Over 1 million Missouri citizens depend on Social Security every month. These include retirees, people with disabilities, widows and widowers and almost 90,000 children.

In 2005, President Bush named privatizing Social Security as his top domestic agenda priority, despite the fact that every single privatization scheme included cuts to guaranteed benefits and increasing the national deficit by trillions of dollars.

Pro-Vote quickly organized a state coalition Missourians United to Protect Social Security (MUPSS) to mobilize our partners and allies across the state to halt the President’s dangerous plan. Working with local and national groups, Pro Vote led the effort in Missouri to educate the public, mobilize labor and community groups, and to pressure our members of Congress to take a position on this issue.

Now, almost a year later, Social Security privatization is off the table! As the result of a unified and coordinated anti-privatization campaign across the states, President Bush was unable to sell his scheme to the American public and to his fellow Republicans in Congress. As a result, Bush relinquished Social Security privatization as his top priority and is now busy trying to restore his damaged popularity and his divided party.

Pro-Vote kept up the pressure all over Missouri:

1. We passed 15 local Resolutions in municipalities and counties across the state opposing Social Security privatization.
2. We organized a crowd of 400 on June 2 nd in downtown St. Louis to protest President Bush’s privatization plan and to challenge Senator Talent to take a stand against Social Security privatization.
3. We organized town hall meetings in Columbia and in Portageville, Missouri, challenging members of Congress to take a stand on this issue.
4. We gathered 50 retirees, union members, and activists at the Edward Jones office in St. Louis to demand that the company stop spending investors’ money on propaganda supporting Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme.
5. We released multiple reports about the effects of Social Security privatization on our state and local communities (see below).

Thanks to progressives all over Missouri, we won the Social Security battle in 2005 and we’ll be ready to fight again when privatization once again rears its ugly head!

Check out the reports from the Institute for America's Future about the consequences of Social Security cuts here in Missouri.