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December
13, 2004 After already stealing $1.6 trillion of our retirement insurance money since 1983, leaving us with phony trust funds that require taxpayers to replace what is now more than 22 percent of the national debt, these crooks are now trying to convince us that if anything is done with the payroll tax surplus premiums we’ve been handing them – they’ll have to make up for it by borrowing more than they are already borrowing from investors, mostly foreign countries like China and Japan, running up the national debt even further. No wonder countries like Japan , holding more than $800 billion in US Treasury securities, are telling us that we better stop living beyond our means, reduce our deficits, take fiscal responsibility for strengthening the plummeting value of the dollar, or pay the consequences. It’s also interesting that The Guardian Observer ran an article titled “Japan Threatens Huge Dollar Sell-Off” so close to the anniversary of Pearl Harbor . The country that lost World War II, but won the economy, is now in the position of being able to bankrupt the richest debtor nation in the world by simply cashing-in its US Treasury holdings. Monday evening, December 6th, Lou Dobbs interviewed one of the Beltway Bandits responsible for getting us into this situation. After first teasing us with the announcement that “Social Security reform, a top priority for the Bush agenda. The federal government may have to borrow more than $1 trillion to pay for it, however. Senator Lindsey Graham has introduced legislation to reform Social Security. He's our guest.”—we finally arrived at Mr. Graham’s chance to enlighten us towards the end of the hour long program. DOBBS: Let's turn to Social Security if we may, and that is the idea of privatizing Social Security. It has a lot of people concerned, a country that is running just about $8 trillion in national debt, looking at the prospect of more than $1 trillion over the course of just a little over a decade in order to do it. How in the world can we afford this? GRAHAM: Well, you can't afford not to do it. Social Security is going bankrupt, it's coming apart at the seams. When I was born in 1955, there were 16 workers for every retiree. In about 15 years, there will be two workers for every retiree. Between 2011 and 2030, there will be a 65 percent increase in retirees and 8 percent increase in the work force. We're short of money to pay the benefits. If we do nothing, the cost will be trillions, if we do something progressive, the cost can be managed. But to do nothing is a death blow to Social Security. Can you believe that? Almost everything the man says is a flat out lie, a fabrication, and an untruth told by one of the pirates who has been stealing Social Security’s profits since at least 1983. The man should be tarred and feathered and imprisoned in Guantanamo. WAKE UP : How can anyone say that “Social Security is going bankrupt?” These (the green figures) are the profits Social Security has been generating every year since 1994 and the Beltway Bandits have stolen to spend elsewhere. You've got to be a nutty politician to believe that $71 billion in surplus/profits during a down economy is chicken feed or that the system is "falling apart at the seams." Because they pretended to have merely “borrowed” these profits, they placed “special obligation” nonmarketable bonds in phony trust funds, then they add annual interest that costs them nothing since they merely hand the trusts more bogus bonds but, by so doing, increase taxpayer indebtedness. It’s a scam, pure and simple, and it is nothing more than double taxation with interest added since only taxpayer money can redeem what is now more than 22 percent of the national debt. You can read all about these phony trust funds right from the horse’s mouth the few times they have not lied about it. What’s more, the “sixteen workers for every retiree” that our snake-in-the-grass senator talks about when he was born in 1955 were contributing only two percent of their salaries to the insurance program and that was capped at $4,200 in annual salary. Whatever anyone made beyond that amount was without payroll tax. Compare that to today’s 15.3 percent premium for every worker capped at today’s $89,000 or thereabouts, another variable that can easily be increased rather than cutting benefits. Most of all, it costs practically nothing to set up a real trust fund for Social Security’s excess/surplus or “profits” and keep them out of the hands of the Beltway Bandits. And even if these funds did nothing but draw simple interest sitting in some bank, we would be more than 100 percent better off than we are now. Remember the “lock boxes” Congress spent years debating when real trust funds are, by their very nature, already lock boxes? Remember the young Wisconsin congressman, a developer named Mark Neumann, who had a crazy plan for balloon payments on the national debt? We should not let them sidetrack us again with convoluted schemes that do not address the central issue. Social Security’s only problem is the federal not-for-profit government that oversees it and should not be engaged in the private enterprise competitive insurance business in the first place and they certainly cannot be trusted with the profits. See:
Social Security I and Social Security II.
Visit Ed Henry's own web site! Send a message to your elected representatives. Click here to start. Be sure to send a copy to Ed Henry.
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Booga-Booga From Greenspeak -- Again Cagney Factor - Misplaced Hero Worship Choosing The Lesser Of Two Evils Four More Reasons To Vote For Bush Wrong Questions On Social Security Light Job Loss Reflected By Social Security Desperate Bush Turns To Social Security National Debt Tax - The Silence Is Deafening Know Your Enemy - Missing Parts Of Usama's Speech Social Security - Is The Battle Renewed? Social Security II - Privatize The Profits Borrow-holics Setting Records- Complete Archives for Ed Henry | ||||||||||||||
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