Rod Grams: “I will go through this quickly. I know we have others wanting to speak. As I said, this is not an experiment. This is…”

“I will go through this quickly. I know we have others wanting to speak. As I said, this is not an experiment. This is being done around the world. Eleven countries now have privatized their retirement; 30 others are considering it. We like to think we are in the forefront of this. But when it comes to retirement benefits, we are behind the curve. Chile, 18 years ago, privatized their system because their system was much like ours. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the brains in Washington did not create Social Security. It was modeled and copied from something that Otto Von Bismark put out in 1880. We adopted it almost exactly. So did Chile and just about every other country around the world. Chile, had the same problems or worse than what we are facing today. It went to bankrupt. They had to privatize their plan. By the way, 95 percent of the Chilean workers have opted into the personal retirement accounts. Their return last year was 11.3 percent. Ours, again, were less than 2 percent. British workers have chosen to go into PRAs. They have what they call their second tier Social Security, where they can opt from the Social Security System, like we have, into personal retirement accounts. In Britain, so far two-thirds of all British workers have opted into personal retirement accounts. They have enjoyed, over the past 5 years, a better than 10 percent return on their money. By the way, the pool of retirement in their retirement accounts in Britain exceeds $1.4 trillion.”