57.3: Retirement Security
Security For Those Who Need It: Ensuring Retirement Security. Other Information:
While no changes should adversely affect any current or near-retiree, comprehensive reform should address our society’s remarkable
medical advances in longevity and allow younger workers the option of creating their own personal investment accounts as supplements
to the system. Younger Americans have lost all faith in the Social Security system, which is understandable when they read
the non- partisan actuary’s reports about its future funding status. Born in an old industrial era beyond the memory of most
Americans, it is long overdue for major change, not just another legislative stopgap that postpones a day of reckoning. To
restore public trust in the system, Republicans are committed to setting it on a sound fiscal basis that will give workers
control over, and a sound return on, their investments. The sooner we act, the sooner those close to retirement can be reassured
of their benefits and younger workers can take responsibility for planning their own retirement decades from now. Unlike Social
Security, the problems facing private pension plans are both demographic and ethical. While pension law may be complicated,
the current bottom line is that many plans are increasingly underfunded by overestimating their rates of return on investments.
This in turn endangers the integrity of the Pension Guaranty Benefit Corporation, which is itself seriously underfunded. In
both cases, the taxpayers will be expected to pay for a bailout. As the first step toward possible corrective action, we call
for a presidential panel to review the private pension system in this country of only those private pensions that are backed
by the Pension Guaranty Benefit Corporation and to make public its findings. The situation of public pension systems demands
immediate remedial action. The irresponsible promises of politicians at every level of government have come back to haunt
today’s taxpayers with enormous unfunded pension liabilities. Many cities face bankruptcy because of excessive outlays for
early retirement, extravagant health plans, and overly generous pension benefits. We salute the Republican Governors and State
legislators who have, in the face of abuse and threats of violence, reformed their State pension systems for the benefit of
both taxpayers and retirees alike.
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