Social security is going bankrupt. It will take bold, innovative leadership to
save social security and turn the often illusive dream of retirement security into a
reality for millions of Americans...
...Let me say that the constitution makes no provisions for an individual's retirement. Indeed, the tenth ammendement prohibits Congress from doing so. We've had it for the past sixty years or so, but we're not necessarily stuck with it.Social security has helped, and continues to help, a lot of people who were unable to save for their retirement due to the regressive nature of our tax laws. It would be imprudent to simply abandon it.
Nonetheless, among my biggest priorities, now as always, is ensuring the solvency of social security.We need sound reform to keep secure financial footing.
When I was a girl growing up in Hope Creek, the dinner hour was precisely at 6:30 every night. Today, that sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it? Or maybe like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting or "Father Knows Best."
How many families sit down together at 6:30 every night to eat supper? Dad's working late. Mom's got a meeting. The daughter has soccer practice. The son's rehearsing for the school play. Dinner in most American homes these days looks like a miniature Grand Central station, with people dashing in and out, saying hello and good-bye, grabbing something from the refrigerator, or putting something in the microwave. Either that or the kitchen is deserted.
Our lives just don't operate on any kind of leisurely, regular schedule anymore, and we can't turn back the clock.
The new global economy just doesn't care about the 6:30 dinner hour. And it doesn't care that you have aging parents, as well as small children, to look after. It doesn't care that you're too tired or have too little time to help with the kids' homework. It doesn't care that you don't know how to use a computer. The global economy isn't worrying about you at all.
Families today need support. What chance does one family have against the global economic order that requires companies to downsize in order to be competitive? What individual response can counter the power of technological change which allows one computer to do what 300 people once did? What can a single worker do when he or she is in competition with people from around the world to produce the best goods at the lowest price - the kind of dynamic that created our prosperity in the first place? The virtuous circle for national prosperity can be a vicious circle for parents.
But we're all in this together. And what individual families can't build on their own, we can all build together.
So I'm here to make a proposal that speaks to the concerns and worries of working families. It's a plan that looks ahead to our long-term interests in human terms, not just economic ones. Because I believe that a prosperity that fails to bolster families is hollow and unsustainable. We must make job and family work together and not against each other.
In order to be part of this new economy, workers have to learn new skills. Otherwise, all of us will be left behind. A pair of strong hands are not what they used to be. Now those hands have to be able to use a keyboard. Government can't prepare Americans for the new economy, but it can make sure they have a chance to prepare themselves. I believe one of a President's fundamental jobs is to help people and the country manage change.
I have traveled America listening to the stories of working families. I've heard of wonderful successes and crushing failures, of hopes fulfilled and dreams unachieved. I was thinking of working families when I crusaded for tax reform to eliminate corporate loopholes so that working families could pay lower taxes. I was thinking of them when I worked for college loans that would be available whatever a worker's age.
For work and family are the twin sides of the American dream. They are the keys to our happiness as individuals-and to our success as a nation and as a family.
Today, America enjoys unprecedented prosperity, and our political and economic ideals have triumphed in some of the darkest reaches of tyranny. This remarkable progress is based on the extraordinary accomplishments of all of you.
But you knowthat America's greatness is not measured in Dow Jones averages, but in the character of its people, and how faithfully our leaders and national institutions reflect this character. And I think many of you will agree that there is a sickness in American political life today.
How political leaders handle the impending insolvency of social security, one of the most critical national problems of our time, may well define our ability to reclaim the public trust. But to save social security,we will have to stop playing politics with it.
This issue is more about our children and grandchildren than it is about us, but that doesn't diminish the urgency of the cause. It makes it greater.
We're all living longer, and with the approaching retirement of the baby boom generation, retirees will soon be a much larger share of the population. Fewer and fewer workers will be financing social security benefits for an ever-growing number of recipients.
There is only one solution if social security commitments are to be honored without breaking the backs of the next generation: bold reform, genuine reform that allows workers to invest some of their social security savings, privately, in higher yielding accounts.
Today, social security revenue can only be invested by government, in government securities that yield miserly returns. It's little better than burying your savings in a tin can until you retire. We can do much better than that.
The American dream belongs to all of us. Promoting investment in America by every American worker would give lower-income Americans the ownership they deserve in the country we share, as well as increase their social security savings more rapidly.
Will reform be easy? No. Nothing worthwhile ever is. It will require sacrifice, but considerably less sacrifice than the train wreck that is the status quo.
There is another point to be made clear. Social security retirement pensions were never designed to provide the full income required for life support after retirement. Other investments such as Savings Accounts, Whole Life Insurance policies and or annuities should be provided by the wage earner.
Yet, no other Candidate for this high office of trust and responsibility knows better than I the importance and the immediacy of protecting the social security system from bankruptcy and/or insolvency.
How can social security be overhauled? Specifically I do not have all the financial details needed to make a sound decision. I can only state that my goal is to give Americans the freedom to choose what retirement plan they want.
We as individuals should take care of our own needs. We should take care of our own parents. We should help those less fortunate than ourselves. In other words we should "Love thy neighbor as thyself".
Thank you very much. May God bless each and every one of you!
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