Social Security Is The Ideal Issue For Democrats

[Parisle]

---- You just have to look into it deeply enough. Why is it that politics breeds superficiality? Let's take this from the top, Ok?

---- On the surface, Bush's Social Security Privatization Plan appears to be an indictment of a system which was poorly-designed,.. an FDR pyramid scheme which has run the course of its geometric lifespan. But this begs the question of 26 years of federal borrowing from the system's contributions, beginning with Reagan in 1983,... the year that Carter's and Reagan's combined "rescue" measures finally got the system back into black ink. (For the record, Reagan's first appropriation of accumulating surpluses was a scant $140 million.)

---- But the amount of the annual surpluses grew rapidly,.. 12 years of Reagan-Bush gleaned every last dime to cover the numerical appearance of their deficit spending (they were the fiscal conservatives, remember?)... and Clinton, left with a record budget deficit, continued the practice. He should have removed the fund from the general revenue once he got the budget under control, but he did not. Gore offered a lockbox, and in financial terms, the very concept was anathema to Wall Street. Here is what they feared:

---- Had the SS trust fund never been touched since 1983, it would contain over $2 trillion (plus a certain amount of interest, of course) It would be the largest chunk of cash on Earth,... money to be cautiously invested, used for the common good, directed at problems besetting the American people. It could have financed alternative fuels research, medical breakthroughs and educational advancement. It could have hedged with precious metals. It could have done a lot of things,.. all while continuing to serve as the supplementary retirement fund, as well. It would have been the "peoples' credit union," and, properly managed, would have rivalled anything Wall Street could offer. "Ah,.. there's the rub."

---- The conflict over social security is nothing less than a conflict over what is proper in the "public vs. private" standoff. The corporatist establishment wants for everything, government included, to be privatized. They use the "freedom and free enterprise" crap to try and obliterate the American people's right to literally do anything they wish which is in their own best interests. "Let the market determine everything," they say,.... and NOTHING may happen unless someone makes a profit off it, eh? That is what we are up against,... and that is what the democrats must take a viable stand against. Is it "socialism," ... or is it just keeping rogue, opportunistic capitalism in its place? Well, even if it is both, there is nothing in the Constitution which forbids it.

---- Some eloquent democrat needs to take the podium, and graphically illustrate for the American public just how life could be if they were all mutual members in a credit union/annuity plan controlling,... oh,.. let's say $2.5 trillion in cold hard cash,and collecting another $500 billion or so every year. And, in fact, they ARE members in exactly that sort of group,.... except that their government has loaned all their money to itself. It is time to call in those loans.

[Parisle]

1. I Just Did the Math,.....

---- The Social Security "Trust Fund," if it had been left untouched since 1983, would today contain approximately $25,000,... CASH,... for every man, woman and child in the United States,... assuming a population of 300 million,... while continuing to pay benefits AND continuing to earn interest.

---- What has happened to the American supplemental retirement fund,.. actuated by politicians,... dwarfs any criminal misuse of pension funds by any private entity. And republicans are into it for a hell of a lot more than democrats,... it OUGHT to be a safe issue for democrats,..... unless........

[INdemo]

2. Pass this along to the Democrats in Washington

Yes there are other issues beside the Iraq war and Soc.Sec. is one of the top issues they should certainly discuss.
Along with
Immigration reform
Healthcare
Pension Protection and the list goes on..

[Parisle]

3. Actually, INdemo, I'm not having much luck with Social Security

---- For some reason, DU'ers do not wish to discuss it, in spite of the obvious potential yardage to be gained with the American public-at-large. I don't know why. With the right political logicians, writers and strategists (none of whom the democratic party seems to employ) the Social Security debate could be transformed into the quintessential argument behind the very basis of our democratic "Great Experiment." There is no issue, war and terrorism included, which is separate from the implications of the Social Security debate. Let's face it,... if the American people were controlling their own $2.5 trillion trust fund, then it would be a lot more difficult for neocons, corporatists and RW fundamentalists to be trying to co-opt the very Constitution, itself. That is the whole point. They do not even want you in charge of your own goddamned money.

