Entitled to Know

And in the same vein, Presidential candidate Fred Thompson has been winning praise from the media for “doing something” on Social Security. Doesn’t anyone care about what his plan actually does?

Here are some of the basics of Thompson’s Social Security proposal:

· Divert money out of Social Security and into private accounts.
· Make huge cuts in Social Security benefits.
· Increase the public debt by billions of dollars.
· Shift risk to individual retirees.

Thompson’s plan would even go beyond the President’s failed Social Security proposal by:

· Making larger reductions in Social Security benefits by completely indexing benefits to prices rather than using a combination of wages and prices
· Raise the Social Security retirement age for those with private accounts, effectively reducing their Social Security benefits further.
· Require workers, through an automatic but reversible wage reduction, to contribute 2 percent of their wages to a private investment account.

We’ve posted a full analysis of the Thompson plan on the National Committee’s website.