Why Social Security Politics Help Republicans

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I'm one of those little old ladies whose only income is SS and I do live in a rusty travel trailer. While I can still afford to have an internet connection and I don't have to eat cat food, I know I'm always a month away from having to choose between eating crackers and cat food in order to pay the bills or moving the trailer to the woods in order to eat better. Medical, dental needs are out of the question. Of course the Obama administration's attitude is that people like me don't matter and should just die off anyway, the sooner the better. Of course if I did die sooner than later the taxes I owe would never be able to be collected, and so the Feds would have to find a way to make the rest of you pay for what they lost with me. There should be no taxation without representation. Today it's the older folk not being represented, but you younger people are not being represented either and you are closer to where I am than you may want to think about.

SuzyQ of FL 1:31PM September 22, 2010

Bush and administrations before him Borrowed from Social Security. That is why social security is in trouble. Coupled with the fact that people are living longer, we need to increase the amount of Social Security deductions from payroll.

HopeforAmerica of WA 6:55PM August 30, 2010

We're in the worst economic downturn since the depression. Just think how many seniors and those who depend on SS would be in even worse dyer straights had
Bush privatized Social Security. Privatizing Social Security means gambling on the Stock Market. You don't gamble what you cannot afford to Lose, and most Americans cannot afford to lose their Social security if the stock market crashed or took a downturn.
It's easy for those who are wealthy and will survive if the stock market crashes.. but not the middle class or poor. I think the Republicans would be extremely Foolish to push this agenda!

HopeforAmerica of WA 6:48PM August 30, 2010

IT IS QUITE INTERESTING HOW THOSE THAT ARE BLESSED WITH FINANCIAL SECURITY ARE WILLING TO WATCH THE ECONOMIC DETERIATION OF OUR COUNTRY FOR THEIR OWN PERSONAL GREED, DO THE THINK THAT THEY WOULD BE ABLE TO MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO ANY PLACE ELSE??????????HOW MISS IMFORMED AND SHALLOW.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rey of NY 10:10AM August 24, 2010

I belive the numbers are current, in any case, I am only saying that this is what I'm hearing. We can always fall back on the "Figures lie and liars figure" philosophy, but instead I suggest that there are solutions at hand. Social Security is simply a safety net and under the current economic situation, one that will be counted on by more people.

VCSMITH of KY 2:46PM August 19, 2010

As a millennial, I guarantee you Brandon Greife doesn’t represent my view on Social Security (or most others my age, for that matter). Sure, we’ve been bombarded with the “Social Security won’t be there for you” lie since birth, but attempts to scare us about the program’s solvency (which is far from in crisis) sure hasn’t eroded our support for protecting and strengthening Social Security.
If Greife had bothered to read any number of polls that have been released recently, (http://www.ncpssmfoundation.org/unh_poll_report.pdf) (http://www.ourfuture.org/report/2010083211/deficits-and-economic-recovery) he would know that young people know we will need Social Security for our retirement and largely oppose attempts to cut benefits.
As the first generation predicted to be worse off financially than our parents, it’s obvious protecting Social Security is a no-brainer. Americans of all ages want to see Social Security strengthened--4 of 5 Americans agree that Social Security is a promise made to all generations and should not be broken. The reason my generation is pessimistic about it being around when we retire is because we constantly hear threats to privatize, cut benefits, or means test the program from policy makers.
Lacking faith that Washington will do the right thing in the midst of deficit-mania is not the same thing as lacking faith in Social Security. I hope the next time Mr. Greife writes about Social Security, he will do his research and not rely solely on the same old anti Social Security talking points conservatives have been using since Alf Landon in 1935. Surely, our generation can do better than that.

Jamie of MD 12:28PM August 19, 2010

I discovered the Social Security fraud while doing research for my book, "The Alleged Budget Surplus, Social Security, and Voodoo Economics" which was published in 2000. On September 27, 2000, I appeared on CNN to discuss the new book. I did everything in my power to convince anchor Lou Waters and the audience that the government was spending all of the Social Security surplus for non-Social Security purposes. Waters seemed amused by what I was saying and he finally asked me, "Are you a voice crying in the Wilderness?" As things turned out, I was a voice crying in the wilderness in 2000, and I continued to be such a voice for the next decade.
Throughout my efforts over the past decade, I was treated by the media about the same way I would have been treated if I were claiming to have ridden in a pink UFO, but I persisted. As crazy as it may sound to some people, I feel somewhat like a modern-day Paul Revere with a civic duty to warn my fellow citizens that trouble lies ahead. I have actually been warning the public about the Social Security fraud for longer than Harry Markopolos tried to warn the SEC about Bernie Madoff's giant Ponzi scheme, and I have had just about the same degree of success as Markopolos until a few weeks ago.
However, things seem to be on the verge of changing. I got the biggest break of the past ten years just last week when Fortune's Senior Editor at Large, Allan Sloan, quoted me in his Washington Post column entitled, "Social Security, the trust fund, and funny money." Allan Sloan is one of the most respected journalists in his field, and he is a seven-time winner of the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award. To have his support and endorsement means a great deal to me. I have been engaging in a periodic email correspondence on Social Security with Sloan since 2004, and I am extremely grateful that he quoted me and referred to my book, "THE BIG LIE: How Our Government Hoodwinked the Public, Emptied the S.S. Trust Fund, and caused The Great Economic Collapse."
Allan Sloan has taken the giant step of revealing the dirty secret about the trust fund that has been kept from the public for so long. In the aftermath of what happened to Dan Rather when he ruffled the feathers of the White House, many members of the media have been reluctant to report stories that they know the government would not want reported. But the American people need to know and have a right to know about the great Social Security scam. I consider it to be the greatest fraud ever perpetrated against the American people by their government.
Allen W. Smith, Ph.D.
Website: www.thebiglie.net
Phone: 1-800-840-6812

