Cantor admits Social Security and Medicare ‘aren’t going to be there’ when he retires

[Zephie]

Source: The Raw Story

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitted Sunday that he didn't expect Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare to be around when he retires.

"What we have said is this: We'll protect today's seniors and those nearing retirement, but for the rest of us, all of us, who are 54 and younger, I know the programs are not going to be there for me when I retire," Cantor told Fox News' Chris Wallace. "They can't," he added.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) unveiled last week the Republican plan to cut $4 trillion from federal spending over ten years, including deep cuts to entitlements. Medicaid alone would be cut by $760 billion.

"The Medicaid reductions are off the baseline," Cantor explained. "So what we're saying is allow states to have the flexibility to deal with their populations, their indigent populations and the health care needs the way they know how to deal with them."

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/10/cantor-admits-social-security-and-medicare-arent-going-to-be-there-when-he-retires/

[brandywine]

1. Social Security and Medicare are Next up on the Budget Cutting List

Let's see how much of a fight our reps put up to protect these important entitlements.

[Born Free]

38. I have no faith in the elected democrats

They talk big and tough but roll over like little puppies for the GOP, and yet they hope people to trust them with national security .
The older I get, the more frustrated I get with the elected democrats. I voted for Obama, but wish there was a viable democrat to
challenge him in the primary.

[roguevalley]

42. Obama has already said they were open for discussion. expect them

to go. President Carebear sees nothing as sacred.

[jaysunb]

56. Where did you get this info ???

and since when did SS become an entitlement ? :shrug:

[ProudDad]

61. Since Obama started using republican language

and republican framing :shrug:

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Amaricans have to face reality.

It's not possible for us to provide all that social safety-net and entitlement stuff and at the same time maintain the upper 1% in the style to which they are entitled, so the commoners' entitlement stuff has to go.

[alfredo]

24. How dare we deprive the rich all they are entitled to.

How about this:

[tomm2thumbs]

3. let's pull post-Congressional benefits as well - if money is the issue

I mean really, let's get to nitty gritty here - Cantor, you are on your own baby

[Marblehead]

4. FU Cantor

Like he would ever need SS. There are millions of us who do. These guys are traitors.

[Ed Suspicious]

5. They are all just evil bastards.

[quakerboy]

6. I suppose killing Medicare is one way

to prevent medicare for all from ever happening, eh.

[UpInArms]

7. those of us 54 and under need to stop paying FICA and medicare taxes

these assholes need to go straight to hell - not pass go and give up their taxpayer funded checks.

[DissedByBush]

10. But that would crash their pyramid scheme

It's obscene that Bernie Madoff's in jail for a pyramid scheme running in the billions, while the politicians' scheme runs into the trillions and they remain free.

On the other hand, Bernie's only in jail.

When their scheme collapses they'll probably be killed in the revolution.

[RaleighNCDUer]

23. What pyramid scheme is that?

"Pyramid scheme" is THIER term for the entitlement programs that all workers have been paying into for all their lives, the benefits of which they are all entitled to.

It is only a 'pyramid scheme' if they loot it, rather than make payments to which payees are entitled. It is the looting, not SS and Medicare, which is the problem.

[DissedByBush]

51. When you pay current recipients

With the receipts of those paying in, it is a pyramid scheme.

Eventually, they all fail.

[RaleighNCDUer]

55. Wrong.

A pyramid scheme pays those higher the pyramid with 'investments' of those lower in the pyramid, while siphoning off a percentage to the top of the pyramid. It works from the top down. 'A' get 'B' and 'B' to "invest" in the scheme, then pays "dividends" to 'B' and 'B' by getting 'C' 'C' and 'C' to invest, then pays 'B''B' and 'C''C''C' with 'investments' from 'D''D''D''D'. It keeps on this way until they can find no more people to suck in at the bottom of the pyramid.

