Bill Sensei,
For the record, I would love to see people have complete control over their social security account. The government has shown it can't handle it well enough for me or anyone else, but we know that won't happen. They will never let go of that cash cow.
BUT...
<<As for social security, well what the hell did GW do to screw it up? WAKE UP, MIKE!!!!>>
I suggest you read the article below Bill and do some waking up yourself. This is only one article of many that I found, but let's not bore each other with trivial liberal press. I posted it in full so no one would have trouble finding it.
<<I gave up on SS....oh...about 27 years ago. One of my specialties is epidemiology. I saw the baby boom population bulge long ago, and knew what was coming ahead. That's why I'm saving. Sure hope you are.>>
Too bad you're stuck with it. We're all stuck with it. I'm saving too, don't worry.
<<With GW's plan, a person gets to ( gasp ) actually SAVE that money and even invest it. Even a monkey can do better with money than the federal government.>>
Only a small portion of it. As I said before, they'll never let go of it completely, not when they can continue to steal from it.
<<GW messed up social security? Oh Mike, that's a good one! >>
I didn't say he was the cause of SS's problems. Those problems were inherent with the system. He simply plays the games the rest of them have played. He has a plan, but he has enjoyed fudging the system. I'm sorry Bill, but GW won't be going straight to heaven.
<<Oh and yes, banks WILL loan students more than they can pay back. If I hadn't succeeded as well as I did and gotten a little bit of help here and there, I would have needed to declare bankruptcy big time. Instead, I took some risks, Mike. I could EASILY have failed. In fact I had negative net worth until I was in my early 40s. >>
As far as I know Bill, banks will loan you only so much money (even for school) before they shut you off. They'll give you a lifetime to pay it back it seems since they can't take the education away from you. And, declaring bankruptcy might be fine, but you can't write off an educational loan.
<<As for Drew, well it's inappropriate for me to volunteer him for anything. Right now I think he's pretty busy doing his best to succeed in a mission that he believes in. And I believe in him , and others like him who sacrifice for me. It's MY prerogative, after all. >>
My door is always open.
<<By the way, why do you keep talking about Vietnam? You remind me of other people my age who are stuck on the music of their generation. Scary...>>
First of all, I'm not your age
. Second, I don't usually harp on the subject, but when the glove fits (OJ pun). There is way too much comparison with it. I don't understand what you don't see, the biggest being the end result, which unfortunately, will be "a long time coming" (more CSN).
The funny part about this that if you are correct it will be a very satisfying "I told you so" that I'll hear from both you and Rich (Ian too probably, but nobody will understand him), but if I'm correct, then it will be with much sorrow and regret that I say it to you. Either way, it won't be a 20 year conflict, so we should know soon enough.
cya,
mike
The Unlocked Box
How Bush is plundering Social Security to close the deficit.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, Jan. 9, 2004, at 10:51 AM PT
Feeding Social Security to the defict
The International Monetary Fund, which usually frets about runaway fiscal policies in developing countries, yesterday released a report that warned of the dangers to the global economy posed by the United States' lack of spending discipline, its reliance on foreign creditors, and its failure to plan adequately for future government liabilities.
Earlier this week, even as he called for making the Bush tax cuts permanent, Treasury Secretary John Snow pooh-poohed the deficit problem and insisted the government has a plan to improve matters:
Our fiscal situation remains a matter of concern. With major expenditures to protect our nation's homeland security and fight the war on terror, coupled with a recovering economy, we still face a deficit in the $500 billion range for the current fiscal year—larger than anyone wants. But that size deficit, at roughly 4.5% of GDP (compared with a modern peak of 6% during the 80s), is not historically out of range; and it is entirely manageable, if we continue the president's strong pro-growth economic policies and sound fiscal restraint. Indeed, with adoption of the President's policies, our projections show a solid path toward cutting the deficit in half, toward a size that is below 2% of GDP, within the next five years.
The genial treasury secretary, a former deficit hawk, seems literally incapable of speaking truthfully about the deficit. (The same holds for National Economic Council Chairman Stephen Friedman.) In fact, if we adopt the president's policies—which include a host of new tax cuts and massive new spending programs—the deficit won't fall 50 percent in the next five years. It will grow substantially. And if President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress weren't already quietly using every penny of the massive and growing Social Security surplus to cover operating expenses—and planning to continue this habit—the deficits would be even larger.
Back in 1983, as part of a deal to save Social Security from impending demographic doom, Congress enacted legislation to essentially increase payroll taxes and reduce benefits. As a result, the government began to collect more Social Security payroll taxes than it paid out to beneficiaries each year. The theory was that the government would use these surpluses to pay down the national debt. That way, when baby boomers retire—and comparatively more people are collecting benefits while comparatively fewer people are working—the government would be in a better position to borrow the necessary funds to provide the promised benefits.
So much for theory. The reality? For the first 15 years, every penny of the surplus was spent, first by Republican presidents and then by a Democratic president. According to figures provided by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the surpluses were relatively insignificant for much of this period. Between 1983 and 2001 a total of $667 billion in excess Social Security payroll taxes was spent—about $35 billion per year. It was only in fiscal 1999 and 2000, when the government ran so-called on-budget surpluses, that excess Social Security funds were actually used to retire debt.
In the 2000 campaign, Vice President Al Gore said we should sequester the Social Security surpluses in a "lockbox" to prevent appropriators from spending them. Bush agreed in principle. But that commitment went out the window soon after the inauguration. In his first three budgets, Bush (who had the good fortune to take office at a time when the surpluses were growing rapidly) and Congress used $480 billion in excess Social Security payroll taxes to fund basic government operations—about $160 billion per year!
By so doing, Washington spenders have masked the size of the deficit. For Fiscal 2004—which began in October 2003—if you factor out the $164 billion Social Security surplus, the on-budget deficit will be at least $639 billion, rather close to the modern peak of 6 percent of GDP. And according to its own projections (the bottom line of Table 8 represents the Social Security surplus), the administration plans to spend an additional $990 billion in such funds between now and 2008. That year, according to the Office of Management and Budget's projections, the on-budget deficit will be about $464 billion. Only by using that year's $238 billion Social Security surplus does the administration arrive at a total, unified deficit of $226 billion. And the ultimate on-budget deficit will almost certainly be worse. OMB has proven in the past few years that its projections can't be trusted.
The accounting for Social Security surpluses has always been dishonest. But in the past few years, the Bush administration has made this shady accounting a central pillar of its fiscal strategy. The unprecedented reliance on these funds hides the failure of the administration to ensure that there is some reasonable correlation between the resources it has at its disposal and the spending commitments it makes. Bush & Co. have redesigned the tax system so that collections of the progressive taxes that are supposed to fund government operations—like individual income taxes—have plummeted. Instead, with each passing year we rely for our current needs more on the regressive payroll taxes that are supposed to fund our collective retirement.
The persistence of the administration and its credulous allies in eliding these facts is flabbergasting. Of course, for the Bush administration to give an honest accounting of the deficits, and of the role that Social Security surpluses play in keeping them down, would be to admit the fundamental bankruptcy—no pun intended—of its adventuresome fiscal experiment.
Daniel Gross (
www.danielgross.net) writes Slate's "Moneybox" column. You can e-mail him at
moneybox@slate.com.
