Social Security, Middle Class Style

The Stakeholder, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's blog, brings us these remarks from House Minority leader, Nancy (got more balls than Frist, DeLay, Hastert, Hoyer, and yes, Reid combined) Pelosi:

"Last week, President Bush confirmed what we had known all along, and what Democrats have been telling the American people: the President's privatization plan would force cuts in Social Security benefits for the middle class.

"I don't know what the middle class ever did to President Bush, but he really socked it to them. If over your lifetime, you make an average of $58,000 a year - in other words, are solidly middle class - you get a cut in your Social Security benefit of 42 percent.

"Over the course of the past few weeks, you've seen a few things happen. You've seen the President go out on a tour of 60 cities in 60 days, and he couldn't sell his privatization plan to anyone.

"In the course of his travels, the President went to the Bureau of Public Debt in West Virginia, where he stood in front of a file cabinet and said, 'There's no there there, when it comes to the Social Security trust fund.' What the President was saying was unheard of -- that he did not intend to pay the Social Security trust fund back. That not only violates our moral and legal obligation to pay it back, it weakens Social Security.