Kerry promises to protect seniors
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• Kerry: "Bush has lost credibility."
ORLANDO, Florida (AP) -- John Kerry is reassuring voters, in a state rich in retirees, that a Democratic administration would protect the two pillars of retirement benefits, Social Security and Medicare.
The presidential candidate's two-day swing through Florida that started Tuesday comes in the wake of deadly hurricanes that brought polling and politicking to a near halt.
President Bush made his third campaign-season trip to Florida this week to assess damage caused by Hurricane Ivan. Kerry has been to the state that decided the 2000 election nine times this year.
He planned to tell voters Wednesday that the president's proposed changes to Social Security could mean a windfall to financial and investment companies, at the expense of taxpayers.
Bush wants to let younger workers establish individual retirement accounts, an idea that Kerry derides as privatization. (Special Report: America Votes 2004, the Issues)
"That's not a plan. It's a rip off," Kerry said in remarks prepared for a town hall style meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida. "George Bush's scheme hurts seniors by cutting benefits, and it hurts our economy by increasing the deficit."
"The truth is, the only people who benefit from George Bush's Social Security scheme are the special interests."
Kerry pointed to a study by Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago business professor, who studied a model that proposes workers set aside a small percentage of their pay in private accounts as a method to adjust Social Security to a rapidly graying population.
Goolsbee concluded that fees charged by financial companies could reap them hundreds of billions of dollars and eat 20 percent of the benefits in an account held by a worker making an average salary.
The Bush-Cheney campaign said Kerry hasn't explained how he'd meet the challenges posed to Social Security by aging Baby Boomers.
"His record is one of voting for higher taxes on current retirees and ignoring the needs of future retirees," said spokesman Steve Schmidt.
Kerry wants to bolster the retirement program by reducing the deficit and expanding the economy. Some experts say economic growth might be insufficient to cover future benefits because those benefits grow as wages increase.
The Massachusetts senator also wants to improve Medicare by retooling the recently passed prescription drug benefit to let the government negotiate for bulk discounts on drugs.
Kerry talked to voters in Orlando and Jacksonville in Florida on Tuesday, promoting his health care plan and criticizing the president's conduct in Iraq.
Bush's record in Iraq means he "does not have the credibility to lead the world," Kerry told reporters. He also questioned Bush's rebuff of a CIA intelligence survey. Bush said "they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like."
"Does that make you feel safer? Does that give you confidence that this president know what he's talking about?" Kerry asked supporters at a late-night rally in Orlando.
