Media Release
| For Immediate Release | Contact | Phone |
| September 19, 2005 | Mike Olender | 732-246-4772 |
Rep. Chris Smith Turns Down DC Meeting with Constituents on Social Security
Washington, DC — Congressman Chris Smith (R-4) turned down an invitation to meet with constituents from his district in his Washington, DC office to discuss his position on proposed Social Security reforms. Tomorrow constituent members of the Keeping the Promise Coalition and New Jersey Citizen Action will travel from New Jersey to Washington, DC to meet with key New Jersey Congressional members who have not yet taken a position on proposals to privatize Social Security. Rep. Smith was given numerous opportunities over the course of a month to schedule a meeting with his constituents to discuss this important issue but instead neglected to confirm his availability for the meeting.
"It is a shame that Congressman Smith has refused to meet with his constituents about this important issue, said Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, Executive Director of New Jersey Citizen Action. "After months of him not meeting with us in his local district offices, we had hoped that a delegation traveling to DC would make it easier. Unfortunately, it appears that Chris Smith has no interest in discussing his position on Social Security with his constituents, no matter how far they travel to see him."
President Bush's scheme to privatize Social Security would undermine Social Security and replace it with an expensive and risky privatization scheme that will end the guaranteed benefit which has been the foundation of financial security for seniors, survivors and the disabled for the better part of 70 years, and create massive new national debt. His recent proposal to cut benefits as means of dealing with a possible insolvency problem in the future will hit the middle class the hardest by imposing cuts in guaranteed benefits of up to 25%.
Recent legislative proposals such as the GROW bill (HR 3304) threaten Social Security's solvency by creating private accounts out of current Social Security surplus funds. Instead of going to ensure retirement benefits for retirees who will be collecting benefits after 2019 (the year at which benefits begin to outpace revenues), the proposal would move that date closer by years and include all of the risky and unstable factors of Bush's general Social Security reform concept.
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New Jersey Citizen Action is the state's largest citizen watchdog coalition, with over 100 affiliate organizations and 60,000 individual members.
