Despite the pervasive media buzz, the 109th Congress did little about social security insecurity. Now comes the good news that a dedicated group of retired military enlisted personnel prevailed in their three-and-a-half-year long pursuit for public disclosure of Bush’s U.S.-Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement.

At a time when American citizens, especially the bulge generation of baby boomers, are increasingly uneasy about what part of their retirement income they can depend on social security to provide, Bush is preparing to sign into law without Congressional approval (though Congress would have 60 days to vote to reject it) the U.S.-Mexico Totalization agreement negotiated in June, 2004.

A loophole in current Social Security law allows illegal immigrants who worked in the U.S. and paid taxes using fraudulent social security numbers to eventually receive Social Security benefits. The Congressional Research Service estimates that there is currently $520 Billion dollars in a fund set aside to for social security payments that cannot be tied to a federally-issued social security accounts for workers.

A 2003 General Accounting Office study concluded that the Social Security Administration (SSA) had no rules for implementing totalization agreements and did sketchy work evaluating the fiscal stability of Mexico’s social security system.

“SSA has no written policies or procedures it follows when entering into totalization agreements, and the actions it took to assess the integrity and compatibility of Mexico’s social security system were limited and neither transparent nor well-documented...SSA provided no information showing that it assessed the reliability of Mexican earnings data and the internal controls used to ensure the integrity of information that SSA will rely on to pay social security benefits.

The proposed agreement will likely increase the number of unauthorized Mexican workers and family members eligible for social security benefits. Mexican workers who ordinarily could not receive social security retirement benefits because they lack the required 40 coverage credits for U.S. earnings could qualify for partial social security benefits with as few as 6 coverage credits. In addition, under the proposed agreement, more family members of covered Mexican workers would become newly entitled because the agreements usually waive rules that prevent payments to noncitizens’ dependents and survivors living outside the United States.

The cost of such an agreement is highly uncertain. In March 2003, the Office of the Chief Actuary estimated that the cost of the Mexican agreement would be $78 million in the first year and would grow to $650 million (in constant 2002 dollars) in 2050. The actuarial cost estimate assumes the initial number of newly eligible Mexican beneficiaries is equivalent to the 50,000 beneficiaries living in Mexico today and would grow sixfold over time. However, this proxy figure does not directly consider the estimated millions of current and former unauthorized workers and family members from Mexico and appears small in comparison with those estimates. The estimate also inherently assumes that the behavior of Mexican citizens would not change and does not recognize that an agreement would create an additional incentive for unauthorized workers to enter the United States to work and maintain documentation to claim their earnings under a false identity...

Currently, social security credits are earned by anyone who has worked in covered employment in the United States. This is true even if the person was unauthorized to work when he or she earned coverage credits. For example, noncitizens, including Mexicans, who are at least 62 years old and lawfully present in the United States, will receive retirement benefits today as long as they meet the coverage credit threshold. Even Mexican citizens who are not lawfully present in this country can receive social security benefits earned through unauthorized employment if they later return to live in Mexico. Similarly, under current law, noncitizen dependents and survivors can also receive social security benefits under some circumstances.”

There is no doubt who profits from illegal labor: corporate and business interests who benefit from the illegal labor depressing wage rates. Approximately 7 million hard-working, non-unionized illegal aliens willingly do all types of work without complaints for fear of deportation. And the Bush administration ignored its responsibility to enforce the law. “Just four notices of intent to fine employers of unauthorized workers were issued in 2004, down from 417 in 1999, according to the Government Accounting Office.”

The Democratic Party agenda on retirement security is clear. “Democrats believe that after a life of hard work, you earn a secure retirement. Our commitment to protecting the promise of Social Security is absolute.”

As legislators grapple with the competing interests for retirement security between generations and among constituent groups, a ballooning war-generated deficit and red ink federal budgets for years to come, we again see how Bush’s policies divide rather than unite us, to the benefit of corporate benefactors.