Republicans Want To Pull A Social Security Scam

[sasha031]

I remember a point in my life – somewhere around the welfare reform debate of the 1990s – where I decided it was wrong to assume that Republicans were deliberately setting out to hurt the poor and the elderly with their policies. I differed with their policies, but Republicans like Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin convinced me that their motives were sincere, if nothing else.

That’s getting to be a harder notion to maintain. Fresh off passage of Rep. Paul Ryan’s ruinous and radical budget proposal that would cripple Medicare and Medicaid, Republicans – including so-called moderate Sen. Lindsey Graham, have introduced a proposal to cut $6.2 trillion worth of Social Security benefits over the next 20 years. Keep in mind that Social Security is actually in pretty good shape. Sure, there’s going to be a shortfall when the bulk of the baby boomers go through the system, but we’ve been preparing for that for decades by charging far higher Social Security taxes than necessary, thus building up a large surplus. Once the demographic bulge of the baby boomers is through, Social Security is on a completely sustainable path with only minor tweaks.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, eliminating the cap on income subject to Social Security (now set at around $106,000) would all but eliminate any long-term solvency issues for Social Security.

For Graham, though, such a proposal is a complete nonstarter. In fact, he blusters that doing so could “destroy the country.”

“It’s much better to give up benefits on the end side than pay taxes now,” he said. Better for who?

It’s important to understand what this move and other radical proposals to increase the Social Security retirement age or otherwise drastically lower benefits are actually about. They are not about “saving” Social Security. They are, in fact, about reneging on a debt and abandoning an obligation.

As I said, Social Security has been collecting far more in revenue than it needs for the last couple of decades. That was part of the Social Security reform of 1983, and it was intended to build up a large surplus for the baby boomers’ retirement. And it worked. But now that baby boomers are retiring, some politicians don’t want to the surplus to actually be spent on Social Security.
http://mykeystrokes.com/2011/04/19/republicans-want-to-pull-a-social-security-scam/

[WingDinger]

1. They've decided they want all dem supporters dead. Or broke.

And they say that dems are evil for making the poor stay poor so they will vote dem.

[EC]

2. How can these people justify other countries being able

to take care of their citizens, but we are so weak WE JUST CANNOT AFFORD IT - EVEN IN THE FUTURE WHEN THE ECONOMY REBOUNDS?


On Edit: Do you recall when Tommy Thompson's daughter had breast cancer and couldn't get coverage on her insurance because they said it was a "pre-existing condition"? Thompson did nothing about insurance companies pulling that shit than. So I came to the conclusion that their ideology was more important to them than even their families...changed my world view of them completely. I used to believe that since they lived in this world too, that they wouldn't do anything that would harm their families or the earth...Ha...they just aren't rational human beings.

[polichick]

3. They think other countries are suckers and idiotic - only hoarding money is noble.

[truedelphi]

4. I don't think Middle Incomed America is going to see any rebound effects.

Not over the next ten to fifteen years, anyway.

My personal situation is much brighter than that of others, due to depending on a wonderful audience of book buyers in China. But most middle-aged, middle incomed people didn't start publishing houses when they were in the early fifties. And we have been very lucky for that and for the fact that the Chinese like our books.

When you look at how Geithner screwed over Japan, so that they had a horrendously worse outcome in terms of their huge recession in the nineties, that is what is in store for us here.

California's newspapers, in ninety out of one hundred locales, are announcing deep, deep, deep cuts of programs that our citizenry took for granted from 1945 to 2006. Libraries, social services, schools from kindergarten to graduate programs, fire fighting districts, police districts, etc, are all feeling the pain.

And whenever I think of Ahnold going to Geithner for a loan for 20 billion bucks to help ease the pain, and Geithner responding that our nation's Fed Reserve and Treasury could not afford it, yet then we find out via Taibbi that Qadaffi got fifty three billion, and so did the rich trophy wives of Geithner's Goldman Sachs buddies, I am so spitting mad I cannot think straight.

[nykym]

5. The reason everyone is proposing cuts

is because they have used the money in the trust fund to pay for other things like tax entitlements for the rich and other entitlement projects that benefit the wealthy. So now they have to pay back the money and they don't have it! What to do? I know lets cut SS benefits and raise the retirement age, that will slow the process down and we won't have to repay the IOU's. Brilliant! Lets tell Congress to Keep your M....F.... hands off our retirement cushion. And furthermore take the $500,000.00 Boner set aside for the lawyer to defend DOMA and give it back to SS. Pay up you bunch of deadbeats.