Social Security
Bush is an advocate of the partial privatization of Social Security wherein an individual would be free to invest a portion of his Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts.
Bush has called for major changes in Social Security, identifying the system's projected insolvency as a priority early in his second term. From January through April 2005, he toured the country, stopping in over 50 cities across the nation warning of an impending "crisis". Initially, President Bush emphasized his proposal for personalized accounts would allow individual workers to invest a portion of their Social Security Tax (FICA) into secured investments. The main advantage of personal accounts within Social Security is to allow workers to own the money they place into retirement that cannot be taken away by political whims.
Most Democrats and some Republicans are critical of such ideas, partly because of the large (US$1 trillion or more) federal borrowing the plan would require, which might actually worsen the imbalance between revenues and expenses that Bush pointed to as a looming problem; and partly because of the problems encountered by the United Kingdom's privatized pension plan. See Social Security debate (United States). In addition, many Democrats opposed changes that they felt were turning Social Security into a welfare program that would be politically vulnerable. Portions of Bush's bill exempting private companies from social security payments have led to complaints that Bush's plan was created to benefit private companies, and that it would turn Social Security into just another insurance program.
Read more about this topic: Domestic Policy Of The George W. Bush Administration
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or security:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
—Second Amendment, U.S. Constitution (1791)