Posted on 01/16/2007 8:03:14 AM PST by from occupied ga
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President George W. Bush's secret plan for Social Security has just been released to the public in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by TREA Senior Citizens League, a million-member seniors advocacy group. For years the president carried on an energetic public relations campaign to promote his plan to privatize part of Social Security, but he kept under White House lock and key the "totalization" agreement his administration secretly made with Mexico in June 2004. |
A U.S. Border Patrol agent patrols along the fence line of the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Ariz., on Thursday, April 6, 2006. Lawmakers in Washington are debating immigration reform measures. Arrests of illegal migrants along the U.S.-Mexican border have dropped by more than a third since U.S. National Guard troops started helping with border security, suggesting that fewer people may be trying to cross. "The presence of the National Guard has had a big impact on migrants," he told The Associated Press on Tuesday Dec. 26, 2006. (AP Photo/Khampha Bouaphanh)
Is that any way to run the government, or to commit billions of taxpayer dollars? Maybe we have been needing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to demand "the most honest, most open" government in history.
If and when Bush personally signs this agreement, it will automatically become law without any congressional action. The law that would have allowed one House of Congress to reject it by a vote within 60 days is generally thought to violate the Supreme Court's 1983 decision in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, which declared unconstitutional a one-House veto of a president's action.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has introduced Senate Bill 43 to require totalization agreements to be treated like bilateral trade agreements. His bill would permit a totalization agreement to go into effect only if affirmatively passed by both houses of Congress.
Unless we live in some sort of Bush dictatorship, that's the very least of what totalization should require. It ought to be considered a treaty and require approval by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate.
Totalization is the bureaucratic buzzword for the plan to put millions of illegal Mexican workers into the U.S. Social Security system. They would collect U.S. benefits based on their U.S earnings under false or stolen Social Security numbers plus alleged earnings in Mexico.
U.S. citizens must work 10 years to be eligible for Social Security benefits, but the totalization agreement would allow Mexicans to qualify with only 18 months of work in the United States, and pretend to make up the difference by assuming work in Mexico. It is highly doubtful that the illegal immigrants ever paid into a Mexican system for eight and a half years.
It could be "virtual" work or "virtual" payments (just like the "virtual" fence proposed for the U.S.-Mexico border, or the "virtual" law that promised to build one).
A 2003 Government Accountability Office report tactfully declined to comment on "the integrity of Mexico's social security data" and warned that the cost to U.S. taxpayers is "highly uncertain."
The United States has totalization agreements with 21 other countries in order to assure a pension to those few individuals who work in two countries (legally, of course) by "totalizing" their payments into the pension systems of both countries. All existing totalization agreements are with industrialized nations whose retirement systems are on a parity with that of the United States. Mexican retirement benefits are not remotely equal to U.S. benefits. U.S. citizens receive benefits after working for 10 years, but Mexicans have to work 24 years before receiving benefits.
Mexican workers receive in retirement only what they paid in plus interest, whereas the U.S. Social Security system is skewed to give lower-wage earners benefits greatly in excess of what they and their employers contributed. Mexico has two different retirement programs, one for public-sector employees, which is draining the Mexican national treasury, and one for private-sector workers, which covers only 40 percent of the work force. Most Mexicans who illegally entered the United States previously lived in poverty, where they were unemployed, or worked in the off-the-record economy, or worked for employers who did not pay taxes into a retirement system.
The Bush totalization plan would put millions of Mexicans onto the rolls of the U.S. Social Security system just as the baby boom generation retires. The White House won't deny that imposing higher taxes on U.S. workers is "on the table" to deal with the expected shortfall.
The Bush totalization plan would lure even more Mexicans into the United States illegally in the hope of amnesty and eligibility for Social Security benefits for themselves, as well as for their spouses and dependents who may never have lived in the United States.
Totalization is part and parcel of the Council on Foreign Relations five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter." The 59-page CFR document - which can claim Bush administration approval because it is posted on a U.S. State Department Web site - demands the implementation of "the Social Security Totalization Agreement negotiated between the United States and Mexico." Americans should raise a mighty clamor to demand that President Bush NOT sign this billion-dollar rip-off of American taxpayers and senior citizens. Meanwhile, tell your Congressional representative to hurry up and pass the Ensign bill.
