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It is no secret that what the major media seem to care most about is radically different from what concerns average Americans. While the inside the Beltway crowd continues to focus on alleged collusion between President Trump and Russia, real concerns like the future of Social Security are ignored.The Social Security Board of Trustees, a six-member panel who serve the federal government by offering a short-term and long-range forecast on the health of the Social Security program, has issued a new report, which says that while the retirement program will be "cash flow positive" through 2021, it is still in...

Politics: Herman Cain proposed privatizing U.S. Social Security and cited Chile's success. But like cuckoos popping out of clocks, the media smeared Chile as a "dictatorship." Cain, speaking Monday at CNN's Republican presidential candidates' debate in New Hampshire, boldly laid out the one solution known to work in resolving much of America's $100 trillion in unfunded mandates by saying: "I support a personal retirement system option in order to phase (out) the current system. We know that this works. It worked in the small country of Chile when they did it 30 years ago. I believe we can do the...

Economy: President Obama had nothing but praise for Chile's democracy and economic miracle, declaring it a model "for the region and world." So why is he obstructing the same reforms in the U.S. that gave Chile its success? Arriving Monday in Santiago on the second leg of his Latin American tour, the president told El Mercurio he picked Chile as one of his three stops because: "The Chilean experience, and more particularly its successful democratic transition and sustained economic growth, is a model for the region and the world. ... It is also a powerful example of how the opportunities...

FIFTEEN years after Paul Keating introduced the superannuation guarantee legislation, Australia's superannuation assets are set to smash through the $1 trillion level. The magic number, which is set to be passed within the next two weeks, has dramatically changed Australian savings patterns, creating a funds management industry that is the fourth largest in the world and helping to fuel Australia's stock market boom. It has also given a new generation of ordinary Australians with a significant level of savings outside their family home and boosted careers and salaries in financial planning, funds management and investment banks - which have designed...

Senate blocks effort to limit benefits to immigrants By Donna Smith 10 minutes ago The U.S. Senate blocked an effort on Thursday to limit Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants who would become permanent residents under a sweeping immigration overhaul being debated by lawmakers. The Senate immigration bill would give millions of the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the country a path to citizenship as long as they pay a fine and back taxes and meet such requirements as learning English. The Senate is considering a number of amendments to the bill and was expected to...

This article appeared in the February issue of The American Spectator. To subscribe, please click here. "Can we, who man the ship of state, deny it is somewhat out of control?" Ronald Reagan asked this question less than two minutes into his first address to Congress in 1981, excoriating a government willing to mortgage the future of its citizenry via a national debt of $1 trillion. Reagan invited the American people to visualize this "incomprehensible" sum not as a string of numbers but as the cold, hard cash it actually was. "If you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in...

GLENN HUBBARD, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, COLUMBIA UNIV.: Social Security turned 70 yesterday. This milestone birthday offers an opportunity to think about the goals we hold dear. The original idea for Social Security from the Roosevelt administration was a proposal for economic security. An economic security agenda was hardly surprising after the depression of the early 1930s when many households lacked the resources to fund their golden years. The 1935 Social Security agenda ushered in a new role for social insurance in the United States. In 1965 this was extended to health care for the elderly and low income individuals,...

President Bush approved 70 of 74 of the WMD Commission recommendations for improving national security, with at least one still under review. India's Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee met with VP Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in Washington. Scott McClellan's press briefing link. Welcome to Sanity Island!

The president promoted Social Security reform during a speech in DC to the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), and met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office. Secretary of State Rice met with Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen at the State Department. They shared the honors at a joint press conference. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is in Brussels for a NATO conference. Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island.

William Donaldson announces his resignation as Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman during a press conference at the SEC in Washington, on the June 1, 2005. Donaldson said he will resign June 30 and today 2nd June 2005 the President Nominated Congressman Chris Cox to replace him The President also proclaimed June 2005 as the Great Outdoors and Black Music Month Later on he travelled to Hopkinsville Christian County Conference and Convention Center in Hopkinsville, Kentucky for a discussion on strengthening Social Security The President will spend the weekend at his Central Texas ranch in Crawford after attending a fundraiser in...

President Bush held a news conference this AM (text found here), which will be replayed by C-SPAN tonight at 8 PM Eastern. Choice pull quote: Bush called a human rights report 'absurd' for criticizing the United States' detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said the allegations were made by 'people who hate America.' People he met with in the Oval Office: Dr. Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States; crewmembers from the International Space Station Expeditions 7, 8, 9 and 10; and Maria Corina Machado, executive director of Sumate, a non-governmental organization that...

