On the recordNovember 28, 2012
Highly paid CEOs are in town to tell America how to avoid the fiscal cliff. The top priority of the ``fix the debt'' CEOs is to cut the essential commitments of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. No skin off their noses. Sorry, you 50 million Americans who are in poverty. Too bad, you millions of children, elderly, and poor who rely on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Unemployed? You're out of luck if you lose unemployment benefits. These 71 CEOs who come to Washington to preach fiscal austerity have average retirement assets of $9.1 million. That's about a $65,000 check each month for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, in contrast, the average Social Security check for retired workers is $1,237 a month. Of all these debt-cutting CEOs, only two have sufficient assets in their companies' pension funds to meet their obligations to their own workers. The rest who pay any pension at all have underfunded their workers' pension funds by $103 billion. Those who have already shoved their own retiring workers off the fiscal cliff want to do it to the rest of the middle class and the poor in America. No way. ____________________
