Say it ain’t so, Teach, say it ain’t so:
In a
Jan. 17, 1935, address to Congress, Roosevelt, the originator of the
federal retirement system, looked into the future and saw the need to
move beyond the pay-as-you go financing and eventually establish
"self-supporting annuity plans," noted Wall Street Journal columnist
John Fund."For
perhaps 30 years to come, funds will have to be provided by the states
and the federal government to meet these pensions," Roosevelt told
Congress.But
after that, he said, it would be necessary to move to "voluntary
contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the
annual amounts received in old age."Roosevelt
proposed that "the federal government assume one-half of the cost of
the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by
self-supporting annuity plans."
Oh, like President Bush is proposing, right? Now what, Contrarians? Here you have the head honcho for Social Security saying that this is the road we should go down. But, we all know that if it was Kerry proposing it, the Contrarians would be all for the plan.
Update: some info from Julie from Passing Thoughts, a thought that should not pass (which I had missed):
I have read a ton of smack today over the social security reform issue.
For quite a few years, my parents (who are over 55) have spoken of this
issue in regards to my brother and me, our spouses, our children and
their children. They’ve been worried about this for some time now. It’s
nothing new! Some people are running around here whinning as if this is
a new issue. When Pres Bush ran for Congress in 1978, he spoke of a
problem in the future with social security. That was over 20 years ago!
It’s not a new problem–it’s not gonna go away on it’s own–it’s going
to just get worse if something isn’t done. OK–President Bush compared
his proposition (personal accounts) to the Thrift Savings Plan. I can
speak of this firsthand because this is the retirement plan I have!
It’s great! There are 5 funds in which you can diversify your
money–they range from very, very safe to a little risky. I have mine
half and half and it’s grown to a very hefty sum in a short period of
time. I contribute (or I did when I worked full time) 12% which at the
time I enrolled was the max you could contribute. You cannot sit back
and expect it to take care of itself. You have to watch it carefully
which I do and it’s not a hard thing to manage. If you can manage a
checking account (which I realize not all people can,) you can manage
an account like this. Someone said that this is not a good thing unless
you are a financial wiz…not true! I’ll leave this topic with
this–why do you think I go work a few days here and there?? For my
health–NOT–I do it because I am a Federal Employee, I have a great
job with great benefits and I’d really like to hang on to it
(specifically b/c of the TSP) for when I do decided to return to work
full-time.
Exactically. Not a new problem, and not going to go away, no matter how hard the Contrarians want to poo poo it, because W is President. Let’s not wait to the point where we go "oh, shat. SS is toast."
