PLEASE read this info about Social Security

[kuozzman]

I’ve tried bringing this up before about Social Security, but a lot of the time, people either say that I am wrong or we end up talking about different fraudulent aspects of S.S. Anyway, I came across some very informative and blunt “speeches” in the (101st) Congressional Record, given by several former/current Dem Senators who explained it very well when they tried to reform S.S. in preparation for baby boomers (their plan, supported by the CBO, would have solved the problem by now) and more importantly expose the embezzlement of the trust fund, which began under Bush 41 and continues today. In fact, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who Bush mentioned in the SOTU, was one of the main congressmen trying to expose and put an end to this massive fraud against the taxpayers, which continues to this day and is more than likely why privatizing S.S. is so important to Bush.

I assure you it will be worth your time to read what these Dem Senators had to say about Social Security back in 1990. Even though they’re from 1990, most of the basic economics they talk about still applies and the fraud they explain never stopped. They also point out several things that contradict several things Bush said in the SOTU. While it is sort of long, it’s one of the best sources of information about SS that I’ve seen. Several of these Senators had been very involved in decision making regarding S.S. several decades ago and some have worked in government for over 30 years, so they give lots of historical information and many other facts that are still very relevant today and are never mentioned by the media and rarely by current Congressmen.

In the SOTU, displaying his strong desire to reach across the aisle, Bush mentioned 4 ideas that Democrats have had about S.S. reform. I think that was just to piss off the people who know how full of $h!t he is, since none of those ideas are similar to anything in his genius proposal and none of the Dems he referred to are even Congressmen/Prez anymore and one, Sen. Moynihan, isn’t even alive. WTF? He said that Sen. Moynihan “recommended changing the way benefits are calculated.” Yes, he wanted to make it so there would actually be benefits to calculate in the future. Unfortunately, Bush 41 didn’t think so, as Sen. Sanford explained, It was hard for me to understand why it is difficult to sell other Senators on this concept and why it was virtually impossible to get the administration to support the thought that we might be doing something wrong in the way we handle Social Security funds. They fundamentally disagree with my concepts and, I think, the concepts historically of what Social Security is. These Senators’ “speeches” mention several interesting facts about Social Security that are rarely discussed.

Below are just a few quotes, but I strongly recommend reading part or all of the speeches, since they provide a lot of information that is relevant today, though rarely discussed.

I posted relevant excerpts, which are pretty long, but worth the read, from various Senators on my blog: http://ignorantusa.tripod.com/socialsecurity/

Or if you want to look at their complete “speeches”, go to http://thomas.loc.gov
and search the Congressional Record for “Social Security” with Moynihan’s name on Oct. 9, 1990. And there are other similar speeches from different dates, which I mention in my blog.

Let me know if you agree that this is a massive fraud on the American people.

Sen. Moynihan:

Out in the nongovernmental world, what we are doing is seen as what it would be were it taking place in the nongovernmental world. You cannot take pension funds and use them for other purposes. You would go to jail. Is it any wonder we are not trusted?

At least, do not withhold Social Security taxes from wages which have not increased in a generation, simply to pay interest to bond holders in Europe and Asia on the money we borrowed in the 1980's. If we enact the Social Security tax cut proposal then one two-earner family can, by fiscal year 1996, add $1,500 to their income.

About a year ago, the Rochester Democrat Chronicle used a rather striking term to describe what was going on. It said that the word for what has happened to these trust funds is “thievery”. It happened that some months later--in early January of this year--I was on the Today Show on NBC, with my colleague and friend on the Finance Committee, Senator Heinz and the moderator asked Senator Heinz if he agreed with the characterization of what was going on as “thievery”. With great candor he said, “Certainly not. It is not thievery. It is embezzlement”.



The President replied. He said:

(FDR) “I guess you are right on the economics, but those taxes were never a problem of economics. We put those payroll contributions in so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pension and their unemployment benefits with those taxes in there. No damned politician can ever scrap my Social Security Program.”

So in the seventies, the idea of moving to a partially funded system began. It was apparent that the retirement of the baby boom, which would begin in the second decade of the 21st century but really kick in, in the third decade, would be followed by that dramatic lower birth rate, the baby bust, and would push the Social Security fund into serious actuarial imbalance over 75 years. And it seemed that some preparation should be made, that we should start collecting more money than we needed to pay out and save the surplus.

Saving is the crux of the matter.

Let no one suppose Congress will much longer allow a payroll tax to be used to service a $2 to $3 trillion debt, owed in vastly disproportionate amounts by wealthy individuals and institutions. It already requires nearly one-half the revenues of the income tax to pay the interest. This surely is the largest transfer of wealth from labor to capital in the history of our political arithmetic. That is a term of Alexander Hamilton, political arithmetic.

Today, Americans three-quarters of whom pay more in Social Security tax contributions than in Federal income tax, have not experienced an increase in real wages. We worsen their burden by levying the most regressive of all taxes on their wages, and using the revenues as general revenue.

Some 500,000 businesses have sent out postcards calling this a key small business vote, because self-employed businessmen and small store operations must pay tax on their labor whether or not they are doing well. A return to pay-as-you-go financing will impact positively on the success of the small business sector, and they see it. This is not just a matter of working people. It is employers, as well.

Sen. Exon:
I strongly support the Moynihan proposal to gradually--I emphasis `gradually'--roll back the Social Security collections for several, but one important, reason: The thievery from the Social Security trust fund must stop, and it must stop now. The American people are just now learning that there is very little trust and very little fund in the Social Security trust fund.

