Ron Klein Ahead of Clay Shaw In Fundraising

More trouble for Clay Shaw.

Rep. Clay Shaw’s (R-Fla.) Democratic opponent raised over $460,000 in the second quarter of this year.

State Sen. Ron Klein yesterday announced that his campaign had raised $465,531 in the second quarter, giving him $560,033 in cash-on-hand with almost 16 months before the 2006 midterm elections — the most for any challenger through two quarters, according to early reporting data.

Klein is hammering Shaw over sponsoring the H.R.3497. Shaw followed Bush off the plank with Social Security private accounts. Mark Foley was a co-sponsor of the bill. Shaw wanted young people to put money in private accounts. He claimed that this would keep Social Secuity solvent. The problem is that Social Security is a pay it forward program. His proposal would help bankrupt Social Security. Another problem with starting the private accounts programs is it would take a trillion dollars. Shaw never explained where that money would come from during a deficit. The private accounts would pay less back.

Bush got the idea for Social Security private accounts from Chile. The country at that time was run by dictator and human right's violater Augusto Pinochet. Bush dined with José Piñera and Piñera sold Bush on the idea. Many conservatives ran with Piñera's pitch. Chile's pension system now can not pay for itself.

According to a recent study here, Chile's pension funds, whose number has shrunk to 6 from more than 20 as competition has diminished, recorded an average annual profitability of more than 50 percent during a recent five-year period. Other studies, including one conducted by the World Bank, indicate that pension funds retain between a quarter and a third of workers' contributions in the form of commissions, insurance and other administrative fees.

At the moment, the government pays about 5 percent of gross domestic product, or more than it spends for either health or education, on pensions for the poor, payments into a separate military retirement plan and so-called transition and administrative costs. Supporters of the privatized system argue that the state's burden will diminish as older retirees enrolled in the pay-as-you-go system that prevailed here before 1981 gradually die off.

But skeptics point to another developing problem: many young people, who should be enrolling in the system early to accrue maximum benefit, are staying out or paying in very little. Some cannot afford to contribute beyond the obligatory minimum payment, which is 10 percent of wages, while others are either self-employed or have been hired by companies as low-paid independent contract workers and therefore do not have to contribute at all.

Way to go Clay.