In case you missed it, Republican Lea Marquez Peterson committed a pretty epic gaffe in an interview with a local editorial board when, unprompted, she admitted she supports privatizing Social Security.
Remember…Marquez Peterson is running in Arizona’s Second Congressional District, which is known for having a high population of snowbirds and retirees and where nearly a third of the electorate is collecting Social Security.
See more from the Washington Post HERE, and a press release from her Democratic opponent, Ann Kirkpatrick, below…
For Immediate Release:
ICYMI:
Marquez Peterson Doubles Down on Plan to Privatize Social Security
(Tucson) – Republican Lea Marquez Peterson doubled down on her support for Social Security privatization, as her campaign manager confirmed to the Washington Post that she supports the risky policy.
Last week, Marquez Peterson told Arizona Daily Star editorial board that she supported allowing people “invest in the private market with SS funds,” as reported by reporter Joe Ferguson.
Displaying stunning ignorance of how Social Security works, Marquez Peterson campaign manager Chris Scotten claimed in the Post article that allowing workers to put their Social Security payments into the stock market would “change nothing” for retirees. In fact, today there are 43 million older people who receive an average check of $1,413 per month from Social Security. That money is drawn from the 175 million workers who pay into Social Security each month. If those workers were to divert those funds into private markets, there would be less money for retiree benefits. If the stock market were to crash again, massive cuts for retirees would be unavoidable.
“I am beyond disappointed to see Lea Marquez Peterson support another privatization scheme to weaken Social Security,” said Ann Kirkpatrick. “Republicans in Washington want to reward their allies on Wall Street with another huge windfall in profits, but taking that money from retired people is absolutely unacceptable. No way.”
The Washington Post article is excerpted below and the entire piece can be read here.
WAIT, WHAT?
House Speaker Paul Ryan has faded into the background of this year’s campaigns. That’ll happen when you’re retiring.
But Democrats believe that one of the speaker’s old issues has resurfaced in Arizona’s 2nd District, days after Ryan campaigned there. To their disbelief, Republican nominee Lea Marquez Peterson used an interview with the Tucson Star to float the idea of privatizing Social Security.
The issue surfaced last week, when the Star’s political reporter Joe Ferguson live-tweeted the Republican’s sit-down with the paper, including her answer on a Democratic attack line — that she would put Social Security at risk. “She notes she does support allowing individuals to invest in the private market with SS funds,” Ferguson wrote.
That was a blast from the distant past, from the forgotten politics of 2005. During the last Republican “trifecta” over the White House, House, and Senate, the party pushed for a Social Security change that would have partially privatized the system, by doing something like what Marquez Peterson said. Younger workers would be given the chance to divert some of their Social Security tax into private accounts.
The idea backfired on Republicans, and basically disappeared for a decade. After 2009, even Ryan’s budget sketches did not suggest privatizing Social Security, going for what seemed like the less controversial concept of turning Medicare into a “premium support” system. Only this year, after the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, did Republicans suggest that the growing deficit would lead to hard thinking on Social Security. Kirkpatrick had been attacking that idea in ads, and it came up at the Tucson Star meeting.
“My opponent says that we should privatize Social Security,” Kirkpatrick said in a video message after the Social Security remarks appeared on Twitter. “I saw how many families lost their savings when the stock market crashed in the great recession.”
Chris Scotten, Marquez Peterson’s campaign manager, said that the quote was being “sensationalized” by Democrats and that they knew the issue was phony.
“She does not support privatizing it for those at or near retirement and would change nothing for those promised it,” he said in an email. “However, the Social Security report makes it clear that over the next 75 years Social Security will owe over $13 trillion more than it is projected to take in. If we are going to save the system we need to come up with a bipartisan solution to fix it.”
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Ann Kirkpatrick was born and raised in rural Arizona. She grew up on an Apache reservation in the White Mountains, and moved to Tucson to get her college education and start her family. She has performed a lifetime of service for Arizona families, working as a prosecutor in the Pima County Attorney’s office, and as a legislator, before serving in Congress. Ann Kirkpatrick has defended women’s reproductive rights in rural areas where families’ health services are often neglected. She has received continued support from women’s groups during her previous time in the House, and has been a key figure in the fight to protect health care funding from the GOP’s dangerous attacks.