The lack of accountability is the elephant in the room

Evidently the public is supposed to pretend the past decade of corruption has no relation to the "debt crisis." Supposedly dedicated public servants are working in good faith to solve some difficult economic problems.

This is absurd. Politicians from both parties have no credibility on the "debt crisis." They squandered that credibility when they suggested that legal accountability for massive corruption was tantamount to criminalizing politics or would be too divisive. Thus it is no surprise that the "tough solutions" come at the expense of safety net programs. This is what one would expect from public officials acting in bad faith.

Seniors, the sick, and the poor will get theirs in the debt ceiling agreement.

They need to be adjusted for populations as time goes on. Since the demographics change, a perpetually fixed payroll tax won't always fit a perpetual payout because the workers who are paying and the retirees who are receiving change over time.

It's illogical to think today's rules fit all times and all populations.

I used to think it was pay-as-you-go.

But DUers informed me that was wrong.
Now I am telling you.....

There was a great deal of money raised.
That money was not used for SS, it was used to keep taxes low for the rich people.

Since the sums that were paid by workers has been used not for SS payments.
We are now in a pay-as-you-go operation.

The sums needed to pay back the workers' SS funds now have to be borrowed.
Or we raise taxes on the rich.

How else can the funds be paid back?

Most Americans believe that the Social Security trust fund contains a pot of money that is sitting somewhere earning interest to pay their benefits when they retire. On paper this is true; somewhere in a Treasury Department ledger there are $2.4 trillion worth of assets labeled "Social Security trust fund."

The problem is that by law 100% of these "assets" are invested in Treasury securities. Therefore, the trust fund does not have any actual resources with which to pay Social Security benefits. It's as if you wrote an IOU to yourself; no matter how large the IOU is it doesn't increase your net worth.

This fact is documented in the budget, which says on page 345: "The existence of large trust fund balances … does not, by itself, increase the government's ability to pay benefits. Put differently, these trust fund balances are assets of the program agencies and corresponding liabilities of the Treasury, netting to zero for the government as a whole."

Consequently, whether there is $2.4 trillion in the Social Security trust fund or $240 trillion has no bearing on the federal government's ability to pay benefits that have been promised. In a very technical sense, it would lose the ability to pay benefits in excess of current tax revenues once the trust fund is exhausted. But long before that date Congress would simply change the law to explicitly allow general revenues to be used to pay Social Security benefits, something it could easily do in a day.

The trust fund is better thought of as budget authority giving the federal government legal permission to use general revenues to pay Social Security benefits when current Social Security taxes are insufficient to pay current benefits--something that will happen in 2016. Effectively, general revenues will finance Social Security when the trust fund redeems its Treasury bonds for cash to pay benefits.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/14/taxes-social-security-opinions-columnists-medicare.html

So, you think what they have done with our money is ok?

And that the simple solution is to raise taxes on the rich?

And decrease the progressive one. I'm the one posting about the non negotiable treasury bonds in the SS system. We have been had!

I posted this:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/11/955117/-The-Great-Social-Security-Heist-Already-Happened

And for that I have been called a right winger and asked why I am here.

The SS surplus was a scam on the middle class and people here defend it! It's disgusting.

So really it's the future ability of our kids to pay off our debts, pay our interest on the debt, pay for our entitlements, and pay for the functions of the Federal Government, pay the funds the Feds send back to the states and pay for Defense.

Realistically what can they handle? Beats me.

Our kids will have to pay for what we are enjoying today.

Lets hope they are all rich kids so the pain can be spread. <heh>

ssion meeting a couple of weeks ago. No shit!

ALL of us had been discussing numbers related to teen pregnancy. He got up and ranted on about Obama, said nothing about the issue at hand, except by ending with "Figures lie and liars figure". The commissioners looked scared and the rest of us gaped at each other in shock.