Excerpts from a speech by Senator John McCain, presidential candidate, on Social Security:

June 7, 1999

"My friends, 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. This isn't an exclusively Republican idea. Two well-respected, thoughtful Democrats, Senators Bob Kerrey and Pat Moynihan, have endorsed the idea because they know it is the only way Social Security can be saved without raising taxes or cutting benefits.

"By some estimates, a working family earning an average of $35,000 a year would receive benefits of $24,000 per year in Social Security benefits. Investing the same amount in a modest, diversified mutual fund would yield over $60,000. The difference is quite obvious, even for a poor math student like myself.

"The only way to increase the yield on Social Security dollars is by allowing workers to make investment decisions for themselves; by empowering American families to invest, in most robust portfolios, a portion of their earnings for Social Security that they would otherwise pay in taxes to Social Security.

"The fact is that personal choice in investing Social Security dollars would most dramatically benefit lower and middle-income Americans. As we all know, much of America's wealth has been generated not by earned income but from investment income. That is the case historically, not just during episodic spikes in the stock market.

"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 grow their Social Security savings more rapidly. It is the same premise upon which the federal employee pension program and 401(k) retirement plans are based. It works."

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