I know, I know.

But I'm posting it anyways. There was a lot of buzz on the Hill yesterday over Social Security's future: committees, rallies with a bunch of unions in different-colored T-shirts...and a fuckload of different numbers getting thrown back and forth, lobbed across party lines.

It's enough to make a reporter wanna slam his/her head against the marble walls in the Dirksen Senate building.

(And yes, the bruises on my forehead are recovering admirably.)

This story was designed as a California-localized sidebar to the AP coverage of Bush's trip to Texas, in the home stretch of his "privatized" (if you're a Democrat), or "personal" (if you're a Republican) accounts campaign.

And I swear, I couldn't friggin' buy a phone call back from Sen. Grassley's office. He would have been the principal counterweight to Boxer's claims. I know the story looks biased, but I did try to get both perspectives in. The News-press took out the "Grassley was unavailable for comment" sentence.

Repeat after me: "I am not a Barbara Boxer hack," "I am not a Barbara Boxer hack," "I am not..."

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New report on Texas workers shows privatization doesn't work, Boxer says

4/27/05
By DICKIE CRONKITE
NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT


WASHINGTON -- As President Bush pitched his partial privatization plan for Social Security in Galveston on Thursday, California Sen. Barbara Boxer retaliated with a new report that she said showed Texas retirees losing benefits under the private accounts.

Ms. Boxer's office and the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service analyzed a private-account program started in 1981 in three Texas counties, including Galveston. For their public employees, the counties opted out of Social Security entirely, deciding instead to provide private accounts.

Using the program as a model, the report showed that if these Texas public workers had retired in 2004, they would lose out compared with benefits received under Social Security, regardless of their income.

According to the study, by the time a 2004 Texas retiree who had earned $34,000 a year reached age 80, his annual Social Security benefits would reach $32,250 a year, which would be $13,000 a year more than his Texas private account annuity.

"The study shows that Americans are worse off with privatized accounts not in theory, but in reality," Ms Boxer said.

The Texas privatized plan is similar -- but not identical -- to President Bush's initial Social Security overhaul proposal.

The report also took aim at the Texas program's limitations regarding survivors' benefits. It estimated that if a worker were to die this year at age 40 with a 20-year work history, his family would receive $865 a month from the Texas plan compared with $2,291 under Social Security.

Proponents of a major Social Security overhaul have said studies like this use current Social Security benefits as their base, but those benefits can't be sustained indefinitely. Social Security is calculated to be solvent until the year 2041.

"It's easy to fix this problem," Ms. Boxer said. She supports having those in wealthier brackets pay higher Social Security taxes.

"That's what 70 percent of the people think is fair and that's what I think is fair," she said.


Dickie Cronkite writes from Washington, D.C., for Medill News Service. E-mail him at mhonore@newspress.com