Allen W. Smith, Ph.D. of FL 10:58PM August 18, 2010

Bill, Social Security currently has over $2.5 trillion in interest bearing assets. They have always been paid their interest and never failed to pay all benefits in full every year. Social Security is the most solvent and successful programs in US history. Stop spreading these right wing lies. It's disgusting.
Social Security keeps over 20 million people out of poverty a year. The Trustees Report for 2010 shows that net assets for FY '09 was over $2.9 trillion after paying benefits. The report also made this interesting claim about ACA, Obama's health care reform bill;
"Medicare’s HI Trust Fund has a projected 75-year actuarial deficit equal to 0.66 percent of taxable payroll under the intermediate assumptions, a large improvement from the 3.88 percent figure reported last year. That change is largely attributable to the ACA, which mandates a reduction in the growth in Medicare payment rates for most health service providers, reduces payments to Medicare Advantage plans, and imposes higher HI payroll taxes for high earners. Those factors slow the depletion of HI Trust Fund assets and delay the anticipated fund exhaustion date to 2029, 12 years later than reported last year."
I guess CBO projected federal budgetary savings from ACA were correct after all. The fund is in good shape and will be helped by ACA.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html

steve of IL 5:13PM August 18, 2010

I would like to know how old your numbers are in your first paragraph:
On August 11, 2010
“Today, let’s talk about one of the world’s biggest piles of funny money — the $2.54 trillion Social Security trust fund. The trust fund matters now, because Social Security revealed last week that it plans to tap it for $41 billion this year, and will begin tapping it on a regular basis in less than five years.’
“This year’s cash deficit, the first since the early 1980s and the biggest ever, means the Treasury will have to borrow money to redeem some of the trust fund’s Treasury securities. Even at a time when Uncle Sam is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year to keep his checks from bouncing, $41 billion is real money.”
http://timiacono.com/index.php/2010/08/11/funny-money-in-the-social-security-trust-fund/

Bill Hedges of MO 4:51PM August 18, 2010

The Trust Fund is financially sound. Last year, FY2009, was the very first year that the Fund had to dip into its quite substantial annual interest earnings to pay benefit obligations. Still, there was a $90 billion surplus in the Fund for last year. The recession has deprived the Fund of much needed tax revenue which is an even bigger reason we need to achieve more GDP and employment growth now. The workforce is actually growing (one reason its so tough to bring down unemployment) and the ratio of workers to retirees is one to four. At current benefit and payroll tax levels this will be sufficient to sustain Social Security.
Ensuring Social Security solvency in the future will not be difficult. One solution would be to create a doughnut hole between the current cap and some point where Social Security/Medicare taxes would restart, possibly at a lower rate than below the cap. Over 90% of Americans pay 6.2% of their entire income in a payroll tax; the figure is 13% for those who are self-employed (often their income is as low or lower than those who are legally employed by a business or organization. Those in the top 1% pay an annual average of about 4% of their income in SS/Medicare taxes. The doughnut hole option seems both economically sound and socially equitable considering all the other tax breaks the rich have gotten over the past thirty years. Even after Obama allows the Bush tax cuts to reset to pre-2001 levels for top earners only it is estimated that these same people will derive greater tax savings from the remaining middle class tax cuts as a share of their gross adjusted pre-tax income than most of the middle class for whom the cuts were intended. A recent CBPP report shows that;
"...recent estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation show that extending just the middle-class tax cuts would provide more than $6,300 in tax cuts to households with incomes above $200,000, on average, compared to $1,132 in tax cuts for households with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000."
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3263
The same report also points out;
"Households with incomes exceeding $1 million will receive an average tax cut of $6,349 in 2011 if the middle-class tax cuts are extended while the high-income tax cuts are allowed to expire....The story is similar, if not quite as dramatic, for households that make between $500,000 and $1 million. They will receive an average tax cut of $6,701 if the middle-class tax cuts are excluded...For all other income categories, by contrast, the size of the tax cuts are about the same whether the high-income tax cuts are extended or not. Even for households with incomes between $200,000 and $500,000, the effects are similar. The Joint Tax Committee figures show that they would receive an average tax cut of $6,743 if only the middle-class tax cuts are extended..."
Increasing amounts of taxable income has been accumulating above the current cap some of which must be retrieved.

steve of IL 1:47PM August 18, 2010