John McCain Still Supports Privatizing Social Security

12:15 am EST September 7th, 2008 | News | 11 Comments

The American people – across party lines and ideology – do not support privatizing social security. They don’t support it in boom times, let alone in the middle of this Republican recession. But John McCain, just like George W. Bush, does support privatizing social security.

Sen. McCain, the Republican nominee, said he remains open to personal accounts, also called private accounts, for younger people. Under this system, pushed hard by President Bush in 2005, workers could divert some of the taxes that normally would go to pay Social Security benefits into personal accounts invested in stocks and/or bonds. In trade, their guaranteed checks from the government would go down, increasing both the possibility of risk and reward for participants, depending on how the investments fare.

…

“Privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George Bush proposed it, and it’s a bad idea today. It would take the one rock-solid, guaranteed part of your retirement income and gamble it on the stock market,” Obama said.

It’s good that McCain said this in front of fellow senior citizens at an AARP event, and I hope he continues to admit his true position on it all the way up until election day instead of running away from it like he has so many other issues. Embrace the privatization of the most important and popular social program in U.S. history, you maverick you!

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11 Responses to “John McCain Still Supports Privatizing Social Security”

  1. The Liberal Curmudgeon says:
    September 7, 2008 at 12:35 am

    Of course McCain, like Bush, despises social security. The Republicans have wanted to do away with it from the start. It doesn’t favor their constituency and contradicts their ideology. Social Security is not a cash cow for banks or Wall Street. It has allowed millions of everyday people to grow old with dignity and stability. What possible interest could the Republicans have in something like that?

  2. Bill L. says:
    September 7, 2008 at 1:51 am

    And they are going to succeed, too. The only way they can really hope to bring down SS is if all the “worthless paper” backing the program, namely Treasury Securities, become genuinely worthless. How does that happen? Why by running up hopelessly large deficits and then trying to “print” your way out of debt by running the money press day and night. You might want to suppress the Federal prime lending rate while you are at it, and a massive multi-trillion dollar Wall Street bailout can help too, especially if you start accepting junk CDOs in lieu of actual debt payment.

    Now if only they can create the perfect economic storm, the dollar will collapse, the government will go belly up, the whole sheebang will be “saved” by wealthy private interests offering to, well, duh, privatize them. See, they’ll say, the government can’t be trusted to run anything. Free market baby!

    Thankfully, nothing like that is happening…

    Doh!

  3. Bruce says:
    September 7, 2008 at 3:03 am

    I don’t mind privatization so long as the investments are in leading-edge companies. Like Enron. Or in companies supervised by the government. Like both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

  4. Nimrod Gently says:
    September 7, 2008 at 6:11 am

    Honestly, it’s like the eighties died in vain. Privatising things makes them worse.

  5. Gravypan says:
    September 7, 2008 at 7:38 am

    Then might I suggest all of you turn your 401k’s over to the government and let them handle it.

    Afterall, they know how to better manage your retirement funds than you do.

  6. Ed G says:
    September 7, 2008 at 11:39 am

    McCain’s has flip flopped on Social Security. He seems to be changing his tune, but who knows? Check out http://www.aafr.org/2008/09/07/obama-dont-privatize-social-security-mccain-yes-er-no-er-maybe/trackback/ on the AAFR site.

  7. Rheinhard says:
    September 7, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    Gravy – I’d be ecstatic if I didn’t have to have a 401K, which would be the case if the regulations governing corporate meddling in PENSIONS weren’t so lax, and we could trust the PRIVATE pension plans we were supposed to receive when we started working X years ago.

  8. Sean D. Martin says:
    September 7, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    OW: The American people – across party lines and ideology – do not support privatizing social security. They don’t support it in boom times, let alone in the middle of this Republican recession. But John McCain, just like George W. Bush, does support privatizing social security.

    Is your objection to McCain’s position based on it being unpopular, or its being harmful. Because from your lede it appears the objection is that his view doesn’t match what the majority wants. And that is a woefully bad basis on which to object.

    Are you in favor of government by poll? Should leaders only ever follow?

  9. Rheinhard says:
    September 7, 2008 at 3:07 pm

    Sean apparently believes that leaders should only ever concern themselves with public opinion when it is believed that the public opinon favors ideas which are “conservative” (more wars, screw more poor people etc.) If the public opinion favors ideas which are more “liberal” (dpn’t hand over the Social Security trust fund to coke-snorting Wall Street masters of the universe), then it is devoutly to be ignored.

  10. Sean D. Martin says:
    September 7, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    Rheinhard: Sean apparently believes that leaders should only ever concern themselves with public opinion when it is believed that the public opinon favors ideas which are “conservative” (more wars, screw more poor people etc.) If the public opinion favors ideas which are more “liberal” (dpn’t hand over the Social Security trust fund to coke-snorting Wall Street masters of the universe), then it is devoutly to be ignored.

    Oh, Bullshit.

    How about instead of speculating on what I apparently believe you say something relevant to what I actually posted? For example, I voiced no opinion on whether McCain’s plans for Social Security are good or bad. Only that objections to it should be based on something of more substance than whether McCain’s view is popular.

    And Social Security was used only because that is the topic of OW’s post. Had he or anyone commented in exactly the same way on an unpopular proposal of Obama’s, for example, I would have posted exactly the same comment.

  11. Geoff Dodd says:
    September 29, 2008 at 8:56 am

    Privatising things makes them subject to the greed factor in rampant capitalism, with reduced real social services. Super would then run totally ‘out of control.’ Big winners, big losers. Geoff D.