Over at Uppity Wisconsin, xoff has done a heck of a job outlining all the reasons why voters in the 7th State Senate District should be casting their ballots for Chris Larson, who’s challenging incumbent Democratic State Sen. Jeff “Pay to” Plale. In xoff’s latest, he notes that he recently received a voicemail from Sen. Plale, who took the opportunity to defend himself against claims he wants to privatize Social Security:
“My” state senator, Jeff Plale, left me a voice mail this weekend saying some special interests were “flat out lying” about him and claiming he wanted to privatize Social Security.
“I’ve never tried to privatize Social Security and never would,” Plale (pictured) declared on his recorded autocall to voters. Besides, he said, it’s a federal program, and he has worked for programs to help seniors at the state level, where he serves.
The only problem with Sen. Plale’s claim that he’s “never tried to privatize Social Security and never would” is that it’s not true. As xoff notes, back when Sen. Plale was still Rep. Plale, he appeared as a spokesman for a group called Economic Security 2000 at a press conference at the State Capitol called by that group to discuss having citizens invest part of their Social Security accounts. In addition to serving as a spokesman for Economic Security 2000 at the aforementioned press conference, Plale also agreed to co-chair that group’s Wisconsin chapter, as Plale himself wrote in an opinion column in the Wisconsin State Journal:
Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen and I have agreed to co-chair the Wisconsin chapter of Economic Security 2000, the nation’s first non-partisan, grassroots organization dedicated to saving and reforming Social Security.
For the record, Economic Security 2000 is/was a group dedicated to reforming Social Security to allow IRA-type investment accounts, a form of privatization.
As for Sen. Plale’s recent claim that he would never privatize Social Security, here’s what Plale wrote in a State Journal opinion column:
Let’s allow all workers to set aside at least $ 1,000 annually into individually-owned IRA-type Social Security accounts with a portion of their Social Security contributions.
Setting aside Social Security funds into individually owned IRA-type accounts sounds a lot like privatization to me, and Sen. Plale’s claim that he’d “never” privatize Social Security sounds like bunk to me.
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