Gee Grandma, I didn't know you were a welfare queen.
Since when is retirement insurance you, or your spouse, paid into welfare?
As Krugman notes, Federal revenue is the problem. It is also my understanding that it were not for the magnitude of the current SS surplus, in contrast to the 80's, we would also be running up record deficits relative to GDP.
Spearing the Beast
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 8, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/opinion/08krugman.html?oref=login&hp. . .
"Why expose workers to that much risk? Ideology.
"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," declares Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."
"By the welfare state, Mr. Moore means Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - social insurance programs whose purpose, above all, is to protect Americans against the extreme economic insecurity that prevailed before the New Deal. The hard right has never forgiven F.D.R. (and later L.B.J.) for his efforts to reduce that insecurity, and now that the right is running Washington, it's trying to turn the clock back to 1932."
. . .
"To put that budget into perspective, let's look at the causes of the federal budget deficit. In spite of the expense of the Iraq war, federal spending as a share of G.D.P. isn't high by historical standards - in fact, it's slightly below its average over the past 20 years. But federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. has plunged to levels not seen since the 1950's."
"Almost all of this plunge came from a sharp decline in receipts from the personal income tax and the corporate profits tax. These are the taxes that fall primarily on people with high incomes - and in 2003 and 2004, their combined take as a share of G.D.P. was at its lowest level since 1942. On the other hand, the payroll tax, which is the main federal tax paid by middle-class and working-class Americans, remains at near-record levels."
. . .