LAURA MILLER
Editor of PR Watch, Miller said today: “The Bush administration ventriloquists are out in full force these days, breathlessly hyping ‘Personal Retirement Accounts’ as a way to save Social Security by destroying it. For the average voter, getting a handle on what the Bush administration is proposing to do to Social Security is quite a challenge. The dozens of bobbing heads and clicking fingers, holding forth on cable news programming and the Internet, are enough to make anyone’s head spin. Is that spokesman from the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security speaking as an independent economics expert, a civic-minded individual or as a paid shill from a corporate-funded front group? If you’re having trouble keeping track of all the players, our very own www.SourceWatch.org can help. It will tell you that the Alliance is sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Business Roundtable, among other pro-business groups.”
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MARK WEISBROT
Economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Weisbrot said today: “The ‘President’s Reform Plan 2’ has administrative costs ten times as high as the current system — but even this is not as much money for the financial industry as they would hope to get further down the road. The potential for making money for financial firms from private accounts is enormous — billions or even tens of billions of dollars annually.” Weisbrot is co-author of the book Social Security: The Phony Crisis.
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ELLEN MILLER
Deputy director of the Campaign for America’s Future, Miller said today: “More people are hearing about Congressman Jim McCrery, because he recently gained great power over our future — and is poised to abuse it. He’s President Bush’s sherpa, the man charged to push Social Security privatization through the House of Representatives. Incredibly, McCrery has accepted nearly $200,000 in campaign contributions from the very Wall Street firms that stand to benefit the most from privatization. Of course President Bush’s campaign contributors reflect a who’s who of the country’s biggest corporations — from Wall Street to health care industries — who are expecting big rewards from their investment in him.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
