Tuesday, July 01, 2008

McCain, you can't have my social security

In case you haven't been paying attention to the stock market, this will make you sit up and take notice. (my emphasis)
Stocks struggled Monday at the end of the worst June for the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials since the Great Depression, amid rocketing oil prices and ongoing financial market woes.
How's your 401K doing? Thank heavens we still have social security to depend on in our old age - today. If McCain wins the election, all bets are off. McCain recently told the Wall Street Journal that "as part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it - along the lines of what President Bush proposed."

I thought McCain wasn't McSame? He sure does embrace a lot of Bush's failed policies for someone who claims he's a maverick.

On the other hand, Sen. Obama isn't afraid to be a straight talker:
Well let me be clear: privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George W. Bush proposed it. It's a bad idea today. It would eventually cut guaranteed benefits by up to 50%. It would cost a trillion dollars that we don't have to implement on the front end, permanently elevating our debt. And most of all, it would gamble the retirement plans of millions of Americans on the stock market. That's why I stood up against this plan in the Senate, and that's why I won't stand for it as President.
You can read more about McCain's support for privatizing social security here and here (YouTube video).

Millions of Americans depend entirely on social security in their old age, yet McCain wants to gamble with it. That's because McCain has never had to worry about money, as Joe Conason recently pointed out in the New York Observer:
As one of the wealthiest men in the Senate, thanks to the highly profitable liquor company bequeathed to him and his wife years ago, Mr. McCain faces no economic difficulty. He never has to worry about how he will afford retirement or the value of his assets, which is why risky schemes like privatization look so brilliant to him. But in the coming campaign, he may find that working families have no desire to turn Social Security over to the same companies now seeking bailouts from the federal government -- or to the politicians who would enact that bankers’ daydream.
McCain and his wife own at least nine houses across the country valued at an estimated $13,123,269, and like DeVos, Romney and so many other rich Republicans, he has no idea what it means to stretch his money from paycheck to paycheck. Trusting him to look out for my best interests is like trusting Dr. Kervorkian not to pull the plug.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

He's trying to back away from privatization now, but hopefully, Obama won't let him.

Great title to this post.

Kathy said...

That's McCain's stance today, Abi. Tomorrow, he'll reverse course again. McCain is the consummate flip-flopper.

Glad you liked the title, but it wasn't original. I stole the idea from Moveon.org, which you probably already knew.

Anonymous said...

I'm far enough away from retirement that I'm personally planning on not seeing a dime from Social Security. That said, I don't want to fund a huge 'busy-work' giveaway to the 'Money-management Industrial Complex'.

Lew Scannon said...

The idea that your average undereducated American has any notion of how the markets work is laughable. This is just another version of trickle up economics as practiced by the Republican party.

K. said...

One of the signal accomplishments of the right wing has been to convince the American people that Social Security, an essentially sound social insurance fund, is on its last fiscal legs. For an excellent and very readable report demonstrating the opposite, go here:

http://www.eoionline.org/social_security/social_security.html