U.S. Senate challenger Ron Johnson is attempting to get out in front of Russ Feingold on a hot button issue. Republican candidate Johnson’s latest ad restates his claim that Washington treats Social Security like a Ponzi scheme. “People like Senator Feingold, rather than address the problem, they’ve demagogued the issue, they’ve used it as a political weapon,” said Johnson. “It’s about time we actually seriously do address the problem.”
“Everything’s on the table, that means that privatization is on the table,” said Feingold of Johnson. “I reject privatization out of hand. Social Security is not something that should be put on Wall Street.” Johnson pledged to work across the aisle to fashion a solution, and suggested his experience in business and accounting would be relevant to such discussions. “You need people with a different perspective, with a different background . . . in order to fix these very serious problems,” said Johnson.
“The fact is he did call Social Security a Ponzi scheme, but it’s worse than that,” said Feingold. “He specifically said he’s only going to guarantee protection for Social Security as it is for those who are currently on Social Security and those that are very close to that age. So basically if you’re 60 years or younger, he’s saying the promise that was made to you is not going to be kept in the way it was promised.”
“What we need to do is work in a bipartisan way and look at all the options,” said Johnson. “And there are tons of options. You can’t really talk about them one at a time because you need to look at the totality of the solution.”