Killing the Trust Fund Pookah

[Miss Authoritiva]

By Grace Nearing of Scriptoids

Amazing, isn't it, the number of conservatives in the media who don't believe in the full faith and credit of the United States government. I view it as economic treason. As usual lately, the economically treasonous remarks come out when the conserverati discuss Social Security. Charles Krauthammer is guilty of it too, but the former psychiatrist takes a distinctly shrink-like approach: Americans are all affably daft and the Social Security Trust Fund is a multi-trillion dollar pookah.

2042. I do not know if the president's Social Security reform will pass, but if it does not, its demise will be traced to that point in the president's State of the Union address when he warned that the system would go bankrupt in 2042. It was a disastrous moment.

Why? Paraphrasing Dr. Krauthammer here, Americans are too cognitively impaired to think that far ahead. I wonder: Maybe the president should have included a brief mnemonic ditty in his State of the Union address so that we neuro-damaged citizens could stay focused on the date. Perhaps something like that grade-school "Columbus sailed the ocean blue" rhyme:

In 2042, we'll all be f*cked -- you know it's true.

See, you're not going to forget that date now, are you?

And not only are we Americans incapable of thinking in the long term, we haven't fully adjusted to the reality of years that begin with a "2." I kid you not.

CONTINUE READING HERE

[Martin Eden]

1. SS Trust Fund -- my LTTE

My LTTE wasn't published, but it seems applicable as a response to Krauthammer:

The Social Security trust fund is a debt owed to American citizens who built it through payroll taxes increased in 1983 specifically for that purpose. It is backed by federal bonds, which our government has never defaulted on. These funds were borrowed to finance the policies of the Bush administration, which have produced huge deficits. Now it is being suggested that the trust fund is little more than worthless IOU's which can't be repaid. Meanwhile, the president insists that tax cuts favoring the rich are to be made permanent. He wants payroll taxes diverted from Social Security into private accounts, which would hasten the bankruptcy of the system.

Conservatives have been looking for ways to destroy Social Security since it was created, and now we are witnessing their best shot. It involves a massive redistribution of wealth from working Americans to the wealthy, an enormous debt burden on the next generation, and a public campaign of deception by the president and his party. They are not trying to find a practical solution for keeping the elderly and disabled out of poverty. They are pursuing their ideological goals at any cost, which will fall upon those who can least afford it.