John McCain: Town Hall Meeting 05/01/08

John McCain
Town Hall Meeting
Des Moines, IA 05/01/08

TRANSCRIPT:
QUESTIONER: ". . . and I'd also like to say, one of your early supporters in this campaign was Senator Sam Brownback. When he dropped out he endorsed you very quickly. He embraced, line by line word for word a proposal for reforming Social Security that was advanced by Bill Shipman at the CATO Institute. And it was designed to create, give people the choice: do you want to stay in this system or do you want to have your own account? And historically what's happened in other parts of the world is that it's created two groups, a declining group of seniors due to mortality supported by an ever-increasing group of younger people entering the work force . . . And I was wondering if you had spoken with Senator Brownback about that or if because what you're talking about in Medicare with the optional accounts, you know where you get the income yourself, it sounds like what he was proposing with Social Security . . . "

JOHN MCCAIN: "Thank you. I appreciate Senator Brownback very much, he's a great defender of the family and one of the great honest and decent people I've had the honor of knowing. I think one of the things, aspects of this, that really actually you're referring to, correct me if I'm wrong, personal savings account. That young Americans who are working, can take some of their social security taxes and put it into an account that has their name on it and they would have access to that in their retirement years. That would certainly not apply to anyone who is presently retired or age 55 or older. It would only apply to younger workers. I think it's a viable proposal, and I think it's a good option. But I think we can't lose sight of the fact that social security also is going broke. And we have to sit down together, it's very much like Medicare, only the size of the problem in Social Security is not as big as the size of the problem in Medicare. And we have to sit down together and put everything on the table . . ."

LABEL: JM IA 5-1 (GR#82) DAGIZZ - Clip J

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• TRACKING
• John
• McCain
• Social
• Security
• Privatization
• private
• accounts
• medicare
• account
• privatize