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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (674557)	3/9/2005 11:08:13 AM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

AARP calls Social Security OK Group's leader tells Canisius audience it is nation's biggest domestic success By ANTHONY CARDINALE News Staff Reporter 3/9/2005 Elizabeth A. Mundschenk/Buffalo News William D. Novelli discusses ways to preserve Social Security's solvency during an address in Canisius College's Montante Cultural Center. Unlike health care, Social Security doesn't need a radical overhaul, the head of AARP said Tuesday evening at Canisius College. "Social Security is the most successful domestic program in our history," William D. Novelli, chief executive officer of the group formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, told nearly 100 people in the Montante Cultural Center. "It's a risk-free, guaranteed pension that on average replaces 40 percent of a retiree's wages." Novelli said the projected Social Security shortfall could be reduced by more than 40 percent if the $90,000 income cap on taxable income were raised to $140,000 for purposes of supporting Social Security. He said the shortfall could be cut by another 15 percent if higher returns were reaped by diversifying the Social Security trust fund "in a total market index fund, like most pension funds" do. Novelli said AARP also would support "possibly adjusting benefits" to strengthen Social Security over the long haul. "But taking money out of Social Security payroll taxes for private investment accounts would worsen the solvency outlook rather than improve it, and could lead to large benefit cuts," he said, calling President Bush's proposal "risky, hugely expensive and unnecessary." Novelli was asked for AARP's response to the sharply critical Internet ads promoted by USA Next, a group claiming support from 1.5 million retirees for Bush's plan. "They have said that AARP is the boulder in the middle of the road toward these private accounts," Novelli said. "They are attempting to dynamite AARP. They ran an ad that claimed that AARP supported gay marriage and opposed our troops in Iraq. We don't have a policy on either of those things." Novelli said AARP finds it hard to take USA Next seriously. . "They're not even a fringe group. The people on the right repudiate them." Novelli devoted most of his remarks to the proposition that Americans "can afford to grow older without economic train wrecks, without pitting the needs of the old against the young, and without leaving future generations to clean up the mess." It can be done, he said, if Americans "cut the doom and gloom" and tackle problems as if they were great opportunities to transform the nation's health-care system, as well as strengthening its retirement system. Medicaid, the nation's largest public health-insurance program, covers one of every six Americans, he said, and pays the bills for two-thirds of the 1.4 million Americans in nursing homes. The program was moderated by former U.S. Rep. John J. LaFalce, the Peter Canisius distinguished university professor.