In the
SOTU address, Bush used the Thrift Savings Plan available to federal employees as an example and model for his proposed private Social Security accounts:
Personal retirement accounts should be familiar to federal employees, because you already have something similar, called the Thrift Savings Plan, which lets workers deposit a portion of their paychecks into any of five different broadly-based investment funds. It's time to extend the same security, and choice, and ownership to young Americans.
Unfortunately, this claim is being repeated in today's edition of USA Today:
There are two reasons the federal plan is an appealing role model for personal savings accounts, benefits experts say
But here is what Bush and USA Today did not tell you: The point of the Thrift Savings Plan is to supplement and not replace federal employees' pension and social security income. Contributions into the Thrift Savings Plan do not come out of Social Security payroll taxes or the federal government's pension plan.
According to the Thrift Savings Plan
website:
The contributions that you make to your TSP account are voluntary and are separate from your contributions to your FERS Basic Annuity or CSRS annuity.
The TSP is one of the three parts of your retirement package, along with your FERS Basic Annuity and Social Security. Participating in the TSP does not affect the amount of your Social Security benefit or your FERS Basic Annuity.
Do not let Bush and the coporate media fool Americans into believing that the Thrift Savings Plan is anything other than a supplement to and not a replacement for Social Security and the federal government's pension annuity.
E-mail the USA Today reporter who wrote the misleading article about the Thrift Savings Plan:
sblock@usatoday.com
Demand a correction that informs readers that the Thrift Savings Plan is only a supplement to and not a replacement for Social Security and the federal pension annuity.
