Candidates on Social Security

We believe our children and grandchildren should have an adequate quality of life when they retire. Social Security must be strengthened without burdening future generations.

The bolded candidate is listed first, then the statement we identified for the candidate. In some cases, we may not have identified a statement for the Divided We Fail principle listed above.

Democrats

Hillary Clinton

"With respect to Social Security, I have a plan. It's called start with fiscal responsibility. That's what we were doing in the 1990s, and we had Social Security on a much better path than it is today because of the irresponsible spending policies of George Bush and the Republican Congress. If there are some of the long-term challenges that we need to address, let's do it in the context of having fiscal responsibility, and then let's put together a bipartisan commission and look at how we're going to deal with these long-term challenges. I am not going to balance Social Security on the backs of seniors and hardworking middle-class Americans."
(MSNBC Debate, October 30, 2007)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21562193/

Barack Obama

"First, I believe privatization is dangerous (because it subjects) a secure retirement to the whims of the market. . . .

"Second, we don't need to cut benefits or raise the retirement age. There are a number of ways we can make Social Security solvent that do not involve forcing seniors to bear a heavier burden.

"The best option. . . is to ask the highest income Americans to contribute a little more by raising the ceiling that's currently put on the amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax. . . .

"Over the long term, we need to stop borrowing billions from the Social Security trust fund. That's why I'll stand for a return to fiscal responsibility as president." (Speech in Cedar Rapids 10/29/2007)

Republicans

Mike Huckabee

The President was right to address Social Security and the fact that it's just out of control. I think his biggest mistake was that he used a word that scared the daylights out of people -- which was "privatization" -- at a time when people saw privatization as the stock market, insanity of...Enron and WorldCom, companies like it. What we need to be talking about, and we need to sit down with Democrats, acknowledge that we have a problem that is neither Democratic nor Republican…"
(Interview, Des Moines Register editorial board, posted July 25, 2007) http://www.secureourfuture.org/...stid=754

John McCain

"I believe that we may meet our obligations to the retirees of today and the future without raising taxes, and I have long supported supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts - but not as a substitute for addressing benefit promises that cannot be kept. People of good faith in both parties agree that we must make the hard decisions to restore solvency to these programs. As President, I will work on a bi-partisan basis to make the hard choices to save Social Security and Medicare, protect the retirement security of our workers, and protect the American economy. I will listen to any serious reform proposal people have but believe we can achieve reform and modernization without higher taxes."
(The New York Daily News Candidate Challenge - John McCain, July 2, 2007) http://www.nydailynews.com/...john-1.html

Ron Paul

"The proposed solutions, ranging from lower benefits to higher taxes to increasing the age of eligibility, are NOT solutions; they are betrayals…. In Congress, I have introduced the Senior Citizens Tax Elimination Act (H.R. 191), which repeals ALL taxes on Social Security benefits, to eliminate political theft of our seniors' income and raise their standard of living…. We should cut payroll taxes and give workers the opportunity to seek better returns in the private market…. We must significantly reduce spending so that our nation can keep its promise to our seniors."
(Campaign website November 1, 2007) http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/social-security/

"The best private solution… is simply to allow the American people to keep more of their paychecks and invest for retirement as they see fit."
("Social Security: House of Cards," Texas Straight Talk, November 8, 2004.)

Mitt Romney

"I think you are going to have to have a President that will work with the Democrats and sit down and say, 'We need to make sure that Social Security is strong and can meet all of its promises, not just over the next 20 years, but over the next century.' Modest changes in the program today would allow us to do that, and they are going to have to be done in a bipartisan basis, and in my view the Republicans are going to do that together with the Democrats, no one can talk about it alone without the other party demogogging them and saying, oh, you are going to reform Social Security and trying to scare people."
(Romney event, Tampa, FL, August 16, 2007)

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