• Privatizing Social Security will not mean more money for you. Privatization will cut benefits by 30 percent even for workers who don't choose to have private accounts. That adds up to $152,000 lost by the average worker who lives 20 years beyond retirement. And if you do choose a private account, the government will take back 50 cents for every $1 in your account—on top of the 30 percent benefit cut.
  
   
• Privatizing Social Security is not really voluntary. You'll get the benefit cuts even if you don't want a privatized Social Security account.
  
   
• You won't be in charge of your privatized Social Security account. Politicians will hand-pick Wall Street firms to control the investment accounts—paving the way to corruption and Enron-ization of Social Security.
  
   
• Retirees can't pass privatized Social Security account money on to your heirs. The accounts will be converted to annual payments.
  
   
• We have time to strengthen Social Security the right way—not by slashing benefits. Social Security can pay full benefits until 2042 even with no changes at all. We should strengthen Social Security with commonsense approaches—like requiring Congress to pay back money it has borrowed from Social Security or rolling back the most egregious tax breaks for the very wealthy.

You won't hear the word "privatization" coming from President Bush—because his pollsters and spin doctors know America's voters oppose privatizing Social Security. He'll call it "personalizing" Social Security. No matter what word spin he uses, the reality is this: Privatizing Social Security will cut benefits, add $2 trillion to the federal deficit in just the first 10 years, push seniors into poverty and replace guaranteed retirement income with "personalized" risk.

Take action to protect Social Security by signing the petition:

www.unionvoice.org/campaign/ProtectSocialSecurity/

Please share these facts with people you know by forwarding this message to your friends, families and co-workers.

Thanks for all you do for working families.

In solidarity,

Working Families e-Activist Network
Feb. 02, 2005