President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.Fred mentioned in comments that:
Do you think obama realizes he just told us all that the SS fund is empty and to send the checks he must borrow the money?I've been thinking about that, wondering who else noticed and I see that Investors Business Daily talks about that very issue.
Wait! What happened to Social Security's "guarantee"? You know, the iron-clad assurance of Social Security benefits in exchange for paying into the program your whole working life? It's something Democrats constantly talk about, particularly when attacking Republicans who propose privatizing the program.Well, if our President is correct, then there isn't any money in the Social Security fund. It's been squandered by politicians who see a fat retirement fund that they can plunder and put an IOU in its place. The simple truth of the matter is that our President has squandered the money. It's gone.
What our President needs to do is sit down with the nation's checkbook and take a good hard look at the register and see where it's all gone. Then, start cutting with the most inconsequential expenditures going first.
What the Republicans should do is immediately put legislation in place that compels Treasury to put over-65 retirees and veterans at the front of the payment line. Everybody else comes second or third or fourth. What our President has done, is to expose Social Security for the fraud it's been for a long time. We should have privatized it under President Bush, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Thanks, Mr. President, for exposing the lie of Social Security. Now, how are you going to trim 4 trillion from next year's budget?
3 comments:
>We should have privatized it under President Bush, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
And we also wouldn't have Social Security. The big deregulated Wall Street banks would have bet the money on derivatives and lost it.
My math says Social Security died 40 yrs ago.
J said...
>We should have privatized it under President Bush, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.<
And we also wouldn't have Social Security. The big deregulated Wall Street banks would have bet the money on derivatives and lost it.
There is no "right" to collect Social Security payments, even if you have paid in for 40 quarters or more. And there is no "trust fund" for Social Security, either.
The SCOTUS has ruled on this more than once.
In Helvering v. Davis (1937), the Court had ruled that Social Security was not a contributory insurance program, saying, "The proceeds of both the employee and employer taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like any other internal revenue generally, and are not earmarked in any way." \
In the 1960 case of Fleming v. Nestor, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that workers have no legally binding contractual rights to their Social Security benefits, and that those benefits can be cut or even eliminated at any time.
In other words, Social Security is not an insurance program at all. It is simply a payroll tax on one side and a welfare program on the other. Your Social Security benefits are always subject to the whim of 535 politicians in Washington. Congress has cut Social Security benefits in the past and is likely to do so in the future.
I personally believe means testing will be instituted in the near future.
Post a Comment