Political Quotes

“With all due respect, I am trying to figure out the new math in my head because the math that the Senator is talking about certainly does not add up to anything that I have seen. I would encourage folks who are watching to go to democrats.gov and use the calculator based on a 6-percent rate of growth that some financial folks put together where they can put in their date of birth and their average yearly earnings and find out for themselves how they would do. So far we have not found anybody who does better under these privatized accounts. So when one is talking about what we ought to do, we need to start with the reality that the privatized accounts turn Social Security from a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble, No. 1. Secondly, there is nothing in what the Senator is talking about that has a relationship to what we are hearing about these private accounts. I said to Secretary Snow in a committee hearing that I understand folks have to pay some of this back, so let me give an example. My daughter is 25. Let us say I give her $1,000. At retirement I tell her I want the $1,000 back, 3-percent interest, plus inflation. Is that what you are talking about? And he basically said yes. He did not disagree with that. What we are seeing is a lot of hocus-pocus, a lot of where is the pea on the table moving things around. Of course, we have nothing specifically in writing yet from the President, which is one of the problems.…”