"We need to have a conversation with America, just like we're having right here today, and admit that is a Ponzi scheme for these young people," Perry said. "The idea that they're working and paying into Social Security today, the current program, that it's going to be there for them, is a lie."
Perry used similar "Ponzi scheme" language to describe Social Security in Fed Up, the book he wrote last year. A campaign spokesman tried to soft-pedal that view in an interview with the Wall Street Journal this month, noting that the book was written before Perry decided to run for president, and saying it doesn't reflect the governor's current views.
Social Security does share one important feature of a Ponzi scheme. The money that today's workers pay into the system goes right back out the door to pay current beneficiaries.
The difficulty that Perry, and the party, face in trying to extricate their fortunes from his position on the 76-year-old program was on full display during Monday night's Tea Party-sponsored GOP presidential debate in Florida.
When former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney pressed Perry on assertions in his recent book that the program benefiting more than 52 million old and disabled Americans is "unconstitutional," the Texas governor insisted that he had no intentions of taking away an entitlement he once referred to as a "monstrosity."
This is a sharp turn away from calling it a Ponzi Scheme, a “monstrous lie,” or saying that it’s an unconstitutional system and that individual states should be allowed to opt-out of it.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/
He suggested that younger workers who are required to pay into the retirement system are the victims of a government swindle.
http://www.ideastream.org/
http://thehill.com/
http://www.cnn.com/
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/poverty_rate_income/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1
http://www.npr.org/
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/31/140072718/perry-revives-social-security-ponzi-scheme-rhetoric
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