Private accounts would cut benefits and cost trillions of dollars to establish.

Questions and doubts about President George Bush’s plan for privatizing Social Security continue to surface. At press time, although the White House had yet to unveil details of its plans for reforming Social Security, members of Congress already were getting an earful from constituents concerned about efforts to privatize the 70-year-old program.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have hosted town hall meetings on Social Security in their home districts in recent months. And they are discovering that Americans across the political and age spectrum have a real problem with any plan that would result in significant cuts in benefits for retirees, disabled workers, surviving spouses and children of workers who have died, and others who depend on Social Security. Alarms also are being sounded about how much the administration’s plan would add to an already out-of-control federal budget deficit.

“We need to stop the privatization plans that would dismantle Social Security through benefit cuts and by diverting trillions of dollars from the trust fund,” says Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.). “And, we need to restore bipartisanship to the debate and return to fiscal responsibility and pay back the trust fund.”

What is known about the president’s plan is that it would allow workers to divert part of their Social Security payroll taxes to risky private investment accounts that would cost trillions of dollars to set up. In addition, privatization could open up Social Security to corruption, waste and fraud because politicians would decide which Wall Street firms would make billions in fees from the private accounts, according to Shaun O’Brien, a pension expert and senior policy analyst with the AFL-CIO.

Several Republicans have joined with Democrats in expressing opposition to the private accounts. “I’ve never been a gambler. ... I don’t want to gamble with Social Security trust fund monies,” Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) said during a radio interview in upstate New York in January. “And so I am very, very skeptical of the so-called plans to privatize. And I think a disservice is being done to a great many Americans by sort of sounding the alarm that everything’s going to hell in a hand basket and we’re going to be broke by 2018. That simply is not so.”

In an effort to ensure Social Security is strengthened, not privatized, the AFL-CIO and its affiliates are building on the grass-roots mobilization networks formed during the 2004 presidential campaign. The effort centers on getting members of Congress to sign a pledge vowing to strengthen Social Security and to oppose privatization.

Instead of extreme measures that would shrink benefits and swell the deficit, union members and their allies are calling for responsible action to make sure the system is there for future generations. “We must strengthen Social Security, but we must take the time to do it right so we help rather than hurt younger workers as well as those nearing retirement,” says AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney.

“At a time when guaranteed private pensions are disappearing and public employee retirement funds are under attack, the president’s privatization blueprint would cut benefits, explode the budget deficit and make retirement less secure,” according to the AFL-CIO.

Opponents of privatization say Bush and his allies are trying to scare Americans into believing Social Security faces a crisis so they can sell privatization. Bush is known for crying wolf when he wants to make sweeping domestic policy changes, David A. Bositis, a senior research associate with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, told interviewers at BlackAmerica.com. On the subject of Social Security, “Bush has a history of saying there’s a crisis when there’s not necessarily a crisis,” Bositis said. “The Democrats are right: This is not a crisis. There is plenty of time for a plan.”

For more information on labor’s plan to defend Social Security, visit www.afl-cio.org/socialsecurity.