Daddy, please make these bad men go away now!
Posted on 03/09/2009 8:21:54 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Lawmakers ask: Can we tap college fund?
By Amy Hollyfield, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Published Sunday, March 8, 2009
TALLAHASSEE — They are desperate for money. Hurting for ideas.
And it has come to this: What about the money the Florida Prepaid College Board is sitting on?
The popular family program benefits one out of every 10 children in the state. Parents invest tens of thousands of dollars — sometimes in small monthly installments over 18 years — to lock in present-day tuition rates for their future college students. More than 1.3 million contracts have been sold since it started in 1988. That means that at any given time, the program's assets rate in the billions.
"We talked about the possibility if there was such money there, perhaps we could borrow that," said Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, chair of the Senate higher education appropriations committee. "We're looking at everything. We're really hurting and we need new sources of income."
An analysis by Ernst & Young shows the prepaid program as of Jan. 31 with $8.8 billion in total assets, $8.3 billion in contract liabilities and an actuarial reserve of $468 million (that's what's left over after all contracts are paid).
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
Ping!
Maybe they can hammer open the little kiddies piggy banks too ...
But I thought these funds were in a lock box like social security! Yeah right...
“borrow” = legislative euphemism for “confiscate.”
Florida has some pitiful Republican leadership.
This is wrong.
If they can do this, I’m sure they won’t have any qualms about “borrowing” from folks’ IRAs, from folks’ bank accounts, and the list goes on.
It never ends politicians appetite for Other Peoples Money.
I am sure they will try. At least, they will “talk about it.” :-)
Oh hell no.
When we said “this is going to end very very badly” a couple of years ago, we were talking about our economy. I think it’s going to apply to our government as well, in the same degree.
“We’re looking at everything. We’re really hurting and we need new sources of income.”
Cut Gov’t. Duh. You guys haven’t seen hard yet. Pitiful.
Make no mistake, the left and the Zer0 admin. have their eyes on ALL forms of savings.....including all assets held in First National Mason Jar.
On WFLA-AM this morning, I also heard they are talking about charging a 40% “fee” when you use this to pay tuition in the future. So not only are they going to steal the fund, they’ll charge you AGAIN for something you thought you’d already paid for.
I HATE politicians....
“Giving government money and power is like giving car keys and whiskey to a teenage boy” - P.J. O’Rourke
yup... just like social security
What really gets me is that it is a nominal Republican suggesting this!
Politiicians are crooks. This is what happens when those in Gov’t lack a moral compass.
It's sad, but it's also long overdue!
"We talked about the possibility if there was such money there, perhaps we could borrow that," said Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, chair of the Senate higher education appropriations committee. "We're looking at everything. We're really hurting and we need new sources of income."
Why not do something different for a change? CUT SPENDING!
Daddy, please make these bad men go away now!
Except, social security is mandatory. I believe this program is voluntary.
These guys are mini-Madoffs...the “need” money to cover outflows they can’t, or don’t want to, control...
that just means they won’t get as much money.
and wasn’t it a month or so ago i heard the dems batting around the idea of somehow taking people’s 401k?
btw... the dropping 401ks also impact florida... as the retired folks were using that to live on. look for more florida businesses to have issues.
also this college fund has actual assets accrued and on hand
SS is totally an income transfer
my SS deduction immediately goes into the federal general fund and pays out some grandma’s payment
Damn.
We can forget about stimulating the economy if the government is going to take or charge a fee for these plans. No one will trust the government not to step in and steal their money. People will go back to bank CDs or putting the money in the mattress. Why would anyone participate in 401(k)s, college savings plans, etc. if the govt retains the right to confiscate your money at will?
Politicians: "You've got MONEY! Our need to buy votes is greater than your need to send your children to college."
It's sickening that a useless politician would view someone's lifetime savings as a "source of income" to waste on pet projects. Not a new tack, by any means, but this money is for the children.
Government has a tendency not to return what they "borrow"; I wouldn't lend it a pencil.
I did not say that it comes just from Democrats. I said it comes from the left and if you think that there is no ‘left’ in the GOP you are woefully misinformed.
Driving us headlong into Socialism.
GRRRREAT thread! Thanks to all posters. The plunderers are coming after us, our kids, our grandkids. What’s next...the mattress police...to see if you have any funds stashed away? Economic subjugation is at hand.
Since Jan 20 and still growing.
Oh I know it. The FL GOP is charging left with Goodtime Charlie in office.
Are they still moving forward with buying a whole bunch of agricultural land to turn into part of the Everglades? I heard the state is going to spend upwards of $2 billion on it.
IOU one college education...
Brings to mind a quote from the newly-relevant Malcolm X:
Sometimes there just isn’t enough rope or trees.
How about garroting?
Somehow the thought of govt bureaucrats staring at a pile of ALREADY TAXED money and thinking how they can take a piece of it make we want to march into their office with a baseball bat...
Your 401K’s are next- it has ALREADY been brought up
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Who says they have not Stolen them already?
Not only NO!!! but HELL NO !!!!!~!~! Keep your stinking theiving grubby lieing paws off of my kids $$$$.
Touch that money and I will sue the state for millions.
These guys are desperate.”
QUIT SPENDING!!!!!!!!
How will the snowbirds and other senior transplants with no prospect of having to put children through college vote?
Except cutting the size of government.
That is stealing from children.
Apparently there are no scruples remaining for bureaucrats and politicians.
Why don’t they simply bludgeon old folks to death so as to reap the windfall in the inheritance tax instead? It’s a 50% rate on the wealth of the estate. (Need the IRS’s help to ID those who are worhtwhile to exterminate, though).
Given that they would have to face either steep cuts in services or higher taxes to pay to put those children through college - that they don’t have - I would think that they would be outraged to be so burdened.
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