Phyllis Schlafly is a national leader of the pro-family movement, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Feminist Fantasies.
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Things that make ya go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Not me, but I'm sure the Bushbots will be along sooner or later to say that it's some sort of little understood plan to fix social security - kind of like when Bush came out for the assault weapons ban they said that he really wasn't in favor of gun control.
I thought it was during the Carter administration, immigrants who had never paid into the system became eligible for SSI (Supplemental Security Income) benefits?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)
E-mail Schafly - she wrote it. I'd be curious as to her response
This is just another 'foreign aid' plan. They will figure out one way or another to get the money to Mexico and Mexicans.
Pathetic.
This is her?
http://phyllisschlafly.com/
The government is awfully free with the taxpayers' money isn't it?
Sho nuff.
Email and question sent. I also sent her the link for here.
Message from Mexico: Thanks, GRINGOES! All your Social Security Retirement are now belong to us!
Insanity
I can't help but notice the AARP, who was all over a modest proposal to privatize a very small part of NEW social secutiry contributions, is deathly silent.
Does the illegal lobby own them?
They've got to be kidding! I'm a 100% disabled veteran, 55 years old, and have been turned DOWN for Social Security Disability Compensation, but an ILLEGAL ALIEN can collect U.S. Social Security benefits throught this program. OUTRAGEOUS!!!!! This Government no longer represents the citizens of OUR country. We have got to have a serious and thorough house cleaning in Washington!!
I'd need to see the agreement to ensure that we are getting the entire story here.
Totalization of course deals with all mexican workers paying into social security in this country, not just illegal workers who stole social security numbers.
The Senate immigration bill was going to grant social security to illegals who paid into stolen social security accounts, and I won't defend that at all.
But I will defend the idea of providing to Mexico the cash which we collect from Mexicans working legally in this country that is paid into our social security system -- which is the INTENT of a totalization agreement (as I said, I don't know how this one is written or implemented).
The idea is that wherever you work, the money you pay into a public pension is directed back to your home country's system and credited to your account there.
I didn't think the mexican workers were supposed to qualify for SOCIAL SECURITY payments. My understanding was that, after they worked 18 months or more, their social security tax payments would qualify, and the money would be sent to the Mexican government and their work credited to the Mexican pension system. If so, the "18 months" argument here is a red herring, because it's not for the workers to qualify for payment, its the minimum before we bother to send to Mexico the money the workers paid.
Social security is nominally a self-financed retirement -- you pay in when you work, and in return you get paid when you retire.
I suppose we could make a law that foreigners don't have to pay into the system, and don't get anything out, but that would make foreign workers more attractive to employers who wouldn't have to coveer their half.
But if the foreigners pay into the system, why shouldn't they get money out of the system? It's not a tax, it's supposed to be an "investment" in their retirement, no matter how it's actually implemented.
So I think we should have a totalization agreement with Mexico where legal social security payments made by mexican citizens are transfered to mexico, and legal payments into mexican retirement by american citizens are transfered to the United States.
Now, suppose you are an illegal immigrant, but have obtained a valid social security number, and are paying into the system. Should your crime of being in the country illegally preclude you from getting back the money you pay into social security? I think not, but as part of comprehensive reform I wouldn't be upset if part of the punishment for the crime was to lose the social security money.
However, the advantage of allowing the social security money to go to illegals who obtained valid SS numbers is to encourage illegals to at least obey SOME laws -- otherwise those who did NOT steal someone else's social security number get treated the same as people who DID steal someone else's number.
If you STEAL A SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, and pay into the system, my rule is simple -- if it's an unassigned number, government keeps the money. If it's an ASSIGNED number, the person whose number you stole gets credit for your work and payments, in compensation for you ruining their credit history and stealing their number.
I'll be interested in her response - if any.
You're being sarcastic, but the estrogen fueled crew on the day in the life of GWB thread will smother you with their damp chair cushions if they catch you.
No, government as usual, on second thought yes, insanity.
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