Has Senator McCain changed positions since the "bold, genuine reform" of personal accounts that he called for in 1999?
Back on Super Tuesday, the Arizona Republic included in its front section a chart that listed the views of each presidential candidate on a variety of issues. For McCain, the newspaper reported that he supports Social Security reform but that he does not back personal accounts funded by payroll tax dollars.
So has McCain switched positions? It's hard to tell, and his campaign did not return my phone call. The Arizona Republic was similarly unhelpful, as the Gannett News Service which did the candidate research does not seem to know how they came up with a position for the senator.
Nonetheless, the possibility raised by the Arizona Republic makes several past comments about or by McCain appear more complex than before. For example, the New York Daily News last year wrote that the Republican candidate has "long supported supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts," emphasis mine.
That's a tricky word, and one that suggests McCain supports either add-on accounts or individual accounts totally outside of Social Security. Both prospects are worrisome, but the latter particularly so.
McCain's statement to the National Review last year may also have disguised his position: "I favor strongly retirement savings accounts, personal savings accounts, whatever you want to call them." Is McCain intentionally blurring the line between personal accounts funded by payroll taxes and individual accounts outside of Social Security?
I don't know, and I hope to hear that McCain supports personal accounts now just like he did in 1999.
But there does seem to be something curious going on. Here is another example: When Senator Jim DeMint offered a budget amendment in March of 2007 that would have protected the Social Security surplus, McCain was one of three senators who did not vote. Why not?
There was good news for supporters of personal accounts last week when President Bush included Social Security reform in his FY09 budget, as he has in previous years' budgets. CQ Politics offered some explanation of Bush's proposal, which couples personal accounts with progressive indexing:
Say this about George W. Bush , the man is persistent. Three years after his plan to overhaul Social Security capsized under the weight of opposition from older voters and congressional Democrats, the president is still plotting a timetable to revamp the system.
The administration’s fiscal 2009 budget, released last week, revives the most controversial aspect of Bush’s plan: allowing younger workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in private retirement accounts beginning in 2013, five years after Bush leaves office. He estimates that it would cost the government $647.2 billion over 10 years.
(...)David C. John, a senior research fellow and Social Security expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, says the timetable laid out in the budget actually is quite realistic, because it would take several years to work out details such as who would manage millions of small accounts and how to explain the new investment choices.
The Ostrich Mobile has been on a cross country road trip...in honor of the Presidential Primary elections taking place in states all across the country! So far, we have stopped in South Carolina, Florida and now Arizona...it has been quite a journey - handing out Missing Posters at candidate events, meeting with college students and getting the Ostrich Mobile signed even more.
It was interesting to see the difference between the primary states. In New Hampshire, the buzz about the election was strong - its basically all that people were talking about. In South Carolina and Florida - many students, when asked if they were voting in the primary responded with, "What's the primary again??" Luckily, when I brought up the issue of Social Security and all the problems facing it for our generation, they all agreed it was an issue that our next President should address...hopefully I was able to convince them to check out our website and REGISTER TO VOTE! Are you registered to vote? If not - click on this link and you can be registered in seconds: http://www.secureourfuture.org/regvote.php
Governor Romney took a strong stand on Social Security in last night's Florida debate. When asked if he would do what Reagan did in 1983, which was raise taxes and cut benefits, Romney insisted he will not ask workers to pay more than the 12.4% of earnings we already contribute to the program. "Raising taxes is just something you don't want to do," Romney said. He then went on to argue for reform that includes personal accounts. From the transcript, with emphasis added:
The other -- there are three other ways that you can solve the problem of Social Security, and they're ways that have been brought forward by a number of Republicans over the years. We're going to have to sit down with the Democrats and say, let's have a compromise on these three elements that could get us to bring Social Security into economic balance.
What are they? Well, number one, you can have personal accounts where people can invest in something that does better than government bonds -- with some portion of their Social Security. Number two, you can say we're going to have the initial benefit calculations for wealthier Americans calculated based on the Consumer Price Index rather than the wage index. That saves almost two-thirds of the shortfall. And then number three, you can change the retirement age. You can make -- push it out a little bit. And so those are the three arithmetic things you can do.
There's going to have to be an agreement reached, Republicans and Democrats. Senator Judd Gregg has introduced legislation cosponsored by a Democrat saying put an equal number of Republicans and Democrats in a committee, have them work together, come up with a compromise, bring it forward, require a 60-percent vote to get the job done.
And those are the three that I think are -- are the ones that have to be pursued for us to solve the issue of Social Security
But don't forget, let's not scare anybody listening in who's on Social Security or near Social Security. It's not going to change the current program. It's not going to change for anybody who's already in retirement or near retirement. But we have to be honest to the people coming along. The program's going to have to change for 20- and 30- and 40-year-olds.
The President said “to keep this economy strong we must take on the challenge of entitlements. Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience — and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound. Yet we are failing in that duty — and this failure will one day leave our children with three bad options: huge tax increases, huge deficits, or huge and immediate cuts in benefits. Everyone in this Chamber knows this to be true — yet somehow we have not found it in ourselves to act. So let us work together and do it now. With enough good sense and goodwill, you and I can fix Medicare and Medicaid — and save Social Security.”
Posted by Jo Jensen| Comments (0)
...both Senator Obama and I have said Social Security needs a solution. And we have said we won't privatize, we won't cut benefits, we won't raise the retirement age. Same thing that Hillary has said.
But she has proposed nothing about how we're going to create revenue to keep Social Security alive and talked about fiscal responsibility.
Not only has Clinton failed to provide leadership on Social Security, but she has also begun criticizing the reforms put forward by other candidates. In Nevada, for example, the Clinton campaign sent out a mailer that attacked the Obama and Edwards position of meeting the Social Security shortfall by raising the payroll tax cap. Clinton's attack was right in that a payroll tax increase would hurt middle class families, but the trick here was that Clinton might support that exact same tax hike. Or at least she told a voter in Iowa that she might. Since that off-the-record Iowa comment, Clinton has not offered any clear views.
Perhaps Senator Clinton should take the advice that her husband gave Democrats back in 2002, when he said, in reference to Social Security reform: "You can't just attack the other guy's ideas unless you have something to say." What happened to that logic?
The truth is, nobody seems to have a clue what Hillary Clinton's plan is for helping our generation get back the money we are paying in.
As Edwards sums it up: "I've heard her answer the question 30 times. I have no idea what she would do."
The President said “to keep this economy strong we must take on the challenge of entitlements. Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience — and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound. Yet we are failing in that duty — and this failure will one day leave our children with three bad options: huge tax increases, huge deficits, or huge and immediate cuts in benefits. Everyone in this Chamber knows this to be true — yet somehow we have not found it in ourselves to act. So let us work together and do it now. With enough good sense and goodwill, you and I can fix Medicare and Medicaid — and save Social Security.”
