After health care, U.S. to take on Social Security

Medicare is projected to go insolvent in 2017. Social security will start paying out more than it takes in in 2016 an be insolvent in 2037.

These trust funds were part of the Reagan flim flam where taxes were cut and the fiction of a 'trust fund' was created while social security money was spent.

Right now Social Security, Medicare-Medicaid, defense spending and interest on the national debt now account for 75 percent of all federal spending. The trends indicate that if the wolf is not at the door, we should be hearing him approach.

There. Problem solved. It's not rocket science that you would need to have endless hearings, bipartisan commissions and CBO studies. You could even phase in the changes if that's what it takes.

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1. Lift the cap.
2. Make the universal program universal. Bring all employees into the system including those hundreds of thousands of schoolteachers and professors who are currently excempt.

Those two changes alone would solve the problem the system has for a long time.

There's no fair reason for there to be a cap. As long as the benefit goes up, the contribution should too.

There's no fair reason why all workers should be in the system except schoolteachers. That excemption is a huge burden to the rest of us.

You said 'wolf at the door.'

Another thread had a picture of daffy duck with that comment in the picture.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x8985976

Did you get the phrase from there?


I also question the authenticity of the article, commenting on Social Security reform sounds like a health care debate smear comment. Not sure if that is the intent, but if they wanted to add fear to people on medicare or social security, that article could distort the administration that way.

It also would not make sense to bring that up now.

I just read the first comment below the article.

This is horrible and inaccurate propaganda designed to scare. Social Security was always intended to be a pay-go system. It's NOT a ponzi scheme. It will not be bankrupt as the baby boomers retire. The trust fund will be exhausted around 2040 (conservatively), but even if benefits are cut to meet contributions, paid benefits will be HIGHER than current benefits even adjusted for inflation.

http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=342

These are facts. Backed with numbers. See the Congressional Budget Office reports.

The fear mongers base their "argument" on two things. A) the federal budget is in deficit, therefore we can't "afford" to pay back the trust fund. In other words, all the SS monies that have been put into the regular federal budge over the years should never be paid back to SS. And, B) there's no such thing as productivity growth.

Stop the lies

Also

Who is supporting the wolf, and who protects from the wolf, is is a question of perspective, and what a person considers important.

AP's Tom Raum is frequently loose with facts and is a reliable courier of GOP water.

1. It's not a "ponzi scheme."
2. It won't "run out of funds" for at least another 40 years.
3. Fixes are easy: Stop raiding it to fund the general budget (which Reagan began) and raise the FICA ceiling.

These are verbatim "talking points" from when bush and his cronies were salivating over the prospect of stealing "privatizing" it.

1 - SS certainly is a Ponzi scheme. Look up how a Ponzi scheme works, then tell me what differences if any you can find. The only exceptional thing about SS is that it is a very long term scheme compared to most. That term is almost up...

2 - It will run out of funds the moment payouts exceed revenues; in other words, with the retirement of baby boomers. Then it will have to cash its Special Treasury Bonds. How exactly is Treasury supposed to make good on them, with a deficit of $2T a year and counting?

3 - those fixes would help a lot, but ultimately they won't matter as the baby boomer demographic crunch will utterly destroy each and every part of the seniors safety net. The only realistic fix that has a shot at actually working is to increase the retirement age to the same level, relative to life expectancy, as was the case when the program was instituted. That would translate to a retirement age of about 77.

because under even the gloomiest scenario, that of all baby boomers retiring and none of them dying, Social Security will be solvent at present OASDI premium levels until 2040.

The only real crisis in Social Security is that as boomers retire, Congress will no longer be able to scrape 40% of the premiums paid into it off the top to pad the budget and conceal the devastation that tax breaks to the rich and corporate have caused.

When the true extent of the shortfall caused by reckless tax cutting is fully known, most of the men who did it will be safely ensconced in nursing homes or pushing up daisies. More's the pity.

However, the crisis isn't in Social Security. The crisis is caused by insanely cutting taxes on plutocrats while allowing the rest of the country to fall into ruin.

for the next 40 years as long as they get their bonds paid off by the US government.

But oh look.

The government is broke.

My retirement will be fine as long as my worthless brother-in-law repays the $ 300,000 loan I gave him for his drug treatment.

But since he's homeless and on the run from the police it doesn't look too likely.

It makes me feel better to say my retirement will be fine as long as my debt gets repaid though, so I'll keep saying it.

PS - the above example is fictationalization. My brother-in-law is actually a good guy.

and will have to supplement Social Security with a dead end part time retail job. The good news is that you will be able to do that. Lots of places would rather hire stable retirees than feckless teenagers.

Imagine what kind of shock people who think they have safe retirement are going to be in when they realize that pension they contributed to for thirty years was stolen half a dozen CEOs ago.

Very few boomers will be able to retire to anything but part time work.

I don't think we are "taking on" health care at all.

The US government will be wholly bankrupt long before then.

By the end of the next decade, if there is no major reform of government corruption and corporate fraud, the federal government will be out of business. That presumes the Chinese don't cancel our credit card...