Bill Nelson: “tonight I want to discuss another subject which is near and dear to our hearts, particularly the two of us coming from…”

“tonight I want to discuss another subject which is near and dear to our hearts, particularly the two of us coming from Florida, on the attempts to privatize Social Security. In fact, it even comes down to the fact that in the State of Florida, the pension program for Florida retirees was changed within the last 2 years by the legislature of Florida to basically allow a privatized element, other than a defined benefit element for all Florida's 600,000 retirees. It sounded awfully good while the stock market was doing so well, but now in the last few months, the stock market has not been doing well. Lo and behold, would you believe that out of 600,000 retirees in Florida on the Florida retirement system, the State pension, only 3,000 retirees out of 600,000 have signed up for the privatized retirement plan. That should give us a clue as to why we should not be privatizing Social Security.”