The president claims Republican leaders are as eager to 'privatize' Social Security as they are to repeal his health care law. That's not true.
Summary
President Obama claimed that Republican leaders are pushing to make "privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda" should they regain control of the House and Senate. He said this is "right up there on their to-do list with repealing" parts of the new health care law.
We find the president’s claim to be mostly false.
- Few if any Republicans now in Congress have ever pushed for total "privatization" of Social Security. What President Bush proposed in 2005 was to allow workers under the age of 55 to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. Most of their taxes would have continued to go into traditional Social Security.
- Bush’s proposal to create private accounts had so little Republican support in 2005 — when the GOP controlled both the House and Senate — that it was never introduced as formal legislation. We’ve seen no evidence to suggest the idea is any more popular among Republicans now.
- Only one Republican "leader" is currently pushing publicly for Bush-style private accounts, as part of an overall budget plan. He is Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the senior GOP member of the House Budget Committee. His plan currently has only 13 cosponsors, none of them in the GOP House leadership.
The president further distorted the Republican position when he claimed that the GOP plan would "[tie] your benefits to the whims of Wall Street traders." That’s not true of the private accounts Bush proposed. Those would have been invested in strictly regulated, broadly based mutual funds, much like the funds in which millions of federal workers invest their own retirement funds.
Analysis follows in full article.
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