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Financial misappropriation is the proper name for the Social Security trust.
Getta loada this:
Reforming Social Security
Federal lawmakers have a very, very special offer for some
5 million teachers, law-enforcement officials and other
state and local employees around the country. They want to
give those employees a chance to enjoy all the benefits of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's greatest New Deal legacy, the
Social Security program. In fact, lawmakers consider this offer
so thoughtful and generous, they may make it one that
employees can't refuse by passing a law making their
participation mandatory.
State employee groups have responded with all the
enthusiasm of German soldiers being dispatched to the Russian
front. Said Robert Scully, executive director of the National
Association of Police Organizations Inc, in a letter last month to
President Clinton, a "proposal of mandatory Social Security
taxes for public safety officers is one of the greatest and most
detrimental attacks on public safety labor organizations and
their respective members."
Said a spokesman for the 40,000-member United Teachers
of Los Angeles, "[L]et's call this what it really is -- a bailout of
the Social Security trust fund on the backs of school teachers
and other state and local workers who did not create the
problem."
Wrote the heads of five government retirement associations
in Ohio, "The anger among millions of working adults and
retirees and subsequent political backlash that will likely follow
if mandatory coverage is imposed is disturbing to contemplate."
It's not hard to understand their anger. Mr. Roosevelt's
grand plan to reduce dependence in old age has been reduced
to a pyramid scheme on the verge of collapse. Even those for
whom the system is "working" -- baby boomers who will get
back little more than they paid in, even less for those who
follow -- could have made sounder investments buying
swampland in New Jersey. This is the retirement system that
President Clinton and congressional leaders now say they want
to save.
The fact is that the only way to provide real social security
is to begin to allow people to save for their own retirement.
There are a host of plans on the table allowing just that.
Impeachment proceedings or no, lawmakers in both houses
should move expeditiously to take them up.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman William Roth, the
panel where Social Security Reform is likely to begin, has a
plan that would leave the existing system untouched but would
use budget surpluses to create personal retirement accounts for
all working Americans. Sens. Pat Moynihan and Bob Kerry
propose to divert 2 percent of payroll taxes into personal
accounts but would allow for increases in both the taxable
wage base and tax rate. Sen. Rod Grams would, among other
things, allow workers to shift 10 percent of their payroll taxes
to individually held personal retirement accounts and would
finance the transition by cutting federal spending 5 percent
across the board.
Still another plan, which has the advantage of being
politically possible, comes from Sens. Judd Gregg and John
Breaux and Reps. Jim Kolbe and Charles Stenholm. It would
allow workers to put 2 percent of payroll taxes into personal
accounts modeled on the Federal Thrift Plan. It also guarantees
the social "safety net" by stipulating that anyone who works for
40 years would receive a benefit equivalent to at least 100
percent of the poverty level.
Exactly where the administration is on all this isn't clear. Mr.
Clinton has so far refused to put up his own plan for
consideration, notwithstanding offers from Republicans to
introduce it as is. Republicans are naturally leery of going ahead
without him for fear that he will use any reform proposal to
attack them for doing away with Social Security.
One would hope he would not want his legacy to include
that of Social Security demagogue. Besides, the president
himself has acknowledged that one way to shore up the system
without tax increases or benefit reductions would be to "take
advantage of the higher return on investments" in private
markets, although he didn't say what form that investment
would take or who would make it.
Lawmakers shouldn't wait for him to make up his mind. Mr.
Roth should move on to do the "people's business," as the
president calls it, by considering Social Security reform. If the
existing program isn't good enough for state and local
government employees -- and it isn't -- it isn't good enough for
anyone.
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