President Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform bill in 1996 requiring single moms to work for their state welfare stipend. (In Washington, the program is known as Workfirst.)
Now, President Bush wants to privatize Social Security with his private-accounts scheme that will benefit only stockbrokers, bond houses, mutual funds, insurance annuity hucksters and the like, all of them grasping for ever-expanding fees and commissions. Bush’s scheme is welfare for the corporate financial industries at the expense of retirees.
Americans need another welfare reform by killing President Bush’s privatization scheme before it gets off the ground.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Social Security System has worked well for the past 70 years. Making the FICA tax a “flat” tax on all wages, salaries, bonuses, stock options and other pay would lower the effective rate for low- and middle-income taxpayers and would ensure the solvency of the fund and maintain the current benefit system for another 70 years.
LES MARTIN
Snohomish
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