Summit to Help Boomers Prepare for Retirement

The Clinton administration will hold a summit with Congress and business in May to devise ways to help a frightened and “freaked-out” baby-boom generation prepare for retirement, a top official said Monday.

“They are worried about whether anything will be there for them,” said Fernando Torres-Gil, assistant secretary for aging in the Department of Health and Human Services. Baby boomers don’t trust government promises about Social Security, nor are they confident of corporate pledges of a secure pension, he told a group of business representatives attending the convention of the American Society on Aging in Anaheim.

Focus groups of boomers in Houston and Baltimore, carefully selected as a representative sample of their generation, revealed a “pervasive sense of anxiety,” Torres-Gil said. The boomers know they don’t have enough saved for a financially secure retirement, but feel helpless to do anything about it, he said. “They are caught up in the fog of today. They say, ‘I’ve got to worry about my job, my spouse, my kids, my neighborhood.’ ”

They know exercise and good health are important for successful aging, but don’t act with consistency. “Some people will exercise and then go out drinking and driving without a seat belt on,” Torres-Gil said. “I’ve got friends going through a middle-age crisis. They go out and ride a motorcycle with no helmet,” said the HHS official, who is 47.

The summit will focus on producing public service campaigns and educational literature and other efforts in six to 18 months. No policies will be established or campaigns begun until after the election, avoiding any charges that the summit is a ploy to round up votes this year.

Meanwhile, the administration will also attempt to avoid taking a position on one of today’s hottest retirement issues, proposals to privatize a portion of the Social Security system.

An advisory council selected by the president to discuss the future of the giant retirement program is now deeply divided, with its report originally scheduled for December delayed until next month or later. One faction on the council favors a continuation of the current system in which taxes of current workers go to pay for retirees, but would invest surpluses of tax funds in the stock market. Funds currently are exclusively invested in special issues of Treasury securities.

But another group would make a much more radical shift, allowing individual workers to divert a portion of their taxes into personal retirement accounts, making their own selections of stocks and bonds. Advocates for this change say it would provide a much more generous return for retirees. Opponents say it would put retirees at the risk of the vagaries of the stock market.

The administration has “no positions at all” on the proposals now being hotly debated at the advisory council, Torres-Gil said. “We will look at the report,” he said, and indicated it would be sent to the next advisory council, which President Clinton will choose next year if he wins a second term.

The summit scheduled for May will be an attempt to help the boomers prepare for their retirement without the expectation of any significant new help from the federal government, Torres-Gil said.

The boomers, the 76 million people born in the years 1946-65, are the largest generation in U.S. history. The summit will focus on the needs of the rapidly aging first group, those born in the years 1946-57. The oldest of these boomers, including Clinton, turn 50 this year.

About 100 people will attend the summit, including officials from the Social Security Administration, HHS, the White House and the Labor Department, staff members of key congressional committees, executives from major corporations and financial planners.

Conference attendees--including corporate personnel managers, retiree benefit managers and business people who market to the elderly--generally praised the idea of a summit.

The idea “is right on the mark,” said Kenneth Dychtwald, president of Age Wave, a San Francisco firm specializing in marketing and analysis of older people.