February 18, 2005

Social Security Debate Hits the Road

Privatization Scheme Sales Pitch Coming to Your Community

And despite a $20 million and growing advertising, marketing and lobbying campaign led by the financial services industry to put the best face possible on the proposal to use Social Security funds to create private stock market accounts, more troubling information is coming to light. First, taxpayers would take on $5 trillion in debt over 20 years to create the accounts. The trillions of dollars in transition costs would drive up interest rates on everything from student loans to cars and mortgages. Second, the privatization proposal would reduce benefits for all workers including younger ones by 46 percent after 2042, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Efforts to dismantle Social Security come at the same time as the attacks increase on defined-benefit pension plans for teachers, education support professionals and other public employees. Like Social Security, these plans provide a guaranteed benefit for life that can never be taken away, and also like Social Security, their continuation is at grave risk as President Bush and at least nine states (Alaska, California, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, South Carolina and Virginia) and New York City seek to shift to riskier defined-contribution retirement plans.

NEA supports strengthening Social Security so that the full benefits for which workers have paid are guaranteed. NEA opposes any attempt to base retirement benefits on the performance of the stock market, especially when private accounts, as the Bush Administration now admits, would not shore up Social Security's long-term finances and would saddle future generations with a massive debt.

Millions of retirees, widows and children who draw survivor benefits under the program, and people with disabilities rely on Social Security, the country's most successful anti-poverty program. Workers and their families should not be forced to trade their guaranteed retirement security for the risks of the stock market.

Action Needed
Join the more than 21,000 people who have signed NEA's petition to Congress. Urge your Member to:

• Protect Social Security benefits and oppose any effort to privatize Social Security
  
  
• Ensure that public employees who are enrolled in and have paid into other retirement security plans are not mandated to participate in Social Security, and
  
  
• Repeal unfair offsets - the Government Pension Offset and Windfall Elimination Provision - that deny earned Social Security benefits to many public employees.
  
  Find out if your Member of Congress is one of the 188 who has signed on to H.R. 147 the full GPO/WEP repeal bill . If not, urge him or her to do so.

Bush Budget Numbers Have Real Consequences

Other programs targeted for elimination include Vocational Education, Safe and Drug Free Schools, education technology grants and community technology centers. If adopted, the $4.3 billion in cuts would affect millions of children and families who rely on programs and services ranging from Head Start and special education to reading and math assistance and college loans.

The President would use the money from the education cuts to expand No Child Left Behind testing to high schools and fund a merit pay program for teachers. NEA supports focusing additional resources on high schools. But the money should not come at the expense of successful programs and should not be used for new tests when the current NCLB testing requirements are not funded at the levels promised. NEA opposes merit pay plans, because historically they pit teacher against teacher and inappropriately use student performance on standardized tests as a measure of a teacher's effectiveness.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not the basis for sound education policy when the end result increased class sizes, outdated and tattered textbooks, and reducing the number of classroom aides harms children.

Bill Seeks To Keep School Telecommunication Funds Flowing

The E-Rate program is the fourth-largest source of federal funds to K-12 schools. It is a $2.25 billion per year program that has wired 99 percent of schools and 92 percent of classrooms to the Internet and ensured that students have the benefits of modern technology. Prior to the program's inception in 1996, only 3 percent of the nation's classrooms were connected to the Internet.

Making the E-Rate exemption permanent, as it is for a variety of other federal programs, means that school districts can free up local funding to hire more staff, buy textbooks, or provide other assistance to students.

Action Needed
Urge your Senators to co-sponsor S. 241

Congress will be on recess until February 28.
The next Education Insider will be published March 4.