Legal Commentary

Obama v. McCain on Social Security

By TChris

Saving social security was the issue du jour on the campaign trail. John McCain, speaking to an AARP conference, did his best to frighten the audience.

"Social Security is going broke. Social Security is going broke. Hello?!"

McCain's plan to address the projected insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund is to "reach across the aisle" and "change Washington." He also promises "the creation of a bipartisan commission to propose solutions." Hey, while we're at it, let's get a bipartisan commission to tell us how to get out of Iraq. Oh, we did?

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Barack Obama proposes to apply the social security payroll tax (now capped at $102,000 of income) to earnings that exceed $250,000 per year. Obama has a plan to address insolvency. McCain doesn't.

McCain does have a plan to permit workers to invest some of their social security payroll deduction in private accounts. In his AARP remarks, Obama associated McCain with President Bush's 2000 privatization plan. Privatization isn't a favored word in the senior citizen vocabulary, so it's no surprise that McCain denied that he would privatize social security. McCain assured the audience that his plan was voluntary and would be offered to younger workers without affecting their benefits.

Perhaps partial privatization (for now) would be a more accurate label for the McCain plan. Whatever you call it, McCain hasn't explained what he'll do if workers decide not to privatize their social security investments and the Trust Fund "goes broke. Hello?!"

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 07, 2008 (boomark / email).