U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D- Madison, held an open discussion for students Wednesday night to touch on the Social Security debate and encourage students to get involved.
Baldwin talked about the stock market crashing in 1929 and how many people had already invested money in the market with hopes of great returns.
\When it crashed, many, many, many Americans lost everything, and poverty among seniors was just incredible,"" Baldwin said. ""So Social Security really became a contract with Americans to assure that seniors would never again face those sort of depths of poverty.""
Baldwin said the Social Security fund pays benefits to 30 million retirees and 15 million Americans who are part of a family where a worker has been disabled or has died from injury.
Social Security was not intended to be the only thing people depended on for retirement. Life savings and pension were also a part of that, Baldwin said.
Baldwin talked about how she was raised by her grandparents and after her grandfather died and her grandmother became older, she helped manage many of her grandmother's accounts.
""Social Security played a critical role in making ends meet for her,"" Baldwin said. ""My life would have been different had there not been Social Security available for her.""
Baldwin wanted to stress that students should care about Social Security as it could affect their lives.
Baldwin said Social Security will be able to pay 100 percent of the benefits until 2052 and 80 percent after that, which she believes to be a manageable challenge.
As the floor opened to discussion, students expressed their concerns about privatization, which Baldwin explained as diverting some portion of Social Security into private accounts to be saved for retirement.
Some students, such as UW-Madison seniors Brett Magaram and Jackie Helmrick, were in support of privatization, while other students are against it.
""I want something to be done now. I don't want to have to wait until I'm receiving lower benefits to fix the problems,"" Helmrick said. ""I do support the president's plan for partial privatization. There is a very good probability that people can make much more money in the private realm than they can with the 1.3 percent that Bush's security currently returns on their money.""
""In my opinion, I think it would be much better if I could have my own money invested the way I wanted to,"" Magaram said.
