Harry Reid Doesn't Have a Social Security Account

Today the RNC released a bill introduced by Democrat Senator Harry Reid in 1983 that kept Senators and Representatives out of the Social Security system. Instead of participating in what Ried has called the most successful government program ever Senators participate in a defined benefit program run by the Federal Government. Thanks to this legislation Senators do not pay any Social Security taxes.

Assuming this program is like every other pension plan in existence it invests in bonds and (gasp) the STOCK MARKET. It also presumably pays benefits many times larger than Social Security's payments to the rest of us. Why would Senator Reid want to participate in a "risky scheme to undermine Social Security"? Why would Senator Reid write legislation to exclude a small portion of the nations richest, most powerful people from paying ANY tax that supports the Social Security system?

Maybe because he wanted a better deal for himself, maybe because he knows the Social Security system is headed towards a disaster and wants to protect his own fortune from the huge pending cuts to Social Security benefits. I don't know, but I think it makes sense to ask why the men who are forcing the rest of us to pay into this system why they don't have to be in it with us.

As aside it should also be noted that Reid doesn't think Alan Greenspan understand economics, and doesn't think the Bush tax cuts have helped the economy over the past few years.

As a second aside, the article I linked to above includes the Democrat attack that President Bush thought the Social Security system would go broke within 10 years from his 1978 Congressional Race. It should be noted that there were significant changes to Social Security made in the early 1980s, in 1987 because Bush wasn't the only person who saw serious problems with the system. It should also be noted that Bill Clinton dramatically increased taxation of Social Security benefits during the 1990s, significantly reducing the burden of paying those benefits.

Timothy Burger