Forum on Expanding Social Security in Seattle Monday 2/23

Nancy Altman will be one of the featured speakers in a forum on Monday, February 23, in Seattle entitled “Social Security – Why It’s Not Broke and How We Can Expand It”. Joining Ms. Altman on the program will be Seattle City Council member, Kshama Sawant, and Washington State Labor Council President, Jeff Johnson.

Social Security Works! Why Social Security Isn’t Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All, is the recently released book by Ms. Altman and her co-author, Eric Kingson. Ms. Altman has a thirty-five year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions. She is co-director of Social Security Works and co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition and campaign. She previously authored The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble (John Wiley & Sons, 2005).

The Seattle forum is part of a campaign to expand the growing chorus of voices in Congress and elsewhere calling for the expansion of our Social Security system. We know that Social Security is not “going broke” and also does not add a penny to the national debt. We are fighting against the three-decade-long, billionaire-funded campaign to make us believe that Social Security is destined to collapse.

With the decline in defined benefit pensions and the total inadequacy of 401(ks), there is a looming retirement crisis that will affect more than two- thirds of today’s workers. Social Security is a powerful program that can help stop the collapse of the middle class, lessen the pressure squeezing families from all directions, and help end the upward redistribution of wealth that has resulted in perilous levels of inequality.

All Americans deserve to have dignified retirement years as well as an umbrella to protect them and their families in the event of disability or premature death. At stake are our values and the kind of country we want for ourselves and for those that follow. From the Silent Generation to Baby Boomers, from Generation X to Millennials and Generation Z, all of us have a stake in understanding the real story about Social Security.

Ms. Altman is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of beneficiary rights. She is also on the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a membership organization of over 800 of the nation’s leading experts on social insurance.

From 1983 to 1989, Ms. Altman was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and taught courses on private pensions and Social Security at the Harvard Law School. In 1982, she was Alan Greenspan’s assistant in his position as chairman of the bipartisan commission that developed the 1983 Social Security amendments.

Please plan to attend this exciting, movement-building forum on Monday, Feb. 23, from 7:00-8:30 p.m. at Joe Crump Hall, UFCW 21, 5030 First Avenue S., Seattle.