CWA 1180 - Political Action

Is Social Security Racist?
March 2005

What you can do to help save Social Security:

“The road to privatization of Social Security runs through New York, New Jersey and Connecticut,” according to the Working Families Party (WFP) Executive Director Dan Cantor. “There are 16 so-called moderate Republican members of Congress from these three states,” Cantor explains, “and there is no way that Bush and Tom Delay … get their way without these northeast Republicans.”

1180, along with the WFP and many others, are organizing a campaign to shore up wavering Democrats and convince moderate Republicans to vote against Bush’s attempts to privatize Social Security. Republican Congressional Representatives of 1180 members who are part of the targeted list include: Republicans Peter King (Nassau and Sufffolk), Vito Fossella (Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn), and Sue Kelly (Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange and Dutchess). If you live in any of these Congressional Districts, call and write your Congressional Representative to let them know what you think of Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security.

In order to privatize Social Security and take money out of your pockets to give to his friends on Wall Street, President Bush is using the same strategy he employed in getting the American people to support invading Iraq –manufacture a crisis. In order for this to succeed, Bush must mask the truth again and again. During the build-up to the war in Iraq, President Bush and his team came up with a different reason for the war every day. Now the Bushies are doing the same thing for their plan to privatize Social Security.

Recently, Bush told a group of African Americans that Social Security is a bad deal because "African American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people."

The Truth

“The Bush privatization proposal would, in fact, cut benefits severely for African-Americans and women.”
~ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Chairman Julian Bond and National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy in a joint letter to President Bush

“The claim that blacks get a bad deal from Social Security is false. And Mr. Bush's use of that false argument is doubly shameful, because he's exploiting the tragedy of high black mortality for political gain instead of treating it as a problem we should solve.”

“The chief actuary of the Social Security Administration . . . said, ‘careful research reflecting actual work histories for workers by race indicate that the nonwhite population actually enjoys the same or better expected rates of return from Social Security’ as whites.”
~ Paul Krugman, New York Times (January 28, 2005)

As for how Bush’s privatization scheme will hurt women, this is what NOW President Gandy says, “Make no mistake about it, privatization of Social Security will disproportionately hurt women – many of whom are already disadvantaged because of pay discrimination, time out of the paid workforce to care for families, insufficient or non-existent pensions and meager savings.”

The Facts

Social Security is not only a retirement assistance program, it’s also a disability insurance program. The program’s guaranteed benefits are especially crucial to people of color who tend to have fewer alternative resources, become disabled at higher rates and rely disproportionately on Social Security’s family benefit features.

According to the AFL-CIO:

Under Bush’s plan, Social Security benefits would be cut, the deficit would increase by $2 trillion AND the age to collect full benefits would increase to 70.
75 percent of older African American and Latino households rely on Social Security for half or more of their retirement incomes.
40 percent rely on Social Security for all of their retirement incomes.
Less than one-third of older African American households on Social Security also have some type of pension benefits, while 42 percent of older white households do.
While African Americans represent about 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, 17 percent of the workers receiving disability benefits in 2000 were African American.

Bush’s privatization plan, rather than helping African Americans, will actually hurt them disproportionately.

Social Security privatization is part of Bush’s overall program to create an “ownership society” that includes plans to change the retirement system, health care system, the tax system, jobs and education. Did you know that the US already had an ownership society? We called it slavery!

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