U.S. Representative Sandy Levin
12th District of Michigan

(Washington D.C.)- {U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), Ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee, today responded to the President's 2007 budget proposal to spend $712 billion over the next 10 years for the creation of private accounts in the Social Security program.

“The President’s budget represents more of the same wrong priorities for American families,” said U.S. Rep. Levin. “More efforts to privatize Social Security when he just last week called for a bipartisan commission; this week he is back on his partisan drum to privatize Social Security. Let’s remember that the American public solidly rejected the President’s plan to privatize Social Security. The defeat of privatization and protecting Social Security’s guaranteed benefits was a major victory for unified Democrats and for the American public.”

During the State of the Union address, President Bush indicated he intended to form a bipartisan commission to look at entitlement spending including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. However, there is no mention of his entitlement commission in the Social Security Administration section of his 2007 budget. The President’s call for a bipartisan commission during his address is not even referenced in the overview section of the budget.

The President’s 2007 Budget does include the privatization of Social Security by introducing private accounts, which states: “The 2007 President’s Budget includes the estimated impact from the creation of personal accounts. The accounts will be funded through the Social Security payroll tax.” Furthermore, there are repeated references for “personal accounts” under the Strengthening Social Security tab, and a detailed description of the President’s proposal to cut middle-class Social Security benefits using a method he calls “progressive indexing,” which has been estimated to cut Social Security benefits for everyone who earned more than about $22,000 a year while they were working.

Under Table S-6, Mandatory Proposals, the President’s budget outlines over $712 billion in costs over 10 years under Social Security Personal Accounts.

Even though he says otherwise, the President is still budgeting for the privatization of the Social Security program.

The overview posted by the White House also calls for the privatization of Social Security http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/ssa.html.

Additional references to Social Security privatization can be found throughout the President’s 2007 Budget on pages: 2, 5, 19, 286, and 321.
 

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