WP: Bush Social Security Plan Proves Tough Sell Among Working Poor

[Pirate Smile]

Bush Social Security Plan Proves Tough Sell Among Working Poor
Investment Choice Has Limited Appeal, Studies Find

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 18, 2005; Page A01

Brenda Ellis's day begins at 6:30 a.m., when she rousts her 11-year-old son, Imani, from bed, hustles him into the kitchen for breakfast and to the school bus by 7. Tianna, 13, and Dikia, 17, quickly follow. Then she's off, some days to a substitute-teaching job in Prince George's County, others to tax clinics for the working poor, where she is earning credit for a hoped-for career in accounting.

If it's a school night for her, Ellis, 41, rushes home to her Landover apartment to quickly fix dinner before bolting out at 5:45 p.m. for the half-hour drive to Strayer University and an accounting class that ends at 9. If it's tax time, she may not leave the clinic until 10. She kisses the kids goodnight, checks their homework, does a little of her own, has dinner, then climbs into bed by midnight, to start over 6 1/2 hours later.

Somewhere in this busy life stews roughly $13,000 in retirement savings from her 14 years at the U.S. Postal Service, in accounts that she doesn't really understand or monitor.

"I don't know what's going on with it," she said one night at a tax clinic in Southeast D.C. "I just know I have these three accounts, so I just say, 'Let's hope and pray. Let's hope and pray it's not going into Enron. Let's hope and pray it's not going into Tyco.' It's just hard to absorb all I'm supposed to absorb."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61356-2005Apr17.html

[Erika]

1. My government administered 401K

is handled by Mellon. The balance about a year ago finally reached what it was prior to 9/11. It increased some and is now on the retreat again. But Mellon keeps on getting their cut.

[MO_Dem]

2. Sadly, under this administration,

there is more working poor every day....Guess you could say the repigs have made their bed and now they can lie in it (pun intended).

[blogbear]

3. you're right!

[shanti]

4. and the working poor

keep growing daily under the chimp! :grr:

[Moderator]

5. kick

[NNN0LHI]

6. Bush Social Security Plan Proves Tough Sell Among Working Poor

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&ncid=716&e=16&u=/washpost/20050418/ts_washpost/a61356_2005apr17

<snip>"I don't know what's going on with it," she said one night at a tax clinic in Southeast D.C. "I just know I have these three accounts, so I just say, 'Let's hope and pray. Let's hope and pray it's not going into Enron. Let's hope and pray it's not going into Tyco.' It's just hard to absorb all I'm supposed to absorb."

"When you know you're entitled to Social Security, you know it's going to continue to come until you breathe your last breath," said Sondra Gilbert, a former D.C. government worker who had been jobless since 1999. "But if I start putting the few dollars he's going to let me put into an account, I could run out of that in a year or two, or whatever. Then I'm back on what? A homeless shelter?"

"I like the old way," said Joan Singletary, 52, a custodian deployed to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving by Goodwill Industries. "I like receiving a check. That way, I wouldn't have to tamper with the money on my own." snip

Bush, they say, has not tried to sell his Social Security plan to them. Rather, he travels to hand-picked Republican audiences that do not need their Social Security checks anyway, said Gregory Ligon, 56, of Hyattsville, who warehouses medical supplies at the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center.

more

[Mountainman]

7. I wish we could get people to transfer this distrust of Bush to everything

else he has tried to put over on them.

My feeling is that when it comes to things that effect someone else, like hating gays or forcing the 10 commandments on the public, it is OK by them but when it has a chance to negatively impact themselves, they are much more distrustful of the right as they should be in all things.

[NNN0LHI]

8. Lou Dobbs even has DUers believing the only ones to mistrust are...

...funny talking brown people. They don't even think about Bush anymore. Mind boggling.

Don

[YDogg]

9. I agree ...

... but this isn't part of *'s base. He doesn't give two craps what a bunch of working poor think.

[Cha]

10. bush is trying to scam the Americans

out of their SS like he scammed them into believing sadam had something to do with 9/11 and there were WMD in Iraq.

I'm surprised cnn and msrnc aren't beating the drums for privatizing Social Security or are they.. I never watch that shyte anymore?!

[struggle4progress]

11. kick

[Bleacher Creature]

12. Brilliant Reporting!!!

I have a suggestion for this reporter's next story: "Pet Termites Prove a Tough Sell Among People Who Own Houses Made of Wood."

[NYC Liberal]

13. Will Bush see them as just another "focus group"

like the MILLIONS of antiwar protestors?