Congressional Black Caucus Meets with President Bush

CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS MEETS WITH PRESIDENT BUSH

(Washington, DC) With respect to the Congressional Black Caucus' meeting today with President Bush, Congresswoman Corrine Brown made the following statement:
"Today, my colleagues and I in The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) met with President Bush and several of his advisors to discuss the CBC agenda for the upcoming Congressional session. The main crux of the CBC agenda is to "close disparities and create opportunities" for African Americans. The Caucus' goals can be summarized as follows:

Closing the achievement and opportunity gaps in education; assuring quality health care for all Americans; focusing on employment and economic security by building wealth and business development in minority communities; ensuring justice for all; guaranteeing retirement security for all Americans, and increasing equity in foreign policy.

As Vice Chair of the Black Caucus, the area I will stress in this Congress is healthcare, specifically, Social Security reform, Medicare, and Medicaid. To begin, I wholeheartedly believe that the Bush administration's long term plan for Social Security is to privatize the entire system. In fact, if the Administration's planned changes are carried out, Social Security benefits will be cut drastically, perhaps by as much as one-third in the coming decades. Specifically, 'the Administration is planning to calculate Social Security benefits by using inflation rates rather than the rise in wages over workers' lifetime.

Given that wages generally rise faster than inflation, the new formula will dramatically decrease the growth of benefit levels' (The Washington Post, January 4th, 2005).
Additionally, the Republican plan for Social Security would allow younger workers to create private accounts for future investment. In reality, even partial privatization of the system would wither away nearly $2 trillion from Social Security in the next decade alone, and would endanger the benefits of current retirees and people with disabilities.

What's more, the President's plan, if enacted, could lead to direct benefit cuts by almost 50 percent for future generations of Americans. For my state of Florida, where nearly 20% of the State relies on Social Security, this precipitous decrease in funding would be disastrous for residents, forcing them to revert to near 1940s living standards.

To close, as The Congressional Black Caucus continues to promote our agenda this session, I remain hopeful that the Caucus will be able to reach agreement with The White House on these extremely important issues that affect minorities throughout the nation."

http://www.house.gov/corrinebrown/press109/pr050126.htm