Summers says Obama will fix Social Security — question is how

[Omaha Steve]

http://transitional.pww.org/article/view/16707/

Author: Susan Webb
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 08/12/09 14:41

One of President Obama’s top economic advisers, Lawrence Summers, told leading economists Aug. 11 that the president intends to overhaul Social Security before he leaves the White House.

Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Obama’s aim would be to strengthen Social Security “in a way that will assure people that there’s something they can rely on, a base from which they can build their retirement security.”

His remarks came at the annual meeting of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group that includes Nobel Prize winners, presidential economic advisers and economists from academia, business and labor.

Summers said he was “confident” that the Obama administration, would “address Social Security from the perspective that the protection of what’s the bedrock of the system has to be an absolutely central value.”

That bedrock is a top concern of retirees and workers about to retire. Social Security is the single largest source of income for the elderly. Two-thirds depend on it for most or all of their income.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council, at its March meeting, issued a statement saying, “We cannot allow fiscal responsibility to be used as a pretext for cutting the social safety net. In this time of growing economic insecurity, we should be strengthening rather than dismantling the social safety net.”

The financing of Social Security, the union leaders said, is “fundamentally sound.”

FULL story at link.

[customerserviceguy]

1. And you all thought that seniors were upset

over a universal healthcare system that wasn't even going to include them...