FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 25, 2005
Contact: Josh Freed
(202) 225-4431

DENVER, CO – U.S. Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO) held a Social Security town hall meeting on March 23 with a standing room only audience of over 100 seniors and students at the University of Denver (DU).  The event took place two days after President George W. Bush visited Denver to discuss his proposal to privatize Social Security.

In a presentation at the opening of the event, Rep. DeGette raised serious concerns that the President would have to cut retirees’ benefits by 40 percent or more and add $4 trillion to the deficit to pay for privatization.  The proposal would also do nothing to help keep Social Security solvent.

“Privatization is a solution in search of a problem,” Rep. DeGette said. “We should not implement a plan that would endanger retirees’ benefits, cut benefits for future retirees like the students at DU by thousands of dollars a year, and add to the already massive deficit.”

A roundtable discussion followed Rep. DeGette’s presentation.  Participants included three students, Johnson and Wales University student Lionel Washington, DU law student Andrew Luxen, and Regis University junior Antonio Apodaca, who is a finance major, and three Denver-area seniors Jane Crow, Robin Martin and Dennis Roe. This focused on how important Social Security benefits have been for retirees living on modest fixed incomes.  Currently, 49 million Americans receive Social Security, with two-thirds of recipients relying on it as their principle source of income.

The students were also concerned that, rather than addressing the long-term solvency of Social Security, privatization simply shifted much more of the burden onto their generation through cuts in benefits and increased deficits.  Instead of an ideological solution, many of the students wondered whether a practical compromise was possible.

“In the last election, Coloradoans made it clear they want practical solutions to the problems we face, not ideological warfare or partisan posturing.  They expect the President and the Congress to come together, just as Democrats and Republicans did under President Ronald Reagan in 1981, to develop a common-sense, bi-partisan plan to improve Social Security for the long term,” said Rep. DeGette. “This is the model that we must use today to strengthen Social Security so that it is still here for our grandchildren in the next century.”

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