John McCain, in March 2008:
I'm totally in favor of personal savings accounts .... I campaigned in support of President Bush's proposal and I campaigned with him, and I did town hall meetings with him.
The big argument in support of the corporate-sponsored Bush/McCain privatization plan was that future retirees would get a greater rate of return on the stock market than with the guaranteed government securities in which the Trust Funds are currently invested (which returned 5.25% in 2007).
Stocks are now down 39% since October 2007.
So the question for John McCain and the Republicans is simple:
Do you still want to privatize Social Security?
And lest John McCain try to explain away his vigorous support of privatization in March 2008, he's been as consistently wrong on this issue as he's been with his "fundamentally strong" comments about the economy.
Here he is a year earlier, in March 2007, with the same enthusiasm (if not complete comprehension):
I favor strongly retirement savings accounts, personal savings accounts, whatever you want to call them.
Democrats have a different record:
Democrats created Social Security after the Republicans led us into the Great Depression.
Democrats saved Social Security from the Bush/McCain privatization scheme before the modern Republican recession.
And Democrats join with all Americans in giving thanks today that Social Security is not invested in the volatile stock market, but instead, in secure, guaranteed accounts backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government and earning a steady rate of return.
Democrats also remember history: after the stock market crash in 1929, it took a quarter of a century for the market to recover all its losses. And while the cheerleaders for privatization like to claim stocks always go up in the long term, if you put your retirement in the stock market in April 1998 -- more than 10 years ago -- you've lost money as of today.
But ... but ... but ... John McCain said in the first debate:
A lot of us saw this train wreck coming.
So he and his supply-side supporters must of warned folks that the economy and the stock market were in danger? Right?
We’re in a long sustained period of economic growth.
- John McCain, March 2007
[W]ho does [McCain] turn to for advice? His answer is reassuring. His foremost economic guru is former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm (who would almost certainly be Treasury Secretary in a McCain administration). He’s also friendly with the godfather of supply-side economics, Arthur Laffer.
- Wall Street Journal, November 2005
If we can get through this period, I think we’ll see a quick recovery.
- Phil Gramm, July 9, 2008
(Dow at 11,147)
I've never seen the U.S. stock market so well positioned as it is now.
- Arthur Laffer, Supply-Side Economist, January 19, 2007
(Dow at 12,565)
The Dow is now under 8,700.
A lot of people saw the train wreck coming ... but none of those people was named John McCain, Phil Gramm or Art Laffer.
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Excerpts from Yeah, Right: "This Economy Is Strong" and Other Tall Tales (pages 23, 60, 73)
Online Sources: McCain; WSJ; Gramm; Laffer
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