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From the diaries. Terrible news -- kos)
According to CNN, Rep. Robert "Bob" T. Matsui (of the Fifth District of California) is dead. He served as ranking minority member of the Social Security Subcommittee. He died from complications of a stem-cell disorder.
In addition, the 63-year-old Matsui was the third ranking Democrat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and was elected two years ago by his colleagues to serve as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - the National Party Committee responsible for electing Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives.
A week ago, he was quoted by Newhouse News Service on the drive to restructure Social Security.
"This plan makes no sense at all and it actually makes the problems worse," he said. He argues that diverting Social Security taxes into private accounts will take 10 years off the life of the program's trust fund and cost $6.6 trillion over 33 years.
An Associated Press article about his passing can be found here.
In the Los Angeles Times on December 21st, he is quoted as saying tax-advantaged individual retirement and 401(k) accounts already provided vehicles for private retirement savings. The virtue of Social Security, he said, is that it guarantees a minimum retirement income.
"You aren't going to get rich," he said, "but everybody knows that no matter what, you're going to have a certain amount of income."
Matsui also challenged Bush's assertions that private investment accounts would boost national saving and, if not exhausted during retirement, could be passed along to future generations.
The government would have to borrow the money to be invested in private accounts, the Democrat said. "At best, it's a wash," he said.
From his bio: "He is one of the nation's most ardent advocates for a social insurance program without which more than half of Americans over age 65 would fall below the poverty line. Matsui has condemned proposals to carve private accounts from the existing system, publicly exposing the fact that all such proposals would cut benefits, raise the retirement age, or reduce retirees' standard of living while further exacerbating Social Security's financing challenges. In the 108th Congress, Matsui is the only current Social Security Subcommittee member who also served on the Subcommittee in 1983, the last time the program faced major changes. He is determined to revise Social Security incrementally to ensure its long-term solvency without compromising its fundamental purpose: to reduce or eliminate poverty among America's elderly, persons with disabilities, and surviving dependents who have lost a wage-earning family member. Matsui believes that all of these groups are entitled to the certainty and stability of a guaranteed income that allows them to live with dignity."
A third-generation Japanese American, Matsui was six months old when he and his family were taken from Sacramento and interned by the U.S. government at the Tule Lake camp in 1942, after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1988, Representative Matsui helped shepherd the Japanese-American Redress Act through Congress, in which the government formally apologized for the World War II internment program and offered token compensation to victims. He was also instrumental in the designation of Manzanar, a wartime relocation center 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles, as a national historic site and in obtaining land on the National Mall in Washington, DC, for the memorial to Japanese American patriotism in World War II.
His bio can be found here: http://www.house.gov/matsui/bio.html
The Matsui family and friends are establishing a charitable fund in memory of the Congressman and ask that all gifts be sent to The Matsui Foundation for Public Service, P.O. Box 1347, Sacramento, CA 95812.