Clarks Summit, PA—Chris Carney strongly rebuked Chris Hackett's misleading statements about Social Security, which were designed to scare seniors into following his plan to privatize the system.

"Chris Hackett is trying to exploit people's fear to further his quick-fix agenda to privatize Social Security. Hackett's Club for Growth has said publicly that "the most selfish group in America today is senior citizens." Hackett and his Club for Growth want to privatize the system to make retirement a gamble. His fear-mongering tactics are short sighted and will hurt Pennsylvanian families and seniors. Chris Hackett needs to understand all the facts first before he tries to dismantle Social Security," said Carney.

Carney continued, "As a father of five, I know how important it is to take care of your family. That's why I've fought to protect Medicare and Social Security for our veterans and seniors in Congress."

In the Scranton Times Tribune (6/4), Hackett said, "Social Security is already on the verge of insolvency." The facts are that, according to the Social Security Administration (www.ssa.gov [1]), current benefits are expected to be fully payable on a timely basis until 2041. In addition, privatization policies like Hackett proposes make Social Security weaker.

According to American United for Change: (http://americansunitedforchange.org [2])

• Privatization is a bad deal for America's families and will weaken retirement security for Americans by imposing massive cuts in the guaranteed benefit that is a foundation for a secure retirement.

• Privatization will put our economy at risk by relying on trillions of dollars of new borrowing and debt, mostly held by China, Japan, and other foreign creditors, and impose a huge new burden of taxes on your workers, their children, and grandchildren to finance this debt.
• Privatization will weaken the long-term fiscal integrity of Social Security by diverting funds from the Social Security Trust Fund, at a time when we should be strengthening Social Security for the future.
• Social Security is a fundamentally sound program that can be strengthened through common-sense, bipartisan approaches - not radical changes. The first step in assuring the strength of the program is to assure that the money Americans have paid in to Social Security is used for Social Security - but President Bush and the proponents of privatization won't commit even to that.
• The proponents of privatization are not only making false claims about the fiscal condition of Social Security, but they are consistently making false claims about the benefits of privatization and false promises to young Americans about how privatization will work.

"The choice is clear. Chris Carney is standing up for seniors while Chris Hackett is working against them," said Vincent Rongione, Campaign Manager for Carney for Congress. "Hackett should be ashamed of the misinformation he is spreading to our seniors about their retirement security."