'Beyond Recognition'

"Cutting benefits in half, risking Social Security on the stock market. The Bush-McCain privatization plan. Can you really afford more of the same?"

The Obama campaign stretches the truth beyond recognition when it says that this would cut benefits in half. As FactCheck.org notes, "this is a rank misrepresentation."

• No one at or near retirement age would have been affected.
• The Bush plan would have limited benefits for some workers to growing at the rate of inflation rather than at the generally faster pace of wages.
• Under progressive price indexing, the average-earning worker would see a 28 percent cut in promised benefits--in 2075.
• Today's average-earning 25-year-old would experience much smaller reductions in promised benefits upon reaching retirement age -- more like 16 percent.

Taken from "Closing the Whopper Gap" by Ruth Marcus Monday, September 22, 2008 in The Washington Post.