Bill Clinton: “One of the questions that we'll be asked to deal with, that most younger people who are interested in this will ask us…”

“One of the questions that we'll be asked to deal with, that most younger people who are interested in this will ask us to deal with, is the question of how much flexibility individual citizens should be given, and should there be alternative investment strategies for the Social Security fund. There will be a lot of these questions asked by young people, particularly. And I think it is important to keep in mind that there is always a balance between greater flexibility with the prospects of greater return on the Trust Fund and rock solid certainty. And ironically, to people in Bernice's position, she'd actually be better off with both, because if you don't have a pension, you need a higher income out of Social Security; but if you don't have a pension, you have very little room for risk. And there are--if you think about it, our society, for decades, by and large, made a bargain with our critical service workers, the people that pick up our trash every day or the police that patrol our streets or the teachers that teach our children. We say, ``Okay, we'll get you the best pay we can, but even though you'll never get rich, at least you'll have a pension as well as Social Security.'' Now, there's been an explosion, in the last 10 years especially, in America, of trying to provide more direct services to people in-home. And most everybody believes that's a good thing. It promotes more independence, a greater sense of security of the people receiving the services. But there are huge numbers of Americans like Bernice out there who are performing critical services and taking our country in a direction most people who study this believe we need to do more of. And one day, eventually, they'll all be covered by some kind of an organizational system that will give them a decent retirement plan. But meanwhile, you've got people like Bernice that are out there doing things that we should have been doing as a society long before, that are making this a better place, that don't yet either have the bargaining power, the political support, or whatever necessary to have the pensions that they need; either that or the economics of reimbursing for the service are not sufficient to support a pension. It is wrong to let people like her do all this work for us and not at least be able to rely on an adequate Social Security system in retirement. This is not an isolated story. This is a person who represents a growing number of Americans, not a shrinking number of Americans, doing something that most experts believe is making us a better society. I didn't want to take so much time, but I just think it's very important that you understand we picked these people--they're very compelling, I think, all of the panelists, but they're also representative, not isolated cases. And I think it's important to think about this when we make these plans for the future. [Vice President Gore made brief remarks and introduced Wilma Haga, who described how she and her husband had worked hard to put their children through college. She said she had retired with a pension of $200 a month and an additional $300 a month from Social Security, but when her husband died, her Social Security payment rose an additional $600 a month at a time when it was really needed.]”