SS collects taxes from all workers. Those workers pay in their entire working lives. The collected revenues pay current recipients AND are held as investments for the payment of future recipients. The anti-SS try to make the 'pyramid scheme' analogy with the false statistic of the number of workers 'supporting' the number of recipients being on the decline. That analogy ignores the fact that when there were 40 workers per single recipient, the EXCESS collected was put in Treasuries against the day when the ratio would be less favorable - that excess in in the range of TRILLIONS of dollars. The 'pyramid scheme' claimants pretend that everything paid in in the last 70 years was immediately paid out, and that is demonstrably not true. Even today, there is more going into the system than is being paid out - although that will change in, I think it is, 2017, at which point we will have to start drawing on the 2.5 TRILLION dollar surplus in the treasuries. Yes, there is a problem in that those treasuries have been looted to the tune of half a trillion dollars - that still leaves a defined surplus of two trillion.

There are two real threats to the SS system - the Republican crashing of the economy, which means less being paid in than should be; and the Republican intent of privatizing SS. Other than that, it's doing just fine.

And it is NOT a pyramid scheme.

[DissedByBush]

59. What do you think treasuries are?

"EXCESS collected was put in Treasuries against the day when the ratio would be less favorable -"

Government debt. The government borrowed against itself.

[ProudDad]

62. Thanks for parroting RW talking points...

I guess you're too young to remember when Social Security was a Contract between generations so that the elderly didn't FUCKING DIE IN A CULVERT SOMEWHERE...

[MattBaggins]

22. You just hit the nail on the head

They intend to kill the programs but ibet my last dollar they still intend to take our money to give to the 1%ers.

[newspeak]

57. so, are we looking at more con artists?

If they would have kept their little greedy paws off of SS we wouldn't be in this predicament. I love how more and more of OUR money keeps being shoveled to no bid contractors (that need even more money to do the job cause they got to make a profit while usually paying shitty wages), and bailouts to wall street, those who do not deserve it (and still rewarding themselves millions) and yet those who are really footing the bill-we the people--why there's no money left for the poor, the children, the elderly, or the sick. And since they gave our money to mostly a bunch of sociopathic greedheads, while the majority of us can suffer and "decrease the surplus population." Yeah, and after thirty years of heartless, moronic conditioning, allowing their mouthpieces like Limpballs, O'Llielly, and crazy Beck to preach from the pulpit of the sins of poverty, free markets (or predatory capitalism) and other Randian fairy tales, the teabaggers have bought the great lie to their own detriment.

[Carni]

44. Wish I could rec this comment like plus 1000!

WE PAY THESE P's of shit!?!? Talk about the ULTIMATE entitlement program! GRRRR!

[marasinghe]

52. you are absolutely correct. (n/t)

[bongbong]

8. repigs openly admit to crime

Since the SS Fund is solvent for many decades, what that pig is saying is, "We repigs love crime, as long as the crime is stealing from Americans for giveaways to our billionaire bosses."

[tanyev]

9. Admits or hopes?

[Faygo Kid]

11. Yep, they are going to kill them off. Depend upon it.

I will be 60 this year, and I doubt that either program will be in place in the next five years.

This has always been their ultimate goal. Looks like they will achieve it.

[jwirr]

12. "They know how to deal with them" - pre-federal health care programs

were all run and financed by the states. Many states dealt with them by using discrimination. I think Texas to this day in their Medicaid program does not pay for mammograms for poor women. I would not be against letting states run these programs if there was a way to ensure that everyone is given equal care.

[raouldukelives]

13. They want everyone to invest in 401ks

So we can be just as vested in the perpetual war/death machine as they are. FU Cantor and FU Wall St. I refuse to profit from your death merchants.

[newspeak]

58. oh, you mean they want to flood wall street

with even more of our money. The wallateers didn't get enough of it. So, they can enronize the rest of us and make sure that not one damn dime is left on main street. So, does that mean that the last one per center standing with all the toys wins?