When President Bush tackled Social Security reform, he surely expected the usual denial and deceit from AARP and do-nothing Democrats. What he probably did not anticipate was an even more vehement defense of the status quo from conservative attorney Peter Ferrara, a longtime advocate of personal accounts. In a January op-ed, Ferrara strenuously opposed basing first-year benefits on individuals' earnings histories after adjusting for inflation (price indexing), rather than the current practice of giving initial benefits an extra boost to keep pace with economy-wide wage growth (wage indexing). "Under the current wage indexed system," wrote Ferrara, "the replacement rate, the...

Ready to play "Count the Deceptions?" Click on the MoveOn link, click start, and wait for their cutesy little Flash movie to start playing. It is so chock full of lies, half-truths, distortions and fearmongering that it takes the breath away. Not that I'm surprised that MoveOn doesn't care about facts or truth. I wish someone on our side would come up with a catchy Flash ad to tell the truth on Social Security.

A registered Democrat, Robert Pozen has little to gain politically from the Social Security solvency plan that he drafted and that now is heralded by President Bush, whom the former Massachusetts economic development chief voted against in November. Nonetheless, Pozen has become a favorite witness at congressional hearings, promoting his idea of "progressive indexing" for future benefits. At age 58, Pozen has no personal stake in the current Social Security debate because neither President Bush nor Congress has advocated changing the existing system for workers over 55. It's a fair bet, too, that Pozen, a graduate of Harvard College and...

Barely a third of the public approves of the way President Bush is dealing with Social Security," writes the Washington Post's Richard Morin, "and a majority says the more they hear about Bush's plan to reform the giant retirement system, the less they like it, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll." Yet inside the same Post poll, there is news that 56 percent of those surveyed say they would support "a plan in which people who chose to could invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market," which is the centerpiece of the president's...

A GOP source close to the Social Security debate tells me, “the battle for personal accounts is over.” “Even though the president will keep pushing it and no one is coming out to say it publicly, most Republicans are already resigned to believe that privatization won’t happen.” “The president is going to take the compromise of add-on accounts, reduced benefits and a payroll tax cap increase and claim victory. Fiscal conservatives and party hard-liners are not going to be happy with this bill at all.” The source believes there is still “some hope” that the House will pass a bill...

The Social Security system is in deep trouble no matter what the Marxists in the National Socialist Democrat Abortion Party (NSDAP) say. And these power-hungry demagogues have got a lot of the oldsters now living at least partly on their Social Security checks all riled up. According to media reports (they're not lying all the time), members of Congress are being scared witless by cohorts of outraged and highly vocal old fogies who show up at town hall meetings called by congressmen and congresswomen to explain the need to reform the system before it comes crashing down. Many shout and...

Where's Will Rogers when we need him? And we do need him today! The wit and wisdom, the empathy and understanding he brought to the social and political issues of his day don't seem to exist anywhere now. Art Buchwald came close, and Garrison Keiller evoked old Will from time to time but the shaggy-haired Cherokee American philosopher from the Oklahoma Territory is still in a class by himself. There was only one. I had the honor and intense pleasure of portraying Will in "The Will Rogers Follies" in Branson, Missouri, for almost the whole year of 1994. The show...

In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress passed the Social Security Act, part of a system envisioned by FDR to provide a secure retirement for Americans. Social Security benefits were never intended to stand alone as a retirement vehicle, but rather to be just a part of Roosevelt's vision, which included personal savings and private pensions. Call it the retirement tripod. Today, tens of millions of Americans are faced with the reality that one leg of that tripod is seriously weakening, and will surely collapse in the future. One does not have to be a Wall Street actuary or...

What are KIDS accounts? KIDS accounts are small savings accounts that were proposed as part of the Americans Savings for Personal Investment, Retirement, and Education Act (the ASPIRE Act), legislation introduced by Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Representatives Pat Kennedy (D-RI), Harold Ford (D-TN), Tom Petri (R-WI), and Phil English (R-PA) on July 22, 2004. The legislation would provide every child, at birth, a small savings account that can be used to build assets. The bill is S.2751 in the Senate and H.R.4939 in the House. ASPIRE will provide a KIDS account for every child born...