Don't Privatize Social Security

President George W. Bush continues to talk about overhauling Social Security and Medicare: “I’m going to continue to work with the Congress and call on the Congress to work with the administration to reform these programs.”

• On June 27, Bush told the Manhattan Institute, “If we can’t get it done this year, I’m going to try next year.”
  
  
• That same month, Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), who’s likely to chair the powerful House Ways and Means Committee if Republicans retain control of the House, said overhauling Social Security should be the top congressional priority next year.
  
  
• In July, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared, “If I’m around in a leadership role come January, we’re going to get serious about this.”
  
  

Do your part to stop Social Security privatization. Click here to sign our petition to incumbents and candidates for Congress. The petition urges your members of Congress and candidates to strengthen Social Security, rather than privatize it, and to oppose cutting benefits, running up huge new debt or raising the retirement age to pay for privatization.

This is a classic battle of working people taking on big-money interests. Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security would make working families’ retirement problems worse, not better. But it would give billions of dollars in privatized account management fees to rich Wall Street outfits that can afford high-priced lobbyists on Capitol Hill.

Last year, we dealt Bush his greatest domestic policy defeat by blocking his attempt to privatize Social Security—which would cut our benefits, place our retirement security at risk, run up massive federal deficits and possibly raise the retirement age. But now Bush and key Republican leaders are at it again.

We beat the big-money lobbyists last year. Now we have to do it again. When candidates ask for our votes, we have the power to demand they keep the “security” in Social Security.

In this election year, we have the power to tell candidates and members of Congress we expect them to strengthen Social Security, not destroy it through privatization. If they deserve our votes in November, they will.