Social Security Dead on Arrival

[erpowers]

It was reported yesterday that Tom Delay said that if President Bush removed the cap on Social Security the bill would be dead on arrival. This is an oppurtunity for Democrats to point out that the Republicans do not want to save Social Security. Removing the cap on Social Security would save the program large amounts of money.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. I disagree

SS is running a surplus and will until 2018. Right now the surplus is being used to fund the mess in Iraq and tax cuts for billionaires. It is being used to cover up the massive deficits that the pukes are running. Raise the cap and middle class working families in the urban centers of the East and West coast will get socked with a regressive tax hike and the money will be spent, all of it, to continue the billionaire tax cuts and the insane plan to conquer the world. Screw that. Roll back the tax cuts and start cutting down the annual deficit. Remember? Like we were doing up till 1/20/2001? There will be more than enough money to pay SS t-bills through 2044 or 2055 or whatever the current projection is.

[erpowers]

2. Not Regressive

I do not believe lifting the cap on Social Security will hit middle class families with a regressive tax. I believe lifting the cap does the opposite. By lifting the cap people who make more than $98,000 a year will have their additional income taxed.

I agree with you on rolling back the tax cut and cutting down the annual deficit. Doing those two thing will help Social Security a great deal. I also think the government should start paying the IOUs it owns Social Security.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Its 90,000 not 98,000

and its a regressive tax - as in a flat tax. The billionaire tax cut reduced progressive income taxes and we are being offered a regressive flat tax in exchange. No thanks.

90,000 is not rich, not if you are living in or near the major urban centers of the east and west coasts. Raising the cap, which in all liklihood means not eliminating the cap but simply a one time upward re-adjustment in addition to the normal annual cola adjustment, is just socking it to blue-zone middle class working families.

SS is running a surplus and will until 2018. So why exactly are we raising SS tax rates?

What do you think the government will do with the additional revenue it gets from raising the cap? Here is my guess: they will spend it just like the do today, rolling the additional surplus into general revenue and accounting for it with more t-bills. Heck, they will use the excess to justify making the first term tax-cuts permanent. Bushco can continue to squander more of our money, continue to float his unsustainable tax cuts and continue to pile on the deficits while he tries to conquer the world.

Get back to me in 2018 when the surplus is projected to end. Then we can talk about why the government should be allowed to default on its SS trust fund t-bills instead of paying them back just like it does for all the other t-bills, the ones held by individual and institutional investors around the world.

We are being maneuvered into allowing the government to default on its SS trust fund obligations. Screw that. We've all been paying in at increased rates every year, piling up TRILLIONS in surplus revenue, under the agreement Greenspan worked out to 'save social security' 20 years ago, and that agreement included the government having to honor the SS trust fund T-bills. We have to hold them to that commitment.