, Sarah Steelman, and John Brunner’s efforts to leave Missouri’s seniors at the mercy of reckless Wall Street speculators.”
Akin, Steelman, and Brunner’s insistence on privatizing Social Security tonight follows earlier debates in which all three emphatically endorsed dismantling Medicare and turning it, instead, into a private voucher program.
While Akin has led efforts to privatize these critical protections for Missouri families, Steelman and Brunner have followed closely behind. Steelman recently declare her support for a Senate budget proposal by Sen. Rand Paul, a proposal so extreme it gained only 16 votes, and would have ended the Medicare guarantee by 2014 and cut Social Security benefits by 30 percent.
Question: One of the proposals that's likely to be debated this race will be whether or not to privatize social security. I'm curious because so many Americans have trouble even understanding investment rules and guidelines. They make big mistakes and get involved in scams. if you were to privatize social security, would you not put millions of people at risk with their inability to properly invest their money, even though they have control over it?
STEELMAN: I think you could go two ways, one would be then that people have a choice to stay with the current system or they could go a different way at a certain age. So in order to fix the existing program, I believe we need to raise the eligibility age and phase that in over a period of time. However, I don't share your view necessarily that people can't make good investment decisions.
And so, for younger generations and whatever age that is appropriate, I think that they should be able to pursue their own type of investments and make those decisions on their own. We do that with a lot of things, the MO Savings plan in Missouri is an illustration of that.
AKIN: I think we might start first of all about being honest about Social Security—that it’s broken—and the money is not going to be there before very long. And that it needs to be changed.
And I think those changes—first of all—people who are much older who are dependent and paid into the system. I think we want to be able to protect those people. And I think the system is changed more and more as you move younger in ages to give people more choices. And if they want to take responsibility for investing their own money, I think they can do better than the Federal government does.
And so in order to keep something that’s broken—in order to fix it—I think there’s sort of a sliding scale. The older people…In fact, I would even make the scale sliding so that if you’re older you get more money, as you’re younger you don’t. Remember, it was 62 was the average age, and Social Security kicked in at 65, that meant half the people never got a nickel out of the system. Now it’s 79, so we’re going to have to raise the age on it. But, I think that you do need to have choice in the system.
BRUNNER: I'm a firm believer in choice. Choice provides great options, lower cost, greater flexibility. You know, we can fix Social Security by gradually increasing the eligibility age over a decade. Because it was set up when the retirement age was at 62, and now people are living to 72 -- I should say, the longevity. So there's issues to fix this right now. But let's bring some choice into the equation, so that people have a choice to continue the same system or do something new.
Pressed by one of the debate’s moderators on how such a privatized system would impact American seniors who are more susceptible to financial scams, all three candidates insisted that they continue to support some version of a privatized Social Security system.
“With more than a million Missouri seniors relying on Social Security, you’d think protecting Social Security benefits would be a no brainer for Todd Akin, Sarah Steelman, and John Brunner—but tonight they made crystal clear that they’d rather abandon our seniors to the whims of the stock market than take even a modest step toward ending huge tax giveaways to big oil companies and corporations,” said Erik Dorey, McCaskill for Missouri spokesman. “Greedy, reckless behavior on Wall Street is what brought the American economy to the brink of collapse just three years ago, and Missouri’s families are rightfully anxious about Todd Akin, Sarah Steelman, and John Brunner’s efforts to leave Missouri’s seniors at the mercy of reckless Wall Street speculators.”
Akin, Steelman, and Brunner’s insistence on privatizing Social Security tonight follows earlier debates in which all three emphatically endorsed dismantling Medicare and turning it, instead, into a private voucher program.
While Akin has led efforts to privatize these critical protections for Missouri families, Steelman and Brunner have followed closely behind. Steelman recently declare her support for a Senate budget proposal by Sen. Rand Paul, a proposal so extreme it gained only 16 votes, and would have ended the Medicare guarantee by 2014 and cut Social Security benefits by 30 percent.
Question: One of the proposals that's likely to be debated this race will be whether or not to privatize social security. I'm curious because so many Americans have trouble even understanding investment rules and guidelines. They make big mistakes and get involved in scams. if you were to privatize social security, would you not put millions of people at risk with their inability to properly invest their money, even though they have control over it?
STEELMAN: I think you could go two ways, one would be then that people have a choice to stay with the current system or they could go a different way at a certain age. So in order to fix the existing program, I believe we need to raise the eligibility age and phase that in over a period of time. However, I don't share your view necessarily that people can't make good investment decisions.
And so, for younger generations and whatever age that is appropriate, I think that they should be able to pursue their own type of investments and make those decisions on their own. We do that with a lot of things, the MO Savings plan in Missouri is an illustration of that.
AKIN: I think we might start first of all about being honest about Social Security—that it’s broken—and the money is not going to be there before very long. And that it needs to be changed.
And I think those changes—first of all—people who are much older who are dependent and paid into the system. I think we want to be able to protect those people. And I think the system is changed more and more as you move younger in ages to give people more choices. And if they want to take responsibility for investing their own money, I think they can do better than the Federal government does.
And so in order to keep something that’s broken—in order to fix it—I think there’s sort of a sliding scale. The older people…In fact, I would even make the scale sliding so that if you’re older you get more money, as you’re younger you don’t. Remember, it was 62 was the average age, and Social Security kicked in at 65, that meant half the people never got a nickel out of the system. Now it’s 79, so we’re going to have to raise the age on it. But, I think that you do need to have choice in the system.
BRUNNER: I'm a firm believer in choice. Choice provides great options, lower cost, greater flexibility. You know, we can fix Social Security by gradually increasing the eligibility age over a decade. Because it was set up when the retirement age was at 62, and now people are living to 72 -- I should say, the longevity. So there's issues to fix this right now. But let's bring some choice into the equation, so that people have a choice to continue the same system or do something new.
No comments:
Post a Comment