Lieberman Supports Personal Retirement Accounts

August 8, 2000

Press reports today indicate that Vice President Gore will select a supporter of personal retirement accounts as his running mate. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), who reports say will be formally invited to join the ticket today, declared in a May 4, 1998 interview that, "individual control of part of the retirement/Social Security funds has to happen."

Lieberman is currently chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, whose 1996 " New Progressive Declaration" on policy reform declared that "We must ... gradually convert Social Security from a transfer program to a new system of individual private savings supplemented by modest public pensions for the needy."

In the 1998 interview, Lieberman said that "if we can manage the transition, we have a chance to not only do something right, but to give people more confidence about what their retirement years will be like. Of course, it also dramatically increases our savings rate, which has to be good for our economy overall."

However, Lieberman warned that "Not everybody supports this." Personal accounts might spark an "old Democratic Party/new Democratic Party kind of split." So far Vice President Gore has been representing the old Democratic Party on Social Security. With Senator Lieberman on board, perhaps he can become a New Democrat at last.

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