The Post Distorts The Truth on Social Security

Powerline catches the Washington Post trying to peddle a sob story designed to derail the President's Social Security proposal...

No group of Americans would be affected more by President Bush's Social Security plan than those earning the least. Just ask 46-year-old Brent Allen.

Allen, who recently lost his job at a Massachusetts paper mill, faces a retirement financed exclusively by the money he has been paying into the Social Security system for the better part of 30 years. Like nearly half the U.S. population, he has no pension or savings to speak of. And his brief flirtations with the stock market have largely flopped.

So Allen, who lives on less than $15,000 a year in disability payments from Social Security and income from his live-in girlfriend, is distrustful of Bush's plan to allow workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal investment accounts.

"I have had stocks, and have had them for six years, and I have lost money continually," Allen said this week. "What's going to happen to people when they retire when the market is down? There is no guarantee [Bush] can make. There is a guarantee now," under the current system.

More than 60 million Americans 25 to 64 years old reported incomes of less than $25,000 in 2002, the latest year for which government figures are available. Like Allen, most of these workers have small or no pensions, scant savings, and serious concerns about their retirement years, according to government statistics and polling results.

Bush sees personal accounts as the gateway to their financial security -- giving them a chance to join tens of millions of Americans with significant investments in stocks and bonds for their retirement. But unless he can convince Democrats and skeptical Republicans that the personal accounts would be a wise and relatively safe investment option for low-income workers, his proposal is likely to fail, many lawmakers agree.

Bush is lobbying Congress to allow Americans younger than 55 to eventually put 4 percent of their income subject to Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, in exchange for a reduction in guaranteed benefits, if they choose. Those who opt to divert a part of their payroll tax would invest the money in a small menu of stock and bond funds that they could not touch until they retire. Unlike in the current retirement system, they could pass on the money accumulated in the personal account to family or friends when they die.

First of all, let's focus on one key phrase that doesn't appear until that last paragraph: if they choose. Now, Powerline didn't see the phrase, mistakenly stating that the Post failed to report that the personal investment accounts are voluntary. But it's hard to blame them, since the focus of the story is on the inherent riskiness of the proposal, with just one mention of the voluntary nature of the accounts.

Guess what isn't voluntary? The fact that money that you and I earn is taxed and taken away from us to finance a government system that guarantees us almost nothing for a return and would be deemed a Ponzi scheme if it was run by anyone other than the Feds. We can't opt out of the government system, because we're financing someone else's retirement. No, we're not financing our own -- in fact, at some point in the future when we do retire, the money we paid into the system (as well as the money paid by our employer on our behalf) will no longer be there. The benefits we receive will likely be cut, because people will not vote for absurdly high taxes to finance our retirement at the level at which we paid into the system.

Yet the Post spends the majority of this article stressing the risk that Brent Allen allegedly faces. Let's get this straight -- since the accounts are voluntary, the only additional risk he faces is if he chooses to take the option. In other words, this guy can retire happily with his Social Security intact in 19 years or so, and he doesn't have to worry about President Bush's plan impacting him unless he chooses to take this option.

That's a choice, folks. Neither Brent Allen nor I nor you have any choice right now. The President is trying to give us one. You'd think liberals, who've spent so many years advocating the freedom to choose, might take a minute to understand that the concept can apply to more than aborting human life. I guess it's too much to ask the MSM to take its blinders off as well.