Mike Bishop, the Republican candidate in Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, has a long history of gambling with people’s livelihoods. He was the Senate Majority Leader when the legislature shut down the state government twice, once in 2007 and again 2009. These two shutdowns wreaked havoc on our state’s economy. Now that Bishop is running for the U.S. Congress, he wants to expand his gambling (with other people’s lives) habit to the national stage.
In a recent candidates forum with Democratic challenger Eric Schertzing, the 14-year County Treasurer in Ingham County, Bishop said he wants young people to gamble with their retirement by putting the money in the stock market instead of the Social Security system:
Bishop said the Social Security system is broken.“Congress needs to come up with a solution and part of that has to be giving the young generation the opportunity to use their own money to invest in their own retirement,” he said. “They will not benefit from the current system so they need to have another option.”
Our Social Security system is decidedly NOT broken, despite the scaremongering by people like Mike Bishop. What Bishop is proposing is to privatize Social Security which benefits Wall Street investors and subjects the retirement income of our young people to the whims of the stock market. It’s literally like betting your retirement on a roulette wheel.
By contrast, Bishop’s Democratic challenger Eric Schertzing is a strong supporter of Social Security:
For Schertzing, Social Security is a vital fallback that prevents seniors from living in poverty.“Social Security is the foundation of a dignified retirement for our senior citizens,” he said. “What we cannot do is privatize Social Security so it turns into Russian roulette on Wall Street.”
Schertzing told me in an interview that, based on his own family’s experiences, he’s “a strong supporter of Social Security so that families have that when they need it.”
To elect Mike Bishop to Congress would be to gamble with Michigan’s future. It’s just not worth the risk.
[CC photo credit: Ralf Roletschek | Wikimedia Commons]
