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I support voluntary personal retirement accounts for Social Security. It should be people's free choice.

We promote domestic savings by also things like the personal accounts associated with the president's Social Security initiative, which over time would generate more savings.

Increased awareness and education could be a great help toward improving spending and saving habits and increasing participation and contribution levels to retirement plans.

Obviously, people with low or even moderate incomes could not afford such savings rates, and even diligent savings from their low wages would not be enough to pay for either retirement or healthcare.

What we should be trying to do is to encourage people to establish private retirement accounts and help them take pressure off the Social Security system.

Savings is an important tool because it can help the poor deal with the ups and downs of irregular earnings and help them build reserves for a rainy day.

Since Social Security faces a large gap between what it promises younger workers and what it can afford to pay them, private savings will likely need to play a larger role in retirement planning for younger workers.

It is incumbent upon each of us to improve spending and savings practices to ensure our own individual financial security and preserve the collective economic well-being of our great society.

President Roosevelt, the author of Social Security, was the first to suggest that, in order to provide for the country's retirement needs, Social Security would need to be supplemented by personal savings accounts.