[INdemo]

4. With just a little research one could go back

about 65 years and find that Republicans have been trying to destroy Social Security ever since it was enacted.I might add along with every other program that FDR gave us. Now here we are in 2006 and the Republicans are still trying.
I really belive that voters are tired of hearing about Iraq,they know what the situation is and what the answer should be.Lets get the hell out of there. They want to hear about what the candidate will do about all the issues and Social Security is near the top..The guy that gives them answers will win.
I dont know how many more young men and women have to die before the people have the same attitude as they did about Vietnam but we have already had over 2600+ too many.

[Parisle]

6. It's the "Battle of the Bulge"

---- When the Germans made their all-out counter-attack in the winter of 1944, it was their last-ditch effort to push the Allies back to the sea. The elitist republicans, corporatists, and soon-to-be neocons have waited all this time to launch their counter-attack against FDR's New Deal, and they felt this was their moment. Hopefully, the common denominator of their effort and that of the original nazis in the Battle of the Bulge will be the term, "last-ditch." When this battle is over, we may need to make some changes.

[sarcasmo]

5. Kick and Nom number three. I agree that Social Security needs to be

The main issue. If Seniors would wake up and realize that the Republicans want to do away with their Social Security and Medicare they would never vote (R) again. The only thing the Republicans have to sell is Fear.

[Parisle]

7. I think they realize that, .....

---- I believe it was a tremendous majority of seniors and near-seniors who comprised the 65% majority who threw back Bush's first attempt to peddle this Wall Street giveaway. It is not so much that I fear they won't do it again,.. but that Bush will find a way to at least try to weasel his way around the law,.... again,... The de facto partial privatization of social security, minus any congressional approval, has already been advanced. It is this sort of tactic for which the democrats must next be prepared.

[hansberrym]

8. can't have your cake and eat it to

Had the SS trust fund never been touched since 1983, it would contain over $2 trillion (plus a certain amount of interest, of course)


Interest for what? Interest is not earned on untouched money.
Either the money can sit in a pile untouched, or it can be lent out and thus earn interest.



As to the hope that such a credit union would be "properly managed", have you forgotten that the gov. has mismanaged SS and got us into this mess? If SS had been properly managed, there would be no need for this discussion.
That is why both parties are simply mum on the issue.


I do agree completely with this:
But the amount of the annual surpluses grew rapidly,.. 12 years of Reagan-Bush gleaned every last dime to cover the numerical appearance of their deficit spending (they were the fiscal conservatives, remember?)...

Once the ballooning deficits were "solved" in the '80s by the creation of the SS trust fund, there was no longer the same impetus for reducing the deficits. In fact lawmakers knew that they had to maintain enough gov. debt to cover the SS trust fund (or else lend it out to some other entity).

[Parisle]

9. Too Simplistic, Hans

---- The goddamned government didn't put surplus SS revenues into mortgages,... they built tanks with it, Ok? Those are two vastly different kinds of investments,.. and the government wasn't making any money on those tanks, eh? Mortgages,.. which is where your money goes in a passbook account,.. pay an actual positive return on the money. The government just chalks theirs off to debt to be paid later.....

----- As for proper management, the point of my comments was to suggest that management would have to proceed differently (as it would in a fund which was off limits to federal raiding. In fact, management procedures could be dictated by law)

-----And the "ballooning deficits in the 80's being "solved" by the creation of the SS trust fund,",...... well, that observation just doesn't make any sense. There is a great chapter about this in a book entitled, "Bankruptcy: 1995" by Harry Figgie, a friend of mine, and a member of Reagan's 1987 Grace Commission. Perhaps you should read it. And just for the record, there should have been a means whereby the surplus monies just went into a bank.

[kentuck]

10. That's about what they stole and gave to their wealthy friends...

I say we simply take it back. They had no right to that money. No right.

[Vidar]

11. Yes, it would.