The Long Campaign against Social Security

Bush has proposed allowing workers to invest some of their federal retirement taxes themselves to earn a better rate of return — a partial privatization of the 65-year-old retirement system.

For such a long time the Social Security have been viewed by most conservative as a way in which the power of the government expands. The Social Security is owned by the government. It is an insurance program that runs for more than 69 years and is designed as something that compulsory collect from the public as a payroll tax.

The benefits that can be derived from the insurance program are disability, retirement and survivor benefits.  The problem with the Social Security arises on 1983 when the payroll tax that a person pays sometimes exceeds the benefits that the Social Security offers. In order to compensate with such a “hoax” as people started to call it, the Social Security invested the money in the Treasury Security that are deposited as a trust fund under the Social Security.

Most people and politicians believe that the Trust fund does not exist anymore. Some say that it should have been invested into a private sector so people would know how the government spent the money.

Since those who would benefit from the Social Security comprise a large number of voters, politicians have been extra careful when dealing with policy changes that would affect the Social Security. Since it was projected that the Social Security would face bankruptcy on the near future there have been several proposals regarding the way in which it could be run to yield more benefits in the future.

Reagan in his early campaign suggested that the Social Security can be privatized. According to him, the privatization could be done by an introduction of voluntary features that would give the citizen a capability to act in accordance to their will. He further stated that he is against forcing any citizen into joining a compulsory public program regardless of the need.

Nonetheless, when Regan have been a president he did not address the issue on privatization of Social Security and instead work on increasing taxes and the age of retirement to answer the possible problem in the Social Security. Regan have influenced the campaign on privatization but proved that radical changes needs long preparation and evaluation.

President Bush proposed to partial privatized the Social Security in order to solve the upcoming bankruptcy.  Bush aims to give deliver the benefits of the Senior Citizens or the people who have invested in the Social Security while at the same time helping the younger generation to build their wealth through the system.

Bush proposes the possibility of an individual and voluntary retirement account. President Bush’s proposal was known as progressive indexing which suggest maintaining the benefits for low income earners while slowly cutting down the benefits that high income earners receive.

Works Cited

Thomma, Steven. Social Security Overhaul is Long-Standing Conservative Dream. Commondreams.org. 2005.Retrieved on December 5, 2007. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0205-05.htm