Mike Huckabee: Speech 12/20/08

Mike Huckabee Speech Manchester, IA TRANSCRIPT: MIKE HUCKABEE: [to college student] First of all, if we dont do anything about Social Security, there wont be enough for you so I hope you have another plan. You need a Plan B. We can take care of the people who are getting into the system right now but theres going to come a point where the younger people paying in, it wont work. And there are several key factors; and the first one is when the Social Security system was developed it was developed based on actuarial tables that said that you would retire at 65 but the life expectancy is 67 years old, so the actuarial tables said you retire at 65 at 67 you would die so we have about a two year obligation, you would pay in for 40 years, we would pay you back for two . . . people started living longer you know and just messed up the whole thing . . . so it looks like the only other option is that we have to, sort of, make the system realistic. And heres the secondary problem: right now, we have fewer and fewer people in America who actually earn their money by wages and the current Social Security system is funded by wages, not just by the overall economy, second thing is we have more people getting into the system . . . baby boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 a day . . . wait until all those aging hippies find out they can get free drugs when they retire . . . this is not a Republican or a Democrat problem . . . and several things that will start fixing it. One, change the way we fund it . . . itll be funded out of the general fund . . . another thing is to come up with creative ways so that those of us who are getting near the Social Security age have some options. Let me give you an example: many of us have probably made plans that say that we know that Social Security is not going to be enough to completely sustain us so we have pensions, retirement plans, 401(k) . . . we may not need the monthly check from Social Security to get by but nobodys going to just say well, dont send me the check after all . . . but what if the government gave you an option for a one-time cash buyout . . . ? . . . its your money, you can take it . . . the President had the right idea and I commend him for it, he was courageous to go out and try to push it. The one big change would be, he used a word that scared the daylights out of most Americans. He used the word privatization . . . looking at the corruption in the corporate world its not an easy sell . . . I believe that while its not going to be easy the solutions are within our grasp. LABEL: MH IA 12-20 (GR#27) ACDS clipC To download a high res version of this clip, VISIT: https://issuealliance.box.net/shared/mdtc0pk2tk To download the full campaign event, VISIT: https://issuealliance.box.net/shared/mdozct81e3