Those in Congress who really want to protect Social Security should put some action behind their bluster. They should add language to the Labor-Health-Education Appropriations bill prohibiting funds from being spent to carry out an expensive Social Security giveaway to Mexico.

U.S. Social Security Commissioner Jo Anne Barnhart signed an agreement June 29 that will allow Mexicans who have worked in the United States, their dependents and survivors to tap into Social Security.

This could spell trouble for American seniors and for baby boomers as they approach retirement.

To hear proponents tell it, this agreement is all about saving some 3,000 U.S. workers and their employers an estimated $140 million on taxes over five years. But actually, American taxpayers could be out hundreds of billions of dollars over coming years.

Social Security officials apparently believe their own (under)estimate that only 50,000 Mexican beneficiaries would receive benefits in the first five years. You don't have to be a math whiz to figure out pretty quickly that that number is laughably low. A General Accounting Office report last fall devastated the Social Security Administration's low-ball figures.

GAO concluded that the "highly uncertain" official cost estimate "does not directly consider the estimated millions of current and former unauthorized workers and family members from Mexico." Social Security must be the last agency to know we have a huge illegal immigration problem, with almost 70 percent of illegal aliens being Mexican.

Ronald Reagan said if you want more of something, subsidize it. Entitling Mexican illegal aliens and their family members to Social Security benefits would amount to a subsidy and a huge incentive to immigrate illegally to the United States.

As the GAO put it, "The [Social Security Administration] estimate also inherently assumes that the behavior of Mexican citizens would not change and does not recognize that an agreement could 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."

Moreover, untold numbers of illegal workers have returned to Mexico and, GAO noted, they and their families "could conceivably benefit from a totalization agreement." While Social Security projected 300,000 Mexican beneficiaries in 2050, GAO said that figure "represents only about 6 percent of the estimated number of unauthorized Mexicans in the United States today, and thus appears relatively low."

At a 2003 House Immigration Subcommittee hearing, investigative reporter Joel Mowbray explained that Mexicans illegally working in the United States already can qualify for Social Security benefits; the totalization agreement only makes it easier for them, plus opens up eligibility for their dependents and survivors. He also noted the "several hundred billion dollars" price tag the "progressive" Social Security structure adds when "illegal aliens from Mexico [can] get back significantly more money than the taxes they paid."

Social Security's track record has been poor at estimating the number of beneficiaries under totalization agreements. GAO found frequent overestimates and underestimates, "usually by more than 25 percent." And "where the underestimates occurred, the differences were huge." Importantly, GAO noted "the number of estimated beneficiaries for prior agreements is substantially smaller than for the proposed Mexican agreement."

In other words, for Social Security number-crunchers to underestimate the beneficiaries for a totalization agreement with Australia or a Western European country is bad but not horrible because the totals are fairly small. However, underestimates for Mexico would have serious financial ramifications for our Social Security system.

The Mexico agreement raises the stakes for a Social Security trust fund set to run red ink starting in 2018 and go broke in 2042. Messing with Social Security, upon which some 47 million Americans rely today, doesn't make good political sense - certainly not for any rational politician in an election year.

Fraud and abuse will only worsen under this agreement. Mexico is notorious for its culture of rampant fraud. GAO was troubled that Social Security officials failed to inspect adequately Mexico's recordkeeping system to ensure its integrity.

Mowbray described for Congress a frightening scenario in which Mexicans could scam the system. He said Social Security's disability insurance program "is wracked with fraud," and millions of illegal aliens and their family members could exploit that route to start collecting payments early - and continue to collect benefits for years.

Social Security bureaucrats have addressed none of the concerns raised by GAO and others.

Congress should rein in the bureaucrats at Social Security and kill this agreement, which has all the earmarks of a costly bad deal that Americans will only regret.

Given the ridiculously low estimates on which it is being sold publicly, the unstable financial future that Social Security already faces, the incentive for runaway fraud and crime, this agreement is unwise.

