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Friday, March 04, 2005
Don't know much about...
I'd cut this college kid slack if I didn't suspect that his talking points were personally handed him from a national Republican operative. Nah, I probably wouldn't. If you're in college you should be able to get simple facts correct:
Federal employees don’t pay into traditional Social Security. Instead, they have what’s knows as the Thrift Savings Plan, which allows them to deposit a percentage of their pay into any one of five categories of diverse investment funds. The plan’s most conservative fund, the bond index fund, produces an annual return rate of 4.58 percent, more than double the one or two percent return rate under Social Security. If a personal retirement plan is good enough for government workers, including postal workers and Congressmen, why isn’t it good enough for all Americans?
Of course, federal employees do pay into Social Security. The Thrift Savings Plan is similar to a 401(k) that many Americans already have:
The TSP is one of the three parts of your retirement package, along with your FERS Basic Annuity and Social Security. Participating in the TSP does not affect the amount of your Social Security benefit or your FERS Basic Annuity.
Chris Cinquemani, "a senior political science major and editor of the Op/Ed section", should run a correction. The letter to the editor is a start, but a bad fact warrants correction no matter where it appears.
