President Discusses Issues With Black Leaders

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 - President Bush told a meeting of African-American religious and community leaders on Tuesday that he remained committed to a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and that fighting H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa remained a priority, a participant in the meeting said afterward.

Mr. Bush also encouraged the leaders to support his plan to add personal investment accounts to Social Security, which White House officials say could benefit blacks because they have a shorter average life span than whites and end up putting more money into the retirement system than they take out.

African-American men "have had a shorter life span than other sectors of America," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told reporters. "And this will enable them to build a nest egg of their own and be able to pass that nest egg on to their survivors."
...
Mr. Rivers, a Democrat and a Bush supporter, was one of about 20 leaders at the meeting.
The White House said the other participants were Bush supporters of both parties. They included Robert L. Woodson Sr., the founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, based in Washington, and Deborah Wright, the chief executive of Carver Federal Savings Bank in New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/national/26bush.html?oref=login

[fshrink]

1. Oh that's good! Let's solve the

SS problem, assuming that there is one! How? Well, let's promote a shorter life-span! With the fire of freedom raging, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[Rose Siding]

2. Earlier pieces debunk the lie in this argument

I've run across an even better analysis recently but here are two I just found...

snip>
Bush didn't make up this phony line on his own; it comes from the Heritage Foundation, which a number of years ago did a study purporting to show that because African-Americans have a shorter life expectancy than whites, they get less in return for the taxes they pay into the Social Security system.

But when the Heritage study was examined by actuaries at the Social Security Administration and by the Government Accountability Office, serious methodological flaws and numerous bad assumptions were uncovered. For example:

• Heritage failed to factor in the progressivity of Social Security benefits; on a taxes-paid to benefits-received ratio, those with lower incomes get more back. Blacks tend to earn less than whites, and thus their Social Security benefits are larger in comparison to taxes they pay.

• Social Security is more than retirement benefits. It also includes survivor and disability benefits. Blacks benefit disproportionately from those programs. While blacks are 11 percent of the workforce, for example, they are 18 percent of those receiving disability benefits. Almost half the blacks receiving Social Security -- 47 percent -- are getting disability benefits or survivor benefits.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/5187689.html

snip>
M inorities should favor private Social Security accounts, several advocacy groups such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute have argued. They have a right to their opinion. We object, though, to their implications that traditional Social Security favors whites over Latinos and African Americans.

Reputable researchers have debunked their research.

Evidence-based analyses explain why the system treats minorities fairly despite many groups' shorter employment histories, relatively lower wages and less-favorable life expectancies. Two concise analyses are "The Importance of Social Security to People of Color and Women" (www.cbpp.org/7-18-01socsec2.htm) from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and The Century Foundation's Reason No. 11 in "Twelve Reasons Why Privatizing Social Security is a Bad Idea" (www.socsec.org/publications.asp?pubid=503).

Selectively using data about shorter life spans to claim that Social Security discriminates against minorities in retirement pay turns a nonstory into a scandal. It ignores other features of the program -- that minorities are more likely to receive benefits for disabilities; that they are more likely to require support as survivors; and that, on average, they get higher average retirement income than their low-income history would warrant without the program's redistributive, safety-net leaning.

http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1106312342108262.xml