Posted on 01/01/2011 8:02:36 AM PST by EBH
Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. ...
...To understand the mechanics of this attempted swindle, you have to roll back twenty-five years, to the time the game of bait and switch began, under Ronald Reagan. The Gipper's great legislative victory in 1981--enacting massive tax cuts for corporations and upper-income ranks--launched the era of swollen federal budget deficits. But their economic impact was offset by the huge tax increase that Congress imposed on working people in 1983: the payroll tax rate supporting Social Security--the weekly FICA deduction--was raised substantially, supposedly to create a nest egg for when the baby boom generation reached retirement age. A blue-ribbon commission chaired by Alan Greenspan worked out the terms, then both parties signed on. Since there was no partisan fight, the press portrayed the massive tax increase as a noncontroversial "good government" reform.
Ever since, working Americans have paid higher taxes on their labor wages--12.4 percent, split between employees and employers. As a result, the Social Security system has accumulated a vast surplus--now around $2.5 trillion and growing. This is the money pot the establishment wants to grab, claiming the government can no longer afford to keep the promise it made to workers twenty-five years ago.
Actually, the government has already spent their money.
...Treasury has borrowed the surplus revenue collected by Social Security and spent the money on other purposes--
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
It seems much history is lost on and in regards to the SS system.
Reference material
Oh boy. Another Grand Bargain.
You know, I used to think Alan Greenspan was working to HELP America’s economy, but the more and more I learn, it seems I was terribly mistaken.
Ben isn’t any better, it seems—God help us.
Greenspan, like Bernanke, only cares about big banks.
I don’t ever use partisan, buzz-word laden articles as “reference material”
That trillions that is supposed to be in SS is only there on the books-—the money has already been spent on thousands of feel good projects by the Dems-—loke changing the school lunches for Moooochhelle—AKA Sasquatch.
The greatest fraud ever FORCED on “free” people and built on the backs of DEAD AMERICANS is solved by an even GREATER FRAUD FORCED on “free” people that will be built on the backs of DEAD AMERICANS...Obamacare...aka abortion of the elderly.
Wake up patriots, it’s 2011.
Life, liberty and the pursuit and destruction of totalitarians.
Me either, especially when they appear in hard-Left magazines like The Nation and are written by capitalism haters like Greider.
There is no surplus and anyone who claims this needs to be slapped.
How do you loot something that’s bankrupt?
The Grand Bargain shows the depth of the Dum/Leftie tax and spend mentality.
Reagan was from a generation that believed a deal was a deal. And lying was a sin not practiced by honorable men/women.
One needs to remember the EPA EDU etc were in their infancy.
When the money started pouring in, was it designated funds...NOOOOOOOOOO. The money was squandered by unrepentent Dums and RINOs hell-bent on funding every hair-brain scheme some busybody elitist could come up with, especially if it was trying to control the lives of the great UNWASHED masses. Perfect example, the push to have detailed labeling of food was “to help people maintain their weight”, guess what obesity is UP 47%. Epic failure but NOW, labeling MEAT, will solve the problem. At what point do we say, to hell with the gov nanny. Your fired.
BB’ers are not a quiet bunch by nature, our taxes were raised to fund our retirement.
It seems the Government is no better than a MOB run UNION that steals the Union dues. It seems the FBI had task forces to bring THOSE criminals to justice. Where do WE go for JUSTICE?
What the Gov’t said in 1964!
http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssa/usa1964-2.html
Self-Supporting
“The program is designed so that contributions plus interest on the investments of the social security trust funds will be sufficient to meet all of the costs of benefits and administration, now and into the indefinite future—without any subsidy from the general funds of the Government. Both the Congress and the Executive Branch, regardless of political party in power, have scrupulously provided in advance for full financing of all liberalizations in the program.”
Where your money REALLY goes! Read and weep!
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html#n4
A universal pension? Isn’t that more or less what SS was supposed to be? Idiots everywhere.
Now, if they can just find that damn “Lock-box” Algore was going to hide all the SS dough in (or the key to it) ...
The SS trust was targeted by LBJ to fund the ‘Great Society’ in other words, buy votes.
It must all go to black people. To do otherwise would be racist.
“Old article, but as I’ve seen lots of OMG the Boomers start to retire this year... “
The media (on orders from whom?) are trying to divide us further. They are demonizing people who have worked and paid into SS but when it comes time to reap the rewards of their labor they are suddenly scumbag freeloaders. Many immature people here on FR are getting on the band wagon.
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