[Politicalboi]

14. Then cut my check now asshole

I paid into these entitlements, and I WANT everything that is owed to me with fucking interest. Repukes make me sick. I hope they all catch some nasty STD's and suffer for years.

[Iliyah]

15. I dunno

about Canter, but I know I will receive SS and Medicare when I turn a certain age. Eff these assholes. They will be voted out in 2012.

[Xicano]

33. +100

That was my thought too. I am currently 44yrs old and been working/paying since I was 17yrs old. If these jerks succeed in cutting this out, then they better give me every fucking last cent I put into it. And I agree with the being paid interest too for the same reason why money lenders argue they're entitled to collect interest because the money they lend out equals lost opportunity they could have made with that money.

Of course we need to defend this very important and needed service. But if we do lose it, then, the above applies.

[KeepItReal]

37. Yeah, Cantor....Where's my check?

I didn't volunteer all those Social Security payment deductions out of my paychecks just to have them go up in smoke like some Enron stock.

[Zambero]

16. With his cushy Congressional pension package he won't need it

In the meantime, Cantor and his cohorts want to reduce the following:

1. The top income tax rate from 35% to 25%
2. Perceived expectations for the future of SS and Medicare

The goal is clear -- to reduce the means for funding non-discretionary programs while benefitting the wealthy, AND imposing a new "reality" that says, well, senior entitlements are on the rocks and, doggone it there's not much we can do to save them. If they manage to get past this speed bump with a complacent electorate not raising objections, the destructive conservative juggernaut will be home free.

[tonybgood]

17. If States handle this, let's follow Vermont's model!

[Critters2]

29. +1

And welcome to DU! :hi:

[Citizen Worker]

18. A few month ago I predicted the cutoff of Social Security at 55. But we needn't worry, Obama and

the democrats will compromise at 60 years of age and claim victory. Problem is that most everyone will accept that compromise and demand we reelect him. How absurd!

[elias7]

21. What's absurd is that you are responding to your own Strawman

[avaistheone1]

19. Does Cantor expect his government pension which is paid by all of us to be there when he retires?

[plumbob]

20. Fine question! I also wonder if he ever read what happened to Mussolini

after the war once the citizenry realized where their real trouble came from.

[gmpierce]

43. Re" Mussolini

You mean the story that after the war Mussolini was taken out by 243 Italian sharpshooters?

Can't happen here. The Democrats don't have any sharpshooters - and their specialty is the circular firing squad.

[bloomington-lib]

25. One of the things that pisses me off is the selfishness of the boomers

They got to shape domestic and foreign policy to what it is today. They got to do what they pleased with the environment. They got to enjoy social programs while they were raising their families. They get the benefit of having socialized health care, but say "after we're gone, no one can have this because we spent all of the money". And at the same time they say they fear for my generation. Fuck you guys

Pass the torch instead of burning the house down after you're through with it.

[PSPS]

28. Has nothing to do with "the boomers"

These are sociopaths and criminals, and that's all there is to it. If you have to define the "class" responsible any further, add the adjective "rich." All the "boomers" I know are just as enraged as you are that these crooks are trying to steal more of our money to line their own pockets. And, sadly, Obama is right there with them, what with his cat food commission and his repeated erroneous reference to Social Security as having an effect on the budget deficit (it plays no role at all.)

As someone else alluded to, all these people deserve nothing better than the "Benito" treatment: Having their lifeless bodies swinging from lamp posts. I'm afraid this isn't going to stop until we begin wholesale culling of this crowd.

[daleo]

32. There are rich boomers and not-rich boomers

There are rich Gen-Xers and not-rich Gen-Xers.
There are rich Millenials and not-rich Millenials.

It's about money and power, not age. Every generation cleaves along the same class divide.