In reality the trust fund is merely a bookkeeping creation to collect more money in one door and immediately spend it out another door. When the grand old generation goes to the Social Security trust fund cash register and opens the drawer, they will find no money as they had presumed, only a very large and ever-increasing stack of IOU's from the Federal Government.

We have significantly increased the taxes on the working people of America, not to make Social Security solvent in future years, but to fool them into the belief that they are paying into a trust fund when in actuality it is just another very regressive form of taxation that is not being employed for the purpose for which it was assessed.

Mr. President, the American people must understand that there is no surplus in the Social Security trust fund; just a pile of IOU's. The so-called surplus in reality is a deficit. It is a deficit which working men and women will be asked to repay with interest 10, 20, and 30 years from now. When the Social Security trust fund was created, it was designed to operate on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The Moynihan tax rollback plan will not only strengthen the system, but it will also end the game of hide the deficit. Much has been made this week of the record $300 billion deficit that the Nation faces in this fiscal year. Mr. President, over and over and over again, the American people are being told a lie as to what the real deficit is.

Sen. Sanford:
The administration talks about how much we have increased taxes over the last 10 years--how tax income has grown. They claim that we have plenty of taxes and taxes are increasing. Obviously, they are not talking about taxes for general purposes; they are counting Social Security taxes as if they were general revenue. So the whole mindset is wrong--the mindset that the Social Security payroll tax is just another source of general revenue tax income for another entitlement program.

Using the trust funds of Social Security to mask the true size of our deficit is bad enough, Mr. President, but we do not stop at that. We carry the deceit even further. We spend the money, all of the reserves building up in the Social Security trust funds intended to help pay for the baby boomers' retirement, we use all of that for general revenue purposes. Taxes paid into Social Security trust funds by hard-working people throughout the country, taxes they believe are being held in trust for their retirement, are actually being spent for general revenue purposes, just as if they were general purposes taxes.

Under this scheme, many of our young workers are paying for their Social Security retirement today, more than they need to pay, money they could be using for other purposes, as a hedge against an uncertain future. They are paying in today and they will pay again later in order to put that money back so they can draw their benefits.

This is a pay-now/pay-again-later policy. This is the policy that the administration is trying to protect in opposing this legislation.

If a private corporation used its retirement pension funds to pay operating costs and substituted IOU's, it would bring down the wrath of the SEC and the employees concerned would go to prison, and ought to.

We make the laws. We allow this type of accounting. We allow this type of embezzlement, if you will, in the Federal Government. We have not yet declared it illegal. I think we should, and I think we will with the legislation.

Sen. Reid:
I go back to when I practiced law. As I have indicated here already, had I used those trust fund moneys in my law business for purposes other than for which they were intended; namely, my clients, I could be subject to criminal prosecution, administrative proceedings taken against me by the Bar Association, and maybe even disciplinary action.

I think that is a very good illustration of what I was talking about, embezzlement, thievery. Because that, Mr. President, is what we are talking about here. But for the dialog started by the Senator from New York, we would not be here today. And I publicly commend and applaud the vigorous activity generated by the Senator from New York because on that chart in emblazened red letters is what has been taking place here, embezzlement. During the period of growth we have had during the past 10 years, the growth has been from two sources: One, a large credit card with no limits on it, and, two, we have been stealing money from the Social Security recipients of this country.

Main Dems who were involved:
S. 101
Sponsor:
Sen Sanford, Terry

Co-Sponsors:
Sen Moynihan, Daniel Patrick
Sen Hollings, Ernest F
Sen Fowler, Wyche, Jr.
Sen Cranston, Alan
Sen Bryan, Richard H.
Sen Conrad, Kent
Sen Ford, Wendell H.
Sen Dodd, Christopher J.
Sen Adams, Brock
Sen Exon, J. James
Sen Robb, Charles S.
Sen Simon, Paul
Sen Riegle, Donald W., Jr.

[Junkdrawer]

1. I've been saying this for a while....

FICA, above and beyond what is spent on current recipients, is a regressive tax on the working poor. Period.

But, to add insult to injury, Bush used the SS surpluses to justify the $10 trillion tax-cuts-for-the-rich. Clinton/Gore at least had the concept that if we use the surplus to pay down the National Debt, we will be in a better position to absorb the deficit spending later.

[Ivote]

2. Add This

SS also covers People with disibilitites and life threatening illnesses. MS, Aids, cancer, spinal cord injuries and the list goes on. Also you would be entitled to either Medicaire or Medicaid.
It also covers children up till the age of 18 (21-22 if they go to college) when a parent dies.
While we are on the subject, ask your congressman & Senators why they have not only SS, but FERS (federal Employees Retirement System) COLA increases, Thrift Savings Plans that are matched by the Government and paid for with our tax dollars, not to mention a lucrative health benefits package. What are they willing to forego to see that SS is kept solvent.
How many of our troops that died in this war will now have their families covered by SS. All of them. To take this away from their survivors would be nothing more than Rape.
Save Social Security

[Ian David]

3. Being on SS disability puts you on the "special treatment" line

Lebensunwertes Lebens
"Life unworthy of life" (German) - Term derived from the work "The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life" ("Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens") by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, published in 1920. This work was referring to the mentally and physically handicapped and regarded the killing of these segments of society as a "healing treatment." This term and this work became a base for the right of the state to kill unwanted segments of the population.