WASHINGTON -- Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, Chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee and Sen. John F. Kerry, Ranking Member of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, today held a roundtable discussion and unveiled a new report highlighting the detrimental impact Social Security private accounts would have on small businesses.

“Increased costs. Benefit cuts. More red tape. Lower profits. This report clearly shows the disastrous effects privatization would have on America’s small businesses. Yet the President continues to promote a Social Security proposal that will drag America’s small businesses and their employees backward. Private accounts won’t work for Social Security and they won’t work for small business," Kerry said.

The report shows that the President’s Social Security privatization plan would cut benefits for small-business owners and employees, many of whom rely on Social Security as their sole source of retirement income, and would burden small-business owners with costly administrative requirements to establish and maintain private accounts.

“Today’s DPC report reveals more troubling facts about the President’s plan to create private accounts,” Dorgan said. “Many small business owners are whacked twice under the President's plan -- suffering large benefit cuts of their own and likely facing hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in administrative costs and red tape in managing the private accounts of their workers. The President’s plan is a poor one, and particularly poor from the perspective of America's small business owners.”

Dorgan and Kerry were joined at the roundtable by Francis Cavanaugh, former CEO of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board; Dallas Salisbury, President and CEO of the Employee Benefit Research Institute; Leonor Rodríguez, owner of Editorial El MundO; and Jim Kinder, comptroller of Hager Sharp, Inc.

For a copy of the report, titled “President Bush’s Social Security Privatization Plan: Benefit Cuts, Red Tape, and Increased Costs for Small Businesses,” visit: http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/

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