[cliffordu]

35. I dunno - I know hundreds of boomers and NONE fit your profile of us.

Mebbe you could fart in your pants

[brandywine]

39. Misplaced blame. The elite who bought the Gov are to blame.

Though I am at a loss on how to fix the problem.

[plumbob]

41. There is enough money in the Social Security fund right now to pay

full benefits through 2037, when the oldest boomers will be 91, or dead, really, and the youngest will be 73 or 5 years from death. That's without doing anything at all, because we doubled our own ss taxes in the early 80s for just this reason.

Now, if we would at any time in the next 26 years, raise the income cap on which ss is withheld, it's good forever.

We got to do those things because we have been as much as 40% of the total population and are 25% right now, and are active politically. Those are just numbers.

I have been fighting for universal single payer coverage for more than 30 years now. I quit using banks for anything in 1978 and have taught hundreds of my high school students how to do the same. I have been fighting for a minimum alternative tax of at least 25% on corporate profits. I have been against every war since Vietnam and have spent my political dollars and votes to reinforce that.

Wall Street wants the nearly 3 trillion in the surplus for their use. They are the goddamned liars that keep saying ss is in trouble. They are the goddamned liars that say that private insurance should even be legal - it shouldn't, because it's a moral hazard - the more they say no to coverage, the more money they make.

I'm doing my damndest to pass a torch, but the right wing owned media is a formidable foe. But I won't quit.

[ProudDad]

63. And I'm with you!!!

Never give up, never surrender...

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[stockholmer]

27. some charts showing lifetime benefits and taxes for SS & Medicare (showing returns on taxes paid in)

some quick points (btw, the interest earned on SS/Medicare tax payments IS included in the taxes paid portion)


1. In the past, single people got back a tremendous amount more in SS benefits than they and their employer put in (even including interest earned on the taxes paid in), but as of a couple years ago, all single people starting SS (and living to average age) will get back less than they nd their employer paid in, and that gap grows every year. However, when the employer's match is taken away, even the single gets back much more thn they actually paid in.

3. The system favours couples (and women), especially one-earner ones. BUT, the more the second spouse makes, the closer the couple comes to being in the same situ as a single person, with a two earner couple (one high, one average wage) wage already getting back less than they and their employers paid in. Once again, however, they get back much more than they themselves put in.

3. Medicare is the truly broken 800 pound gorilla. In the past, all got a huge amount more back (percentage-wise) than they paid in. But, unlike SS, this doesn't correct itself. Even singles in the future will get back at least 3 times of benefits (hundreds of thousands of dollars more), and couples will get back 4 or 5 times the amount they paid in.

4. Personally, these charts for medicare are way too optimistic, due to the USA for-profit health care costs simply exploding over the lst 20+ years' The rate of increase projected from 2010 to 2030 looks very under-estimated to me.

Bottom line:

A. Anyone retiring now and in the future is not getting back the total paid into SS, except for one earner couples, but they are getting back more than just they personally paid in. Expect this to be used to attack the system by quotes that leave out the employer match.

B. In Medicare, all are getting back so much more than they paid in that the system will collapse without huge changes, IMHO.


http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/social-security-medicare-benefits-over-lifetime.pdf







the article this is from:
http://moneywatch.bnet.com/retirement-planning/blog/financial-independence/whats-the-return-on-your-social-security-taxes/1151

"Whether you believe it or not, Social Security is going to be a part of your future, and when the time comes, you’ll be glad you’ve got it. Yes, our national pension system has some well-known fiscal problems, but Uncle Sam can solve them by any number of bearable cost-cutting and/or tax-raising solutions before the money runs out. The question remains, though: Is it worth it? Will the benefits you’d receive under current law compensate you for the career’s worth of taxes you’ll have paid into the system? The latest answer, generated by a new Urban Institute Social Security study, is: yes. (Surprised?) As far as it’s possible to project, Social Security and Medicare give you a positive return on your tax “investment” even after inflation.

