Posted on 05/29/2012 8:33:35 AM PDT by upchuck
Alan Simpson let loose at a group of Californians who charged in a brochure that he and Erskine Bowles were "using the deficit to gut our Social Security." The former Republican senator from Wyoming sent the California Association of Retired Americans a characteristically colorful response, which I quote: "What a wretched group of seniors you must be to use the faces of the very people (the young) that we are trying to save, while the 'greedy geezers' like you use them as a tool and a front for your nefarious bunch of crap."
I can't not like Simpson, but he is wrong this time, and the activists are right. The plan named for him and former Clinton Chief of Staff Bowles bravely confronted soaring deficits with balanced spending cuts and tax hikes. Upon its release, the tax-a-phobic Grover Norquist called Simpson "old and grumpy." Simpson fired back with "old Grover Norquist and his happy band of goofy warriors, all they do is make money off of people." And I, too, have made past reference to "greedy geezers."
But Simpson-Bowles had no business dragging Social Security into the operating room, and here's why: Social Security is an independent, self-funding program. It is not welfare. The workers and their employers pay for all of it.
About 25 years ago, Social Security taxes were raised above that needed to support current retirees and the surplus put in a trust fund. The goal was to create a buffer to keep the program healthy as the number of retirees grew and lived longer. Left alone, Social Security can pay all promised benefits for the next 20 years, and can continue doing so with some minor adjustments, such as raising the cap on income subject to payroll taxes.
Conservatives and "centrists" who call for compromise on the Social Security Trust Fund still don't get it, so let's bang the gong again: The trust fund represents real money taken out of workers' pockets, and the money it loaned the Treasury is really owed.
Simpson-Bowles did fine calling for a curb on projected entitlement spending. That, of course, includes Medicare, the health-insurance plan for the elderly. Unlike Social Security, Medicare is not self-supporting. Medicare payroll taxes and payments by beneficiaries cover only some of it.
The Social Security Trust Fund is a big piece of change, and by declaring the Treasury securities sitting in it "worthless pieces of paper," our right-wing politicians can throw the obligations overboard in the service of more tax cuts for the rich -- with the added bonus of killing off a program they never liked much. Often citing some scuzzy accounting methods applied to the surplus, they tell us, "Whoops, the money has been spent."
Well, duh, all the money the Treasury borrows has been spent. That's why it borrows money. Every bond it issues to investors across the globe represents a debt. And if the Treasury hadn't been able to borrow that money from the trust fund, it would have had to borrow more from the public.
Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was asked in 2001 whether the trust fund investments were real or not. His response: "The crucial question: Are they ultimate claims on real resources? And the answer is yes."
The California Association of Retired Americans was overenthusiastic but correct in its assertion that Simpson-Bowles envisioned using Social Security to balance budgets that the program is not supposed to be part of. They were perhaps unfair to imply that the intention was to gut Social Security. Some politicians might like that, but the more realistic explanation is that many simply don't know what they're doing.
The hacks in both parties are the reason we are in the bad shape this country is in. Why should ANY AMERICAN have to pay the price for the fiscal mistakes made over decades by these hack politicians. This is where “compromise” leads.
A bankrupt country. And now they want us to pay for their mistakes. Off with their heads. Get the pitchforks, tar and feathers out.
Not only the disability but all the other give aways that were tacked on during the days of plenty to buy votes.
An example. Back in the late 70's my uncle died. His son was given enough money via SS to completely pay for his last three years of college. Tuition and room & board.
If SS had been left to just pay for retirees it would, in all probability, still be solvent but the politicians used all those excess funds to buy votes rather than keep those funds for the original intended use.
It is not an entitlement, it is paid for, it was supposed to be in a trust managed for our benefit... LIE.
I have paid in the following as of last year. It is MY money but the politicians stole it to buy votes for people who are against my interests and want MORE of MY money that I have EARNED. I have no employer contributions... I earned it all by myself and I have been “contributing” for a long, long time and still am.
Actual:
Medicare $206,921.32
Social Security $264,391.06
Total of the two $471,312.39
The present value of these “contributions” at a modest 6% return on the “investment”:
Medicare $381,712.16
Social Security $673,848.35
Total of the two $1,055,560.51
I’ll take a cashier’s check... ha, ha, ha. Fat chance... it is all gone. I am convinced I will not see a DIME of MY money again.
I don’t call it feral government for nothing.
Parasites...I doubt society will ever find any effective new ways of dealing them.
Correction: SS WAS an independent self-funding program. It became welfare when the links between funding and benefits were severed through mixing SS payments into General Funding, and also with means-testing of the supposedly prefunded benefits.
I personally know someone who received a rebuttal smackdown letter from Alan Simpson after criticizing him online.
Sarcastic, self-aggrandizing, in-your-face retort is this guy’s stock in trade. Along with a hair-trigger sensitivity to any sort of criticism.
SSI is a medical welfare program administered but not funded by SSA. SSDI, is a benefit program funded and administered by SSA. The standards for each are very different.
If the government that took the money at the point of a gun would stop printing money, then you might have a point.
Sorry, but it IS welfare. Period. Social Security has no account with your name on it. There never was. You paid into SS a tax which went to pay the old age welfare payments of your parents. There was a little left over to go into the kitty as surplus but your generation (collectively) started helping themselves to it early, spending it on frivolous things. Now it's almost gone. If we raise taxes high enough to continue paying old age welfare at the rate we have, we will eventually all starve as the U.S. collapses under a mountain of debt. EVERYTHING must be cut in order for us to survive.
Actual:
Medicare $206,921.32
Social Security $264,391
Medicare contribution thru FICA is only approx 1.50% while the SS contrib thru FICA is approx 6.5%. Yet you are reflecting contributing about the same for medicare as SS. How?While SS can be “fixed”, Medicare is not a sustainable program. The govt expends 900 billion a year on medicare benefits and collects approx 125 billion in FICA contributions annually for a 700 billion dollar annual deficit. It is not sustainable. The entire program needs to be revamped more along the lines of a voucher system as Ryan has proposed if we want to make it close to self sustaining.
Actually, both are true. However, as you correctly point out, Whatever is collected in FICA Taxes is robbed by the politicians to pay for other projects. Congress (and the people who elected them) is the problem. Simply put, if anyone OTHER THAN congress were doing this, they would be in prison. Just ask Bernie Madoff. In fact, what congress has done, and continues to do, is far worse than what Madoff did: At least with Madoff, his victims contributed to him voluntarily. He didn't effectively hold a gun to their head, as does congress.
Mark
Recall that medicare is paid on an UNLIMITED level of income and is not limited like SS.
Re your Post #30 to me:
What you say about Medicare is true, but I was responding to the quote in the article, which said “Social Security” and called it “self-funding” which Medicare never really was.
Every time you hear somebody bandy about the statistic “Half of the population is on Government assistance,” they are referring to SS.
Die quickly! Is what you seem to be saying...
I’m not saying “Die quickly!”; I’m saying “If you’ve collected more than you would have had if you had put your contributions into some typical sort of investment, you’re collecting an entitlement.”.
That’s a good question. A in-depth human audit with full cross tabs available for demographic representation of SSI use might be VERY revealing.
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