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02/11/12
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May 02, 2005 On April 24, 2005, the Boston Globe published an article that sums it up nicely. In that article, Charles Stein said: “But before the Democrats start to celebrate, they should consider this. Eventually they are going to have to say yes to something, because the Social Security problem isn’t going away. The latest report by the system’s trustees found that Social Security faces a $4 trillion shortfall over the next 75 years. The deficit may not represent a crisis, but it is a substantial hole that will have to be filled sooner or later. Sooner would be better. The longer the delay, the more Draconian the response will have to be.” This is a nice thought. Every insurance company should begin building its reserves when faced with obvious future problems. That’s the intelligent thing to do. Unfortunately, we do not have an insurance program that is handled by conscientious people. We have one that’s supervised by the greedy who have their malicious fingers in the pot. Consider this from Marshall Loeb of Market Watch which is merely the latest in a long line of authorities who have said the same thing: “We are going to get no help from the so-called Social Security Trust Fund. The Fund is a collection of non-negotiable government bonds in a filing cabinet in West Virginia . Investing in Treasury certificates is a good idea unless you are the Treasury. The idea that somehow this represents anything other than records kept on money collected by Social Security taxes that had been spent on other programs in the last 20 years is a complete fraud. When the president talks about using the Trust Fund to extend the life of the Social Security program for 24 years, he is wrong. We are misleading people into thinking that this Trust Fund has any relevance whatsoever. From an economic and a legal point of view, there is no Trust Fund.” This is also pretty much the truth, and it’s the federal government’s way of handling the “extra” money Social Security has been generating for ages – what could have been a “reserve” if it had simply been stuffed in a mattress, coffee can, or real “lock-box.” But it wasn’t. Everybody talks about how Social Security is currently producing more money than it needs, and how this will not last, but no one mentions how much surplus has been produced year after year. And the government is deathly afraid you might find out. They’re just as afraid of this public discovery as they are of terrorists. God only knows what the American workers and the American taxpayers would do if they found out how much of their money their own government has been ripping off in a scam worse than Enron. This is why Bush doesn’t jump up and say “Look how much we could be putting into private accounts.” This is why the democrats are stonewalling a plan that they haven’t even seen yet. Stand fast. Just say no. Now the cult that’s even greedier than the other cult will come out with all sorts of plans to immediately increase the booty. It’s important to start filling the hole we see coming, right? It’s important to get started now. Stand by. It’s going to carry through the elections of 2006 and another, perhaps even two giagungha increases to the national debt limit. In the scam, Social Security and the national debt are hopelessly entwined when they shouldn’t be, not if Social Security were building a real reserve. To this day no one asks anyone in the federal government to explain how Social Security became 22 percent of the national debt. Debt is debt. It’s already a hole that must be filled. And it’s $1.7 trillion deep. If a declining ratio of workers to retired, payouts increasing as people live longer, are such a problem even in a sour job market, how come we're producing such huge surpluses? This extra money was $71 billion last year, $82 billion the year before than, $89 billion in 2002, and a record $98.7 billion in fiscal 2001. While dropping off, it will increase as soon as the economy picks up. President Bush claims that he has convinced the American public that the Social Security system has long range problems. Now he’s willing to turn things over to a “nonpartisan” panel of pirates to come up with solutions better than his. Draconian responses are here already. The hole that has been dug by stealing Social Security’s extra money, then pretending that the same money can be both spent and saved, is the same hole at least twenty other entitlements find themselves in and it’s currently $3.2 trillion deep and getting deeper. It’s called “Intragovernmental Holdings” and it’s about 43 percent of the national debt entirely composed of the same sort of trusts and fraudulent “holdings.” Some taxpayer money is already being thrown into this debt hole. For instance, the Unemployment trust has gone from holdings of $94 billion to its current $39 billion. Where did the money come from? Unemployment taxes didn’t increase. It came from legitimate borrowing (a tax on your future) and cutting other programs in the budget. Watch for all sorts of cockamamie proposals to increase payroll taxes beyond what is necessary as was done in 1983, borrow even more money, and/or cut benefits, raise the age of retirement, or increase the “cap” on salaries. And there will be little or no talk of saving today’s surpluses, to stop stealing the money, or to build the sort of reserve that could have been built long ago. There may, however, be some thrust by the democrats to launder surpluses against the legitimate side of the national debt in Clinton fashion. They don’t see any contradiction in using our retirement money to pay off their credit card. The Beltway
Bandits are hard pressed to raise money. After all, their largest slush
fund has gone from a surplus of $98.7 billion in 2001 to its present $71
billion. That’s a substantial loss for them. And they do think of
it as “their” money.
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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Boomer Myth - The Great Fear Story For Social Security First Things First - STOP Social Security's Bleeding Secrets Neither Political Cult Will Tell You Bush Put The Fox Back In The Chicken Coop Unfunded Liabilities - What They Are Job Market Reflected In Payroll Taxes $3.2 Billion A Day - $2.25 Million A Minute Go George Go - Keep Talking About Social Security Pipedreams Of Social Security Reform Open Letter To President Bush & Congress Parkersburg Papers At The Bureau Of Public Debt The Job Market Reflected In March Payroll Taxes Changing Direction On Social Security Reform Complete Archives for Ed Henry | ||||||||||||||
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