White House: Bush Will Push for Individual Accounts

December 11, 2001

White House spokesman Ari Fleisher told reporters at his regularly scheduled briefing last week that President Bush, "believes very strongly that the only way to save Social Security, particularly for younger people, is through the creation of personal savings accounts. He would very much like the Congress to take up this issue."

While Fleisher said that the timing of legislation remained unclear—most observers are looking toward 2003—he said that "the President will continue to make every effort to build the case, both in the Congress and in the public, that personal accounts, which allow younger workers to invest a portion of the money that's currently taken out of their paychecks, for payroll taxes, could be put to better use, so they can get a higher rate of return on their money, through personal accounts."

A few days later, Fleisher returned to the issue, pointing out the importance of privatization in helping low-income workers to accumulate real wealth:

There are many people in society who would like to have access to markets, so that way they can accumulate wealth. And often, they can't. Social Security is one of the reasons they can't. Young people have all this money taken out of their paychecks, and often they do not receive any return on it, specifically people who are young today pay taxes for a system that is scheduled to go broke before they have any return. So one of the ways the President sees as helping workers who have a low income is to allow them to have the same market access that upper-income and middle-income people have, so they, too, can accumulate wealth.

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