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Americans United for Change: Iowa's seniors deserve to know: Where do Steve King and Tom Latham stand?
2/5/2010

ww.americansunitedforchange.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Jeremy Funk, 202-470-5878

DATE: February 4, 2010 Lauren Weiner, 202-470-5870

Alternative Republican Budget Plan Calls for Dismantling Social Security and Medicare As We Know It by Reviving Bush-era Privatization Schemes

Iowa’s Seniors Deserve to Know: Where Do U.S. Reps. King and Latham Stand?

Washington D.C. – On the heels of the release of President Obama’s 2011 budget plan this week, Americans United for Change called on U.S. Representatives Steve King (IA-05) and Tom Latham (IA-04) to publicly ‘take a stand’ on the alternative budget proposal being offered by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking Republican on the House budget committee, that calls for dismantling Social Security with a risky privatization scheme and replacing Medicare with a voucher program that will lead to “massive rationing” of care for seniors.

Ø WashingtonPost.com’s Ezra Klein: “Ryan's budget proposes reforms that are nothing short of violent. Medicare is privatized. Seniors get a voucher to buy private insurance, and the voucher's growth is far slower than the expected growth of health-care costs…And beyond health care, Social Security gets guaranteed, private accounts that CBO says will actually cost more than the present arrangement.” [WashingtonPost.com, 2/1/09]

Ø ThinkProgress’s Matthew Yglesias: ‘Paul Ryan’s Budget Alternative: Massive Rationing’

Ø TalkingPointsMemo: ‘Privatizing Social Security Unlikely To Appear In GOP Campaign Mailers’

Tom McMahon, Acting Executive Director, Americans United for Change: “A deadly serious Republican alternative budget proposal has been laid on the table that would privatize Social Security and Medicare, effectively dismantling two of America’s most successful social programs that have been credited with pulling millions of seniors, survivors, and people with disabilities from poverty. From tax breaks for the extremely rich, to gambling Social Security away in the stock market, to replacing Medicare with vouchers to seniors that won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on – the Republican budget is a blueprint for resuscitating the same disastrous proposals of the Bush-era that the American people are trying hard to forget. And Iowa’s seniors deserve to know: where do Representatives Steve King and Tom Latham stand? Carving into the Social Security trust fund to pay for risky private accounts in the stock market would require massive benefit cuts for Iowa seniors and massive new borrowing and debt for our grandchildren. Do the Congressmen believe we should go down this tortured path?”

Known formerly as Americans United to Protect Social Security, AUFC led the national campaign to beat back President Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security in 2005.


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