"This could well be McCain's Achilles' heel with regard to large numbers of people who are already Social Security retirees and the baby boomer generation, which is getting ready to retire," said Charles M. Loveless, legislation director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which helped fund the 2005 effort and expects to spend millions this year.
McCain's remarks on Social Security came during a week that showcased his ideas for the economy. When asked by a young woman at a Denver town hall meeting last Monday how to make Social Security viable for her generation, he said she could not rely on the system "unless we fix it."
"We are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today," he said. "And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed."
His comments seemed to suggest that McCain favored a new funding mechanism for Social Security benefits, such as private accounts. Later, on CNN, McCain seemed to fully embrace the idea of private accounts. "I want young workers to be able to, if they choose, to take part of their own money, which is their taxes, and put it in an account which has their name on it," he said. Participation would be a "voluntary thing," he said, and "would not affect any present-day retirees or the system as necessary."
The remarks drew fire from Democrats, who accused McCain of failing to understand a system that since its creation in the 1930s has relied on payroll taxes from current workers to fund benefits for current retirees. Some supporters of this system say that allowing younger workers to divert money into private accounts would reduce the tax money needed to provide benefits for older workers once they retired.
Considering that McCain has been trying to demonstrate his understanding of Americans' economic woes, his timing was odd -- endorsing a new reliance on the stock market in the same week that the Dow Jones industrial average dipped to its lowest point in two years.
His aides said Democrats were misrepresenting his statements; his only plan for fixing Social Security, they said, is forging a bipartisan compromise that considers all options.
Still, McCain did not back down, saying later in the week that "it's terrible to ask people to pay into a system that they won't receive benefits from."
