Did We Forget Something?

BUSH'S SOCIAL SECURITY PLAN WOULD SLASH FUTURE BENEFITS
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=124597

PROGRESS REPORT - The president proposed deep Social Security benefit cuts for middle-class Americans. He formally "backed a specific plan to reduce future benefits for tens of millions of Americans." Yet in presenting the idea of progressive indexation – a change in law that will give workers less money by tying their benefits to inflation instead of wage growth – President Bush described it as a system "where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off." Here is the part he skipped: the plan "would reduce annual benefits for an average wage-earner who is 25 today and retires in 2045 by 16 percent.… For an average-earner who retires in 2075, the benefit reduction would be 28 percent."

Not only did the president not acknowledge the sweeping cuts that would be made under his plan, but his definition of a "high wage earner" was equally as misleading. A worker making $58,000 a year – who will see his or her benefits cut by 42 percent under the president's plan – certainly could not be considered "affluent."