(Bu$h) Lies Calculated to End Social Security (Newsday)

by Saul Friedman

With Medicare on its way to becoming not one government program but millions of private insurance policies, <SNIP> Bush's vision for private ownership of Social Security is next. <SNIP>

If the president wins a second term, he can be expected to move aggressively to turn part of Social Security into millions of 401(k)s with their billions of dollars invested in Wall Street. Earlier proposals called for diverting one-sixth of the 12.4 percent in Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts. This time, Bush and advocates of privatization will propose increasing to 50 percent the chunk of Social Security taxes to be shifted to private accounts.

Anticipating his re-election, Bush's allies are preparing to put their proposal before Congress. They have organized what they hope will become a grass-roots movement to convert the nation's oldest and most successful social insurance system into a stock investment scheme. <SNIP> Their new group is called Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, or ARP. Despite the group's claim that the similarity to AARP was not aimed to confuse, the attempt to deceive is obvious and symbolic of the privatizing campaign. It's based on the double lie that the Social Security system is in crisis and that ARP wants to save it.

<SNIP> Today, many AARP boomers as well as other, mostly younger, Americans have fallen for the myth of an imminent Social Security bankruptcy. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan perpetuated the myth when he suggested cuts in future benefits for millions nearing eligibility, in order to pay for boomers, the first of whom will apply for benefits in the next few years. But Greenspan knew better, for he co-chaired a 1983 commission whose findings led to the raising of payroll taxes to create the current Social Security surplus, enough to pay for boomers born between 1945 and 1964.

<SNIP> the privatizers and their dupes in the press have created what Robert M. Ball calls a "bogus crisis," not to save Social Security but to end it, for the ARP leadership is ideologically opposed to Social Security. Ball, Social Security commissioner under three presidents, says in the April issue of the American Society on Aging journal, "Aging Today," that 75-year projections are no cause for panic, and allow time to make adjustments. Said Ball: "The one certainty is the uncertainty of any 75-year forecast. Consider ... how estimates in 1929 would have looked without any allowance for the Great Depression or World War II." Ball said the projected 75-year deficit amounts to less than 2 percent of payrolls covered by the program, and that the potential deficit could be avoided via higher economic growth or a combination of additional income and benefit cuts equivalent to a 1-percentage-point increase each in the payroll tax rate for employers and employees.

But rather than raising the tax rate or cutting benefits, Ball suggests less controversial ways to restore the system's long-range balance. One would tax 90 percent of all earnings instead of the current 85 percent. Others would eliminate or raise the ceiling on the maximum amount of income ($87,000) that's taxed. As of now, Donald Trump and a plumber pay the same in Social Security taxes. Meanwhile, says Ball, who is 90, "Social Security doesn't require reforming because it hasn't failed. The system that has served so many for so long simply needs some timely maintenance work."

MORE at http://www.newsday.com/business/custom/retirement/ny-bzsaul0403,0,374048.column

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Bu$h and the Rethug media lied their heads off to pass Bu$h's Medicare bill -- to loot Medicare for the benefit of the drug companies.

If Bu$h gets back in, they'll do exactly the same thing to loot Social Security for the benefit of Wall Street.

another Enron happened would I just be out of luck. If the principle (not the interest) were guaranteed, it would not be a bad idea. But I doubt seriously there is any guarantee and I would end up living with my granchildren - much to my and their unhappiness.

passed but will never be implemented or shown on the books as a liability.

The media allowing the "SS in trouble" lie to be spread is the final nail in the coffin - heck - it is the solid proof - of our right wing GOP controlled media finding employees that care more about their check than about telling the truth.

I am a poor investor.
I exercised a corporate stock option at $40 per share and six months later sold it at $12.

Cisco at $75 went to $15.

And I am well educated(?).

My 107 year old grandmother heard that bullshit before the Depresssion. She remembered how crooked churches were back then and they did NOTHING.

Yet, the masses have been brainwashed by the Republican media that invseting in the stock market is fine. the media has conveniently brainwashed the masses to foget that Social Security is retirement, SURVIVOR and DISABILITY benefits all in one.

Bill Maher comes on his show and beats the drum for full privitizatin. I wonder what that pompous ass would say if he collapsed from a stroke and found himself unable to shoot off his mouth and unemployed?

Oh, Silly me forgot that the churches will take care of him...

...and the financial fat cats who are about to lose their asses in the great financial instrument and equity collapse that is on the way. The great central investment banks are facing a catastrophe with increasing interest rates. This is the planned government bailout.

This is virtually no way the average boomer is gonna make money on his IRA or 401k in next several years. Investing in the stock market is like playing Vegas.

you can see he can't wait to get his hands on social security-he carefully avoids mention of it lest his true evil intentions come out-i truly thinks he dreams of going to Hyde Park to desecrate the body of FDR