Social Security: Clay Shaw (R-Fla.) Having Trouble Making Up His Mind
Tuesday, August 15
News flash from Congress: yet another member of the House Republican majority, when it trashing Social Security and putting our money into shaky private accounts, wants to have his cake and eat it too. This time, though, we mean that literally: when Americans United threw a birthday party for Social Security this week in West Palm Beach at the office of Florida congressman Clay Shaw (R), Shaw, er, took the cake from us – no pun intended, really – and pledged his full opposition to privatizing Social Security.
Great news, right? Well, um ... not so much, once you try to pin him down on the details. You see, in 2005 Shaw wrote a bill called HR 3304 -- a piece of legislation that, if Congress passed it, would swipe the Social Security surplus and use the cash for private accounts. In layman's English, we call that privatization -- but apparently Mr. Shaw had too much cake in his mouth to tell us what he calls it.
While Shaw works the cake out of his mouth -- and you know, we wonder how biting his tongue got involved in that process -- our own Jeremy Funk made a statement on Shaw's silence:
"Clay Shaw, like many of his friends in Congress, likes to play word games with his position on Social Security reform – "No Privatization," his ads claim on TV ... The fact is, just one year ago, Congressman Shaw was a co-sponsor of legislation that would have used the Social Security surplus to help fund private accounts. That's privatization – pure and simple. Pro-privatizers like Clay Shaw can call their risky investment scheme anything they want, but the result is still the same: massive benefit cuts for the middle-class and nearly a trillion dollars in new debt."
But that's okay -- because if Clay Shaw's in a giving mood after he trashes Social Security, he can always just let the middle class eat cake.
Posted by Americans United For Change Web Team
1 Comment
You seem surprised that the crooks and criminals currently running the government are ‘salivating’ over the Social Security surplus. Let us take a moment to remember how Social Security was created.
President Roosevelt signed Social Security into law as a remedy for crooked politicians trashing people in various ways, during the Hoover Administration leading into the Great Depression. That was an example of somebody on top, looking out for the little guy.
Well, these days the little guy has been trashed by the government and by big corporations. The US under Bush is TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN DEBT; the US under Clinton had a multiple-billion dollar surplus. Social Security was in no danger with Clinton as president--but now that we have Bush II, Social Security is endangered as never before.
It is incumbent on EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO RETIRE--whether Republican or Democrat, wherever they live, to VOTE DEMOCRAT in this midterm, and also in the next general election. We need more than anything to get rid of the cockroaches--sadly, mostly Republicans--who are crawling all over our Social Security surplus, trying to steal it.
If nobody stays home this Election Dat and EVERYBODY votes Democrat, then this threat to our retirement will be temporarily suspended. Temporarily, until the next time the American people either stay home from elections, and/or vote Republican.
Val Fitzgerald in Dallas, TX | Wednesday, August 16 at 06:07 PM