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“ Democratic priorities are clear: we will fight to get the economy back on track, we will create jobs, and we will help unemployed workers. ” |
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Pelosi: ‘President’s Privatization Plan Would Be a Nail in the Coffin of Social Security’
Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, and Congressmen Charles Rangel and Sandy Levin of the Ways and Means Committee held a news conference this afternoon to voice their opposition to President Bush’s Social Security plan, which would be the largest benefit cut for the middle class in the history of Social Security. Below are Pelosi’s remarks:
“Last week, President Bush confirmed what we had known all along, and what Democrats have been telling the American people: the President’s privatization plan would force cuts in Social Security benefits for the middle class.
“I don’t know what the middle class ever did to President Bush, but he really socked it to them. If over your lifetime, you make an average of $58,000 a year – in other words, are solidly middle class – you get a cut in your Social Security benefit of 42 percent.
“Over the course of the past few weeks, you’ve seen a few things happen. You’ve seen the President go out on a tour of 60 cities in 60 days, and he couldn’t sell his privatization plan to anyone.
“In the course of his travels, the President went to the Bureau of Public Debt in West Virginia, where he stood in front of a file cabinet and said, ‘There’s no there there, when it comes to the Social Security trust fund.’ What the President was saying was unheard of -- that he did not intend to pay the Social Security trust fund back. That not only violates our moral and legal obligation to pay it back, it weakens Social Security.
“Who is going to pay the price for all this deficit spending and his reckless borrowing without intending to pay back to the Social Security trust fund? The middle class.
“We are here today to say that the Democrats are united in fighting the President’s proposal. Many of us view this assault on Social Security as a way to destroy it. The President’s privatization plan would be a nail in the coffin of Social Security. Make no mistake about it.
“We will not let President Bush turn a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble for the American people.”
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“ Democrats are united in presenting a New Direction for America, one that will make our nation as strong as its people, one that brings opportunity, security, and prosperity to all Americans. ”
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
