WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush warned Thursday America`s retirement safety net was heading for bankruptcy, opening a new attack in his high stakes bid to reform the US pensions system.
Bush has made changing the system a prime goal in his second term in office -- despite warnings that attempts to spend political capital on the issue are destined for the political graveyard.
The president, in a prime time news conference, rode to the defence of his plan to allow workers to divert a portion of social security taxes to a private account for retirement, after a 60-day cross-country drive in support of the initiative.
Bush`s Democratic opponents have charged such a move would be tantamount to privatising a much loved system underpinning US society, and have accused Bush of failing to lay out realistic proposals for reform.
But Bush said Thursday that he favoured a system that he favoured a new style system in which "benefits for low income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off."
"If you work hard and pay into social security your entire life you will not retire into poverty," Bush said, in an apparent bid to shore up apparently eroding support in Congress for the plan.
He also suggested that one investment option under his plan for private accounts would allow Americans to divert funds into treasury bonds, considered a less risky investment than funnelling money into the stock market.
"That will allow an american to build a nest egg that he or she can pass on to whom ever he or she chooses."
Bush opponents however charge that his plan would do nothing to meet predicted shortfalls in social security, and would not relieve intense pressure on the system as the baby-boomer generation begins to retire in the next few years and there are fewer workers to pay into the system.
"These changes have put social security on the path to bankruptcy," Bush said.
04/29/2005 00:27 GMT