February 2005

by Lee Sustar

Say you're expecting to rely on a modest retirement fund. Along comes a hotshot stockbroker promising that if he can handle your money; he'll guarantee you 15 or 40 percent less of a payout than you would have gotten in the first place.

It sounds absurd, but that's the essence of George W. Bush's Social Security "reform." For all of Bush's hype about diverting a portion of the Social Security payroll tax into individual retirement accounts, his proposal is simply a smokescreen for a cut in benefits.