That question has been chewed over through the years with generally less upbeat answers. Uncle Sam, for example, does its own Social Security money’s worth calculation and generally shows that the payoff for being a loyal Security Security taxpayer shrinks a lot with each succeeding cohort. The big difference is that the Urban Institute study, conducted by Eugene Steurle and Stephanie Rennane, adds in Medicare. That, it turns out, has been a very good deal, in part because all taxpayers (not just Social Security payroll taxpayers) pick up so much of the cost.............."

[Fearless]

30. And he'd be a large reason why.

[TownDrunk2]

31. He'll have stolen enough to support 1,000 why should he worry (nt)

[lumberjack_jeff]

34. It isn't an admission. It's a threat.

If that sack of fuck does nothing, it'll be there.

[and-justice-for-all]

36. Is it ok to 'hate' these scum fucking pigs??

hate is a strong term and I want to use it where it is appropriate.

How about a penetagon budget that is nothing near wher it currently is when he retires??! This country needs national health service, not an out of control war machine.

[Gormy Cuss]

40. Stupid headline. He didn't "admit it, he declared it, because that's his goal.

According to nonpartisan analysis, without any changes at all Social Security will "be there*" until at least 2084, so unless Congressman Cantor plans on living until age 120, he's safe.

Of course, Cantor and his party are doing their damnedest to make it and Medicare disappear altogether or morph into some kind of individual investment/savings plan.



*with 15-25% lower benefits beginning in the 2030s if nothing is done to correct the formula.

[unkachuck]

45. "...deep cuts to entitlements. Medicaid alone would be cut by $760 billion."

....if the Dems allow the pukes to reduce Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid for ALL by even 1 red cent, I will NEVER EVER vote Democratic again for the rest of my life....

....if the Dems are going pay for puke tax give-aways, economic meltdowns, depressions, corporate loopholes, corporate bailouts, perpetual wars, corporate greed and corruption by punishing and depriving Seniors, Poor and their posterity of historic survival programs, then I want to see EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE without exception, in this country suffer proportionately or much much worse....

[salin]

46. so put aside 2,000 a month for retirement (how many extra jobs does that require)

and another 2,000 a month for escalated health care costs. What - does that require 3 full time jobs to afford? Who needs a moment for sleep or a social life - and isn't grand that if you work a 4th full time job (yep - hours are impossible) that you could reach the upper economic echelons where those realities don't matter because the incomes are so high, and the taxes are so low, that saving 40k a year isn't a hardship except letting go of some luxuries.

[The Second Stone]

47. All the Republicans are eager to do away with social security

and Democrats need to start documenting every instance of it.

[M155Y_A1CH]

48. Cantor is full of shit, what an idiot. n/t

:kick:

[freshwest]

49. The bastard isn't even original. The GOP has hated and tried to destroy the social safety since FDR.

Why? Because there are groups that benefit from poor people. The GOP is the representative of that group. Without the poor, there would be no rich of the type the GOP represents.

We would have an egalitarian society like those who kept their oligarchs in place but restrained them from going crazy like they have here. It can happen here, but not with these SOBs in power.

[marasinghe]

53. true. these repukes' constituents are the hyenas & vultures of society.

if their filthy political goons & their military machines didn't destroy the helpless & vulnerable, these bottom-feeders couldn't last a second in a genuinely fair economy. and they have an unreasoning & paranoid, almost genetic, hatred of the poor; just like their jungle counterparts. unless these murderous scum are controlled & caged, by regulation & incarceration where necessary, there will never be a decent life for the least fortunate amongst us.

[ProudDad]

64. Not really since FDR

It was actually quite bipartisan (in the accurate meaning of the word)...

http://www.ssa.gov/history/tally.html

More Democrats voted against it than republicans...

More accurately since Goldwater...

[RedCloud]

50. Non-fucking liar!

[harun]

54. Eff off Cantor.

[Old Troop]

60. And he needs to worry....How?