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Forum examines proposals for trust
by David Knox
BEACON JOURNAL

A solid majority of participants in a citizens forum on the future of Social Security favored investing a portion of retirement trust funds in the stock market to bolster the financially shaky program.

But the group of about 85 area residents adamantly opposed allowing individuals to manage their own retirement accounts.

"If they had left it up to me to put it in the stock market, I would have nothing now," said Robert J. Taylor, 70, of Akron, a retired Goodyear engineer.

The forum, held yesterday at the Quaker Square Hilton hotel in Akron, was sponsored by the Public Forum Institute, a nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C.

The aim of the forum -- one of hundreds sponsored by the institute across the country -- is to foster educated debate on important public issues between local citizens and their elected officials.

Ensuring that Social Security can provide promised benefits to the huge generation of soon-to-be-retiring baby boomers ranks among the nation's toughest and most complex problems.

"If decisions in Washington are to be sustained, they must be based on the input of an informed public," said Jonathan Ortmans, president of the institute.

But unlike traditional public meetings, the forums use technology to accurately record the grass-roots opinions.

Each participant is given a hand-held transmitter -- about the size of a television remote control -- to respond to proposed solutions to problems facing society.

At yesterday's forum, Cori Uccello, a representative of the American Academy of Actuaries, provided the stark facts: With no change in the law, by 2032, the Social Security Trust Fund will be bankrupt. From that point on, payroll taxes -- 12.4 percent, half paid by workers, half by employers -- will be able to pay for only about 70 percent of promised benefits.

Uccello explained the proposed fixes under consideration in Congress fall into three categories: cutting costs, finding more money for the program and altering the basic structure of Social Security.

The forum participants didn't think cutting costs was the way to save the program. They voted down proposals to increase the retirement age -- already scheduled to climb to age 67 for those born after 1959, or lower the annual cost of living adjustment.

The option of reducing benefits across-the-board was rejected by 76 percent of the participants.

The group was equally leery of plans to bring more money into the Social Security fund. The only proposal favored was an increase in the amount of earnings subject to the payroll tax, now capped at $72,600.

The message sent by the participants was that they favored a cautious altering of the way Social Security is funded.

In addition to supporting investing the Trust Fund in the stock market in hopes of generating a larger return, the group voted 78 percent in favor of tapping into the huge federal surplus projected for the next decade to shore up Social Security.

"That was the big winner," Uccello said.

U.S. Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Akron, who moderated the forum, said he was not surprised by the opinions voiced by the participants -- especially their willingness to invest Social Security dollars in the stock market.

"I believe that is a legitimate option," Sawyer said.

But Sawyer said he agreed with the majority that opposed individual accounts as too risky a way to finance a retirement system designed to provide security for all Americans.

Sawyer also echoed several residents who said that any Social Security money invested in the stock market should be managed by an independent authority -- similar to the Federal Reserve Board -- and insulated from political pressure.

Organizers of the forum cautioned that the opinions voiced by the participants may not represent a cross section of the populations. Only half of the participants were younger than 55 and more than a third older than 65.

Sawyer said that the large number of retirees in the audience struggling to solve a problem that is more a threat to their children and grandchildren than themselves was a testimony to the strength of democracy.

"We look beyond our time and ourselves," Sawyer said. "It's all part of keeping promises."

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