Moran Town Hall Discusses Future of Social Security; Advocates Strengthening the System Not Privatization
Fairfax County, Virginia, February 8th - Congressman Jim Moran, Virginia Democrat, held a town hall meeting last night featuring Barbara Kennelly, former member of Congress and current CEO and President of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, to discuss the future of the Social Security system. Over 200 constituents showed up to ask questions and voice their opinions.
In his remarks, Moran stated, "For his second term, the President has made Social Security reform the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. But instead of working to find ways to keep Social Security solvent for future retirees, the President is bent on privatizing the system, requiring both cuts in benefits and the ballooning of our federal deficit by trillions.
"Social Security was created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the height of the Great Depression as a means to keep older Americans from experiencing the shame and debilitating effects of poverty. It continues to be one of our nation's crowning achievements and is the bedrock on which millions depend for their basic needs."
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has calculated that the Social Security system can continue to pay out full benefits until the year 2052. Under the President's plan, future retirees' benefits would be cut up to 40 percent and trillions of dollars would be drained from the Social Security trust fund.
"If it was not for the expense of the war in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts that reversed President Clinton's $5.6 trillion surplus into a $4.5 trillion projected deficit, we could create private accounts as a supplement to traditional social security. It is going to take a truly bipartisan solution to save the program most responsible over the past seven decades for lifting millions of Americans out of poverty. I am urging the President and Congress to search for solutions that keep the system solvent and do not gamble with the program's future."
http://moran.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=10053
