In weekly address, Obama returns to campaign chestnut: Warning of threat to Social Security
By Michael D. Shear and Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Reviving a scare tactic that Democrats have used before, President Obama said in his radio address Saturday that "some Republican leaders in Congress" want to privatize Social Security.
The specter of a threat to the program that provides retirement income to senior citizens is a preview of an attack that Democrats intend to make this fall, as they hope to blunt what appears to be a Republican surge in congressional elections.
"I'd have thought that debate would've been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we've just experienced," Obama said of privatizing Social Security. "I'd have thought, after being reminded how quickly the stock market can tumble, after seeing the wealth people worked a lifetime to earn wiped out in a matter of days, that no one would want to place bets with Social Security on Wall Street."
But GOP leaders are not pressing for privatization. The idea proved so unpopular when President George W. Bush proposed it in 2004 that Congress, then led by Republicans, never took it up. The concept lives on in a budget proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, but only a handful of GOP lawmakers have signed on to that measure. And, in the aftermath of the worst shock to the financial system since the Great Depression, many Republican lawmakers would just as soon see the idea forgotten.
(More here.)
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Reviving a scare tactic that Democrats have used before, President Obama said in his radio address Saturday that "some Republican leaders in Congress" want to privatize Social Security.
The specter of a threat to the program that provides retirement income to senior citizens is a preview of an attack that Democrats intend to make this fall, as they hope to blunt what appears to be a Republican surge in congressional elections.
"I'd have thought that debate would've been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we've just experienced," Obama said of privatizing Social Security. "I'd have thought, after being reminded how quickly the stock market can tumble, after seeing the wealth people worked a lifetime to earn wiped out in a matter of days, that no one would want to place bets with Social Security on Wall Street."
But GOP leaders are not pressing for privatization. The idea proved so unpopular when President George W. Bush proposed it in 2004 that Congress, then led by Republicans, never took it up. The concept lives on in a budget proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, but only a handful of GOP lawmakers have signed on to that measure. And, in the aftermath of the worst shock to the financial system since the Great Depression, many Republican lawmakers would just as soon see the idea forgotten.
(More here.)
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