GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers supported private investment of Social Security funds

Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers said last year that he supports a major overhaul of the Social Security system. Over the course of his 14 years in Congress, he backed efforts to change it, including a risky plan to partially privatize the program and have Americans invest benefit funds individually and directly in the stock market.

Rogers, who served in the House of Representatives from 2001 to 2015, will face Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin in the November election for retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s open seat. Slotkin has vowed to work to protect Social Security and Medicare and has been endorsed by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, a nonpartisan nonprofit that works to protect the safety net programs. 

“Rep. Slotkin has been a steadfast ally of Michigan seniors in the House, earning her a 100% rating on our NCPSSM legislative scorecard,” Max Richtman, the president and CEO of the organization, said in a March press release. “She casts every vote affecting seniors with their interests in mind.”

While considering a possible 2024 presidential campaign, Rogers appeared at a May 2023 town hall event in New Hampshire and said he favored changes to the Social Security program. Speaking of disability benefits paid under the program, Rogers said: “If you deserve it, you should have it. But if you don’t deserve it, listen, we don’t want to risk people who have worked their whole lives, paid into the system, can’t get what they paid in. I think we have to do that, and then we’re going to have to take — every option is going to have to be on the table. If you’re 3 years old today and your life expectancy is 110, or whatever it’s going to be now — it’s in the 90s now — we’re just going to have a rethink about what work looks like and what retirement looks like.”

He was then asked about an unsuccessful 2005 effort by President George W. Bush to change the system from one where everyone puts part of their income into the Social Security trust fund and is guaranteed retirement benefits with an option for Americans to invest one-third of their payroll tax funds in the stock market and hope the stocks do well enough to fund their retirements. 

“I think Americans see Social Security very different from their personal investments, and they don’t want to see them intertwined. And I’m not sure that’s the wrong answer, honestly,“ Rogers replied. “It is not the best system for retirement. If, pure and simple, if you could invest some money and get Social Security, that’s probably, financially, over the duration of the fund, is the best way to do it. But Americans aren’t there, and I don’t think you should change it if Americans aren’t there.” He said that the conversation should be about changing it for people not close to retirement, 50 or 60 years from now.

The Rogers campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

Rogers, however, had been a vocal backer of Bush’s initiative.

In 2000, he told the Livingston County Daily Press and Argus in Howell, Michigan, that he backed allowing individuals to put some of their Social Security tax into a private investment fund. “In the future we will have to make some changes, but benefits will not be changed,” Rogers told the outlet. “We need to make it solvent.’  

Rogers said in February 2004 that he would not cut benefits for anyone at or near retirement, but told Gannett News Service he backed allowing younger workers to make early withdrawals from their future Social Security benefits to put into private investment accounts. 

In 2005, Rogers wrote an op-ed published by the Lansing State Journal that called for citizens to have a choice of where to invest their Social Security payroll tax funds: “Personal accounts for younger workers are one proposal aimed at making sure that retirees have the security that was promised during our working years. As someone paying into Social Security, who falls into that younger worker category, I find the idea of a voluntary personal account encouraging. Imagine the possibility of protecting retirement security and having new workers able to retire at twice the amount, or more, of what traditional Social Security could pay. The return on our Social Security investment is only about 1.6 percent. Federal workers and members of Congress have a government-approved 401(k)-type plan that has earned between 4 percent and 11 percent interest.”

But past performance does not guarantee future results. Just three years later, as Wall Street banks melted down, the Great Recession of 2008 saw what was, at the time, the largest stock market crash in history. Between October 2007 and March 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than half. 

Had the approach backed by Bush and Rogers been in place at that time, retirees would have seen part of their retirement savings decimated. According to a Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis, someone who retired on Oct. 1, 2008, would have lost about $26,000 had some of their Social Security funds been invested in stocks over a period of 35 years. 

Partial Social Security privatization would mean billions of dollars collected in additional fees for Wall Street investment firms, some of whom have openly embraced the idea.

According to OpenSecrets data, Rogers has received more than $720,000 in campaign contributions from the securities and investment sector since 1999, making that industry his third-largest source of donations.