Black folks don't appear to be buying into President Bush's argument about the benefits of allowing workers to invest a portion of their Social Security in private accounts in exchange for a reduction in future benefits from the government.
About 75 percent of respondents in a recent poll of African Americans by Democratic pollster brilliant corners Research & Strategies said they generally oppose Bush's plan. (In comparison, a Washington Post/ABC-News national poll of all racial demographic groups in mid-April found 64 percent of respondents disapproved of the way Bush was handling Social Security.)
The poor poll numbers should not be taken as a reflection of Bush's lack of trying to push Social Security private accounts with African Americans, a constituency that disproportionately depends on the government program.
"African-American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people, and that needs to be fixed," Bush said at a forum in January.
Similarly, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman has made pitching the concept of private accounts to black voters a top priority in recent months. Tara Wall, an RNC spokeswoman on issues of black outreach, said Mehlman has mentioned the benefits of private accounts in every outreach event he's done lately.
"If we want to close the gap between minorities and non-minorities in access to capital, in the ability to build wealth, in the ability to have a piece of the American dream, the only way to do it is a personal retirement account, because that's the only way for folks who live paycheck to paycheck to be able to build a nest egg for themselves or for the future," Mehlman said in a recent speech at historically black Howard University in Washington.
Republican National Committee officials downplayed the brilliant corners poll, noting that it was done for a group called "Americans United to Protect Social Security," which they described in a news release as a "liberal, fringe organization [whose] sole goal is to oppose Republican efforts to fix Social Security, and [which] is funded by millionaire elitists and unions."
AUPSS officials said the group is registered as an IRS 501c3, meaning it must be nonpartisan. A spokeswoman for the group, Cara Morris, acknowledged that some labor unions were active in the group, but said a broad coalition of "grass roots" activists were also involved. She refused to divulge the group's major funders. As an issue-advocacy group, it is allowed to advocate against Bush's Social Security plan
Republicans were happy to see their support among blacks creeping up, albeit incrementally, in the last presidential election. Bush increased his percentage of the black vote nationally from about 9 to 11 percent, and saw more significant increases in a few battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida.
The White House has made the calculation that it can broaden its appeal to minority voters, in part, by doing a better job of explaining why and how its policies benefit African Americans. Its Social Security argument is built on the premises that blacks die younger on average than whites (five or six years, depending on gender) and that blacks, who have built up less savings than whites, depend more on Social Security in retirement.
Thus, blacks would benefit disproportionately by being able to invest a portion of their retirement in private accounts, which almost assuredly would bear a greater return in the long haul, and can be passed along to heirs upon death.
Alphonso Jackson, a black, long-time adviser and friend of the president's, laid out the case in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed: "While approximately 20 percent of white Americans depend entirely on Social Security for their retirement income, the figure doubles for blacks. . . . But blacks receive far less in return for their Social Security contributions. One in three will get no benefit at all because he will die before he is eligible to collect benefits. After a lifetime of paying into Social Security, nearly 30 percent of black seniors are left in poverty, compared to 7 percent of white seniors. And while the average black male lives to age 67.8 -- after collecting less than one year of Social Security -- the average white male will collect seven years of benefits. In effect, black workers are subsidizing the retirement of whites. The inevitable results of not reforming Social Security -- raising payroll taxes or reducing benefits -- would only worsen the situation for blacks."