The propaganda "fact" sheet put out by the SSA:

Fact Sheet

Social Security

UNITED STATES/MEXICO TOTALIZATION AGREEMENT

(Aquí en Español)

Totalization

Since the late 1970’s, the U.S. has established international social security agreements that coordinate the U.S. Social Security program with the comparable programs of other countries.
These international social security agreements are called “totalization agreements” and have two main purposes:
- Eliminate dual social security taxation that occurs when a worker from one country works in another country and is required to pay social security taxes to both countries on the same earnings. As a result of existing totalization agreements, U.S. workers and employers currently are saving about $800 million annually in foreign taxes they do not have to pay.
- Help fill gaps in benefit protection for workers who have divided their careers between the U.S. and another country, but who have not worked long enough in one or both countries to qualify for social security benefits. With totalization, workers are allowed to combine work credits from both countries to become eligible for benefits. The benefit amount paid is proportional to the amount of credits earned in the paying country.

An agreement with Mexico

An agreement with Mexico would save U.S. workers and their employers about $140 million in Mexican social security and health insurance taxes over the first 5 years of the agreement.
An agreement would also fill the gaps in benefit protection for U.S. workers who have worked in both countries, but not long enough in one or both countries to qualify for benefits.
Mexico is the second largest trading partner with the U.S. Agreements are already in effect with Canada, the largest trading partner with the U.S., and 19 other countries.
With Mexico, the U.S. now has signed agreements with eight of its top ten trading partners. Many of these agreements have been in effect for nearly two decades. The two exceptions are China and Taiwan. By law, the U.S. could not enter into agreements with these two countries because they do not have generally applicable social security systems that pay periodic benefits or the actuarial equivalent.

Costs of an agreement with Mexico

Social Security actuaries estimate that a totalization agreement with Mexico would have a negligible long-range effect on the Trust Funds.
Costs to the U.S. Social Security system are estimated to average about $105 million per year over the first five years. These costs are for additional benefits to eligible U.S. and Mexican workers and reduced Social Security tax contributions under the dual taxation exemption.
To put this in perspective, in 2002, costs to the U.S. system for the existing agreement with Canada were about $197 million.

Effective date of an agreement with Mexico

In the United States, once the agreement is signed, the President will submit the agreement to Congress where it must sit in review for 60 session days. If Congress takes no action during this time, the agreement can move forward.
In Mexico, once the agreement is signed, the Mexican Senate must approve it.

Countries already having totalization agreements with the U.S.

The United States currently has Social Security agreements with Canada, Chile, South Korea, Australia and most of Western Europe.

Country	Effective Date	Country	Effective Date
Italy	November 1, 1978	Portugal	August 1, 1989
Germany	December 1, 1979	Netherlands	November 1, 1990
Switzerland	November 1, 1980	Austria	November 1, 1991
Belgium	July 1, 1984	Finland	November 1, 1992
Norway	July 1, 1984	Ireland	September 1, 1993
Canada	August 1, 1984	Luxembourg	November 1, 1993
United Kingdom	January 1, 1985	Greece	September 1, 1994
Sweden	January 1, 1987	South Korea	April 1, 2001
Spain	April 1, 1988	Chile	December 1, 2001
France	July 1, 1988	Australia	October 1, 2002

More detailed information about these totalization agreements can be found at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/international/.


(Toll-Free) 800-772-1213	www.socialsecurity.gov	(Toll-Free) TTY 800-325-0778

June 2004

Oh for God's sake. Don't any of these politicians get this???????

Of course they get it. They wrote it!

They also know what would become of their political careers if it came out that they wrote it.

This is why both presidential candidates are talking about their service in the Vietnam war.

Naturally, the group of people most able to stop this (FReepers) are asleep at the switch because they've allowed themselves to believe they elected a moral and just man --Jorge W. Arbusto.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In March, 2004 the GAO rapped Arbusto's knuckles over propaganda created by the Arbusto HHS in order to sell the Medicare package to the `merican people.

An honest man doesn't need to resort to propaganda to move his ideas forward. Which means that Arbusto is neither honest nor is his medicare package good for the country.

And still Bush will probably win the election and FReepers couldn't be happier.

Where is Sean Hannity? Ann Coulter? Rush Limbaugh? Michael Reagan?

All drinking deeply from the Republican trough.

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