Originally published July 5 2005
Social Security reform bill would save funds in workers' private accounts
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A group of Senate Republicans offered a bill yesterday that they said would prevent Congress from spending surplus Social Security taxes by taking surplus revenues, projected at about $170 billion this year, and credit them proportionally into retirement accounts in the names of workers.
Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, said the measure is the first step toward overhauling the program and addresses one of the top concerns people raised in town hall meetings across the country this year.
In effect, the bill would take the surplus revenues, projected at about $170 billion this year, and credit them proportionally into retirement accounts in the name of workers paying Social Security taxes.
While that would create an inheritable nest egg for workers and pay a share of their future retirement benefits, it would inflate the budget deficit because the government would no longer count the Social Security surplus as an asset.
This year, a projected deficit of about $370 billion would increase to $540 billion, based on projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
''The Social Security trust fund has become a secret slush fund for Congress," DeMint said as he introduced his bill with Republican Senators Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Mike Crapo of Idaho.
They propose transforming general IOUs -- which the government places in Parkersburg, W.Va., as the money is spent on other government programs -- into personal IOUs for each of the 110 million Americans who pay taxes into the program.
While the federal government would continue to spend the surplus tax money, the individual accounts would bear marketable Treasury bonds that give American workers a sense of ownership over their retirement money, as well as an inheritable asset should they die before they stop working, the congressmen said.
Democrats said the plan was little different from Bush's call for personal savings accounts funded with a portion of the payroll taxes workers pay each year.
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