Angle: Reid pillaged Social Security

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle on Tuesday said that Social Security is in trouble "because of $2.5 trillion of raiding and pillaging by Harry Reid."

Speaking to the Carson City Republican Women's Club, she said her plan would cut taxes, reduce regulation of businesses and reduce the deficit while paying back $2.5 trillion borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund.

Angle is trying to fix damage to her message caused by Reid campaign commercials quoting her on more than one occasion calling for the end of Social Security and Medicare. That concern drew several questions from the audience of about 120, reflecting obvious concern among the seniors attending.

"I'm not doing away with Social Security," she said. "I want to put the money back in the lock box. I used to say privatize. Now I say personalize."

She said that means allowing younger people to opt out in favor of other retirement plans.

Angle said her plan is to make sure Social Security and Medicare are there for those who have paid and been promised those benefits.

"The least we can do is put that $2.5 trillion back in the lock box like they promised," she said.

Asked where the money would come from, along with another $500 billion taken out of Medicare, she said there is some $500 billion left in stimulus money and about that much more in TARP - better known as the bank bailout - that could be moved immediately to the Social Security Trust Fund.

After that, Angle said, reduced government spending would free up money to fix Social Security.

Angle began her speech with a plea for contributions, telling the audience: "We spent every dime we had on the primary. There was nothing left, not even a bumper sticker."

She said the money has been coming in much better since the primary, a large amount of it from outside Nevada. According to her website, Angle has raised more than $2.2 million, averaging $54,500 in contributions a day.

"Money is coming in from all over the nation," she said.

She called on those attending to contribute what they can.

She quoted GOP strategist and author Dick Morris as telling her "the fate of the nation rides on you."

"The fate of the nation does not ride on me, it rides on us," she told the audience at the Carson Nugget.

Angle blamed Reid for the economic recession: "He's directly responsible for all of the policies in the past 18 months that have driven unemployment (in Nevada) from 4 percent to 14.2 percent."

"He can't run on the real issues and the real issues are simple: It's the economy, the economy, the economy; It's jobs, jobs, jobs," she said.

Asked afterward if she had changed her position that a Senator's job isn't to create jobs, she said no.

"My job is to create the climate for business to create jobs," she said. "Government doesn't create jobs."

Angle called for reduced regulation of business and industry.

"We have corporations that have $2 trillion they'd like to invest in jobs but they can't," she said. "If we don't want corporations to outsource jobs, we have to do something about the corporate tax rate and about the regulations."

Finally, she called for major reductions in federal spending, admitting the elimination of pork is key and will be very unpopular with members of Congress. She said it will be much more popular with people.

"People don't want pork anymore," she said.

She said a major improvement to the climate in Washington, D.C., would be to impose term limits. She said if elected, she would introduce a bill limiting terms for senators, congressmen and Supreme Court justices.