Social Security

Think Progress lies On ABC’s This Week today, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) falsely claimed that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “is not for the private accounts to take the place of social security.” “He’s for what Bill Clinton used to call Social Security plus,” said Lieberman.... As Stephanopoulos noted, McCain has abandoned his initial Social Security plan, which called for “supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts,” in order to embrace President Bush’s failed effort to replace the system with private accounts.

That is not what Bush proposed. Bush wanted

As we fix Social Security, we must make it a better deal for our younger workers by allowing them to put part of their payroll taxes in personal retirement accounts.

• Personal accounts would be entirely voluntary.
• The money would go into a conservative mix of bond and stock funds that would have the opportunity to earn a higher rate of return than anything the current system could provide.
• A young person who earns an average of $35,000 a year over his or her career would have nearly a quarter million dollars saved in his or her own account upon retirement.
• That savings would provide a nest egg to supplement that worker’s traditional Social Security check, or to pass on to his or her children.
• Best of all, it would replace the empty promises of the current system with real assets of ownership.

“I believe that private savings accounts are a part of” Social Security reform “along the lines that President Bush proposed,” McCain told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.