Democrats Get Roadmap Wrong

Published January 25, 2011 9:38pm ET



Democrats are targeting Paul Ryan and his Roadmap for America’s Future as the Wisconsin Republican is set to give the GOP response to the president’s state of the union address tonight. But while the Roadmap, Ryan’s proposal to rein in the federal budget deficit, is getting the attention from the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, it’s not clear that he and other Democrats are fully aware of what the plan lays out.

Schumer, the chair of the Democrats’ Senate policy committee, said this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that, “what Paul Ryan suggests — privatization — is really a dismantling of Social Security.” In fact, the parts of the Roadmap that address Social Security state that only those citizens under the age of 55 will have the choice to invest a partial amount of their FICA tax into private accounts—hardly a complete “privatization” as Schumer has stated. Here’s the relevant part from the plan (emphases mine):

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