Pelosi calls privatization plan a 'rip-off' ...!!!!!

[kentuck]

Wow! This is exactly how we have to approach the fascists that are trying to destroy our country and our institutions.
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Democratic Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, launching what she vowed will be an aggressive effort against President Bush's Social Security privatization, told cheering supporters in San Francisco on Wednesday that the plan is a costly "diversionary tactic'' by the administration and a blatant "attempt to divide the generations" on the values of a crucial social program.

"It's absolutely stunning, the rip-off that it is,'' Pelosi told a town hall meeting on Social Security, which drew overflow crowds of hundreds to the San Francisco Library. The minority leader said her appearance was part of a nationwide Democratic effort this week to hold at least 100 meetings and "raise the drumbeat'' against the Bush plan.

"We will not be part of increasing the deficit ... or being unfair to women and minorities,'' who rely overwhelmingly on social security in their senior years, Pelosi said.

The minority leader's lively 90-minute public discussion -- in an audience packed with concerned seniors -- comes on the heels of the president's own cross-country campaign on the issue to push more private investment in the program. In what is likely to be a recurring theme of Democratic attack, Pelosi repeatedly characterized the Bush plan as "a tax on our children'' -- and one that would severely endanger the poor, the disabled and especially minorities and female seniors who rely in the millions on the program as a safety net.

...more

[FreedomAngel82]

1. Good for Pelosi

I'm happy to hear her speaking out. :) :kick:

[Clarkie1]

2. I wholeheartedly agree...we've got a strong leader in our House n/t

[AirAmFan]

3. It's LEGALIZED EMBEZZLEMENT!

Former Rethug House Dick Armey leader spilled the beans (see http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1634126 )--

Social Security currently is a fully-funded social INSURANCE system, solvent for DECADES. Whenever anybody's played by society's rules and gone to work most of his or her adult life, Social Security assures that just enough money to live on will be available whenever it's really needed--

--when the person can't work anymore and has to retire; or

--when the worker dies and surviving children and/or a spouse too old to work are left behind.

To keep benefits high enough for such needy people to survive on, no benefits are paid unless one of these urgent situations occurs.

Now Dubya wants to PHASE OUT this highly successful SOCIAL INSURANCE program and replace it with IRA-like PRIVATIZED SAVINGS accounts that would be able to pay only a pittance to a vastly increased number of beneficiaries. Instead of survivable incomes going to a manageable number of people who really need them because they're too young or too old to work, many many small pots of money would go to insurance companies, Wall Street brokers, and able-bodied heirs too lazy to work for themselves.

Rather than announce openly that this is what he's trying to do, the Toxic Texan in the WH is LYING DAILY and trying to set up a system that allows LEGALIZED EMBEZZLEMENT of Social Security insurance money. Under his plan, gradually more and more of FICA and Trust Fund obligations would be siphoned away from the survival checks of those who need them and into the coffers of those who don't! A system now financially sound would be undermined and TERMINATED, deliberately but surreptitiously for those foolish enough to take the political manipulations of Rove and Greenspan at face value.