Social Security Empowerment

August 25, 1999

In her syndicated column on August 22, Josette Shiner, President of Empower America, highlighted the opportunities that Social Security reform presents and outlined the principles for reform that voters should demand:

Question: By all accounts, Congress and the Clinton administration have given up on Social Security reform for 1999, which means that the next president will have a major role in reform, making the issue ripe for the 2000 presidential race. What approach to reform should voters support?

Josette Shiner: First, voters should demand that candidates talk about the economic and social fruits of modernizing the nation's retirement system. Why should Americans settle for an outmoded, underfunded, low-yield (or no yield) national retirement system? For years now, Silicon Valley companies have made employee ownership a central tenet of good business, offering entry-level workers and executives alike a real stake in the success of the firm. We should expand this investment and ownership strategy to all American workers so each citizen can look forward not just to retirement security but retirement prosperity.

That's exactly what Empower America and other think tanks and grass-roots advocacy groups hope to accomplish by forming a new coalition called Social Security 2000. The group, chaired by former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, has united behind seven principles that should govern the transition to a system worthy of the New Economy:

1. Guarantee all promised benefits to current and near-term beneficiaries.
2. Give all workers the opportunity to generate increased retirement income and build personal assets by using a portion of their payroll taxes to establish Personal Retirement Accounts owned and directed by each worker.
3. Give workers freedom of choice to remain in the current Social Security system or choose the new Personal Retirement Account system.
4. Maintain a federal safety net, guaranteeing that each worker's retirement income under the new system would be no less than what Social Security would pay.
5. Address and ultimately solve Social Security's long-term financing challenges without tax increases.
6. Avoid imposing additional administrative costs on employers, particularly small businesses.
7. Adopt pro-growth tax and regulatory policies that will increase the rate of return on the Personal Retirement Accounts and smooth the transition to a new system.

Reform based along the seven principles would not only protect seniors and ensure intergenerational fairness but would also provide vast new opportunities for low-income and minority Americans to participate in America's economic success. Voters should demand that candidates adhere to these principles.

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