No Solvency, No Deal

23 June 2005

I strongly recommend that you not support Mr. DeMint's plan because it is incomplete. We need a plan that addresses solvency and you have admitted that this one does not.

It would be great if the "pain caucus" and the "free lunch caucus" came together and had a complete package that included the personal accounts. If the plan is a complete one, as yours was and the Democrats won't help then they are obstructionist. But we must, as Republicans, put forward a complete plan for Social Security. Partial only makes things worse.

Using the surplus to create the initial accounts is a good idea, however, once we do this where are we getting the money to pay the current benefits? How are we going to make the system solvent?

Your plan was so much better because it had the voluntary accounts, a way to make the system solvent, options within the account and safeguards.

From what I had read thus far about Mr. DeMint’s proposal, it is to place only T-Bills in the accounts. Sure this is ownership, but I felt the idea of a TSP-type account is better because there is a choice.

We do not need a purely Republican bill that we know will pass, but on a party line vote. This is not good for the reform idea. It needs to be truly bipartisan and solve all of the problems. It can not look like an ideological solution. This sounds like required personal accounts.

Please go back to your plan and try to gather support for it because it is simply the best plan out there. It solves the solvency question. It creates voluntary personal accounts. It has safeguards built-in to it. There are sop many good provisions that I believe your idea has a better chance of getting bipartisan support than Mr. DeMint's plan.

At this time the Democrats are not going to cooperate because there is an upcoming mid-term election. Maybe this issue, regardless of what the President and the House want, should be put aside until after the election.