National Silver Haired Congress
11901 West 148th Street
Olathe, KS 66062
Phone: 913-897-3352
FAX: 913-897-3802
STATEMENT FOR THE
WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL SECURITY
The National Silver Haired Congress, a national grassroots organization
of registered voters over 60, held its inaugural session in
Washington, DC in 1997. At both its inaugural and second sessions,
preserving Social Security was voted in as a top priority of this
group. Specifically, the National Silver Haired Congress has called
for the following actions:
- Congress oppose all types of privatization of Social Security
including individual accounts and investment of Social Security
trust funds in other than government securities. Privatization
makes insufficient "safety net" provisions for all beneficiaries
that Social Security helps support.
- Congress repeal the offsets and penalties which tend to restrict
the earned benefits promised to vested workers under the Social
Security program.
- Congress extend the inflation indexing to the Earnings Threshold
Levels of the means test in the same manner that it does for other
income tax items and end this form of discrimination against the
elderly and disabled.
- Congress raise the cap on income subject to Social Security tax
by $5,000 per year until it reaches $200,000 and that additional
bend points, as appropriate, be utilized in the computation of
Social Security benefits.
- Local and state governments be prohibited from designing and
implementing alternative plans to Social Security and new employees
to such governments be grandfathered into the Social Security
program, thereby, increasing participation in the program.
- When each spouse of a marriage is entitled to Social Security
payments based on his/her own earnings, the widowed spouse be
entitled to 50% of the Social Security payments of the deceased
spouse also, with 50% retained by Social Security.
Finally, and
most importantly, I would like to strongly emphasize the urgent
need to
PERMANENTLY REMOVE THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND FROM THE GENERAL
FUND AND DO SO IN SUCH A MANNER THAT PREVENTS CONGRESS AND THE
ADMINISTRATION FROM USING THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND FOR ANY
OTHER PURPOSE.
The National Silver Haired Congress is pleased to be part of the
White House Conference on Social Security.
Submitted by Bea Bacon, Chairman
December 3, 1998
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