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Barrett:
Private accounts good for Social Security
March
23, 2005
By WALLACE
McBRIDE
Index-Journal
senior staff writer
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| U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett
speaks with a gathering Tuesday at Lander University
about proposed changes to the nation’s Social Security
system. Greenwood was one of about a dozen public forums
Barrett conducted this week to discuss Social Security.
| U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett is
on the road this week pitching proposals to remodel America’s
Social Security system.
This tour brought him Tuesday to
Greenwood, where he addressed a group comprised mostly of
senior citizens and college students.
“The numbers are
starting to show that we can’t keep up with what we’re
supposed to be paying,” Barrett said.
The situation will
become more urgent in 2008 when the first major wave of the
“baby boom” generation will retire and begin to strain Social
Security funds, he said.
Since the Social Security system
was created in 1937, payments began when American citizens
turned 65. The average life expectancy for Americans at that
time was 63, Barrett said.
“That was a good deal for the
government,” he said. “Odds are you were going to be dead
before we had to start paying you.”
Payroll taxes have been
raised 20 times to extend the life of Social Security, he
said, and it takes more people to support a single
beneficiary. In 1950, it took 16 workers to pay the retirement
benefits for one person. Today, it takes 3.3 workers for every
one person.
Barrett wasn’t championing a specific plan
Tuesday, but did argue in favor of the president’s proposal to
create private savings accounts to subsidize — and
possibly replace — Social Security.
“One of the major
problems with Social Security is that Congress — in the past
and present — spends the reserves,” Barrett said.
Personal accounts would be private property, not an
additional source of government funding, he said.
“It’s a
lot harder for the government to take it away if you own it,”
he said.
Regardless of which proposal is adopted, Barrett
said benefits will be preserved for everyone age 55 or
older.
“One thing for certain is that benefits for retirees
and coming retirees will be paid in full,” said Mike Korbey,
who is accompanying Barrett on his tour. “We have to make
changes to make sure it’s strong and viable for their children
and grandchildren.”
Korbey is senior adviser to the deputy
commission of the Social Security Administration.
Max
Pappas, director of policy for Freedom Works, a national
grassroots organization, said private retirement accounts
would earn interest over the years.
“Based on the last 100
years of bonds and stocks, there’s almost no scenario where
you wouldn’t have a higher rate of return than you have now,”
he said.
Barrett said this plan would overlap the current
Social Security model and likely come with additional expenses
in the interim.
“There are a lot of plans out there,”
Barrett said. “There are four to seven congressmen on the
House side with plans. What a lot of congressmen are doing
this week is having forums to talk about what won’t work and
what we think will work.”
Nobody expressed much faith in
the government’s competency to shepherd these changes, though.
Many of those present for the Lander event were old enough to
have witnessed many changes in Social Security funding, and
expressed doubt that a new system wouldn’t eventually be
changed by future politicians.
“We’ve had a lot of people
upset,” Barrett told the Greenwood Rotary Club later that
afternoon. “But there’s a group of us trying to get our hands
around this ball.”
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