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Alice Rivlin’s latest opinion piece on Social Security, “The Right Reason for Saving Social Security,” makes the case for why she and the other members of the Catfood Commission are the wrong people for the job.
First, from whom does Social Security need “saving,” other than from her and other self-proclaimed deficit hawks? Rivlin acknowledges that the program can pay all benefits in full and on time for more than a quarter of a century and after that, in the unlikely event that Congress has not then acted, it could still pay three-quarters of all scheduled benefits for the foreseeable future and beyond. Notwithstanding these facts, she argues that “The right reason for saving [sic] Social Security is to reassure all Americans.”
Does Rivlin truly believe that a package of changes worked out behind closed doors by an unrepresentative group of white male multi-millionaires, will reassure the American people? (With all due respect to Rivlin, 14 of 18 members of the Catfood Commission are white men.) Not only does the Commission lack gender, racial, age, or economic diversity, it lacks a single commissioner or even a staff member whose primary area of expertise is Social Security and retirement income, rather than the budget. She is probably the most knowledgeable member on the subject and her piece shows a failure to understand the basics.
Raising or eliminating the maximum amount on which contributions are assessed and benefits calculated is one of the most popular options around, but not only doesn’t Rivlin mention it, she apparently doesn’t even understand it. Ironically, she gets her facts wrong in the part of her piece where she is explaining how the program works. Here is what she says:
“Here is a quick refresher on how Social Security works. Workers and their employers pay Social Security taxes on their wages (up to a limit of $106,800 increased annually for inflation)…” (my emphasis.)
The limit is increased annually not by inflation but by the average increase in nationwide wages. This is a crucial distinction. In 1977, Congress explicitly increased the base to cover 90 percent of all wages nationwide and then indexed it to the increase in average wages so that Social Security would continue to cover 90 percent of all wages. That is, when you add together the wages of all the CEOs on Wall Street, sales clerks, janitors, factory workers, and everyone else, the intent is that 90 percent of all those wages are taxed for Social Security purposes and are insured against loss. The idea is that the ten percent left out – earned by about 6 percent of the work force – do not need to be insured against loss by a public program like Social Security.
But a funny thing happened to that 90 percent. The last few decades showed huge increases in the earnings of CEOs and other top earners with stagnating wages for everyone else. Consequently, when all those wages were averaged together, the wages of the highest earners increased by more than the average, and the percentage of covered wages slipped accordingly. Today, only about 84 percent of wages are under the maximum. That seemingly small slippage, from 90 percent to 84 percent, costs Social Security billions of dollars of lost revenue each year. Gradually restoring the 90 percent is not only sound policy, but would go a long way to eliminating the projected deficit.
No wonder Rivlin didn’t mention it. She apparently doesn’t understand how it works or even why it exists. Rivlin is right about one thing, though. The American people need to be reassured. The best way to do that is for Rivlin and the other members of the Catfood Commission to announce that they will keep their hands off Social Security. Since its enactment in 1935, Social Security legislation has always had the benefit of full hearings before the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee; open mark-up sessions, and opportunity for amendment. What will reassure the American people is for their elected officials to stop avoiding accountability and do their work in the open, where the American people can see what is going on.
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Thank you for this… Bill Whaley, the former publisher of Horse Fly, a (previously) alternative monthly cultural & muckraking newspaper here in Taos, once told me that Taos was the only place in the country where Social Security really made a difference. :-) That’s not true, of course, but he was alluding to the lack of jobs, etc., and since I started drawing my own Social Security checks at age 62, they HAVE made the difference between just barely getting by and utter disaster.
With millions of people affected, to even hint of messing with this system is the height of cruelty. In this one area alone, Obama has sacrificed every last bit of goodwill I had for him. He didn’t have to appoint this stupid commission—by doing so, he showed who his masters are. And as the Rivlin episode reveals, the “reassurance” B.S. is just a cover for more Wall Street thievery.
All the young ones moaning that “it won’t be here for me” have bought the propaganda. I’m so sorry that has happened, because as my case proves, Social Security is a bleeping GODSEND, and the slow death of our current financial system, along with crashing asset values, means this may be the only thing they CAN count on. It works, it’s fine, it’s saving my life.
I go on Medicare in less than a week, too. Glory hallelujah.
It is dumbfounding how such supposedly smart people are in fact so totally clueless in so many ways. And think the rest of us are just as clueless as they are.
Great post Jane! I sure can’t figure out why there are only the Rich fat Cats on this commission!!! No wonder they want to cut SS so they can get their greasy hands on the poor and middle classes only way to be sure of having enough to make it to the end without being thrown into the street. Kill the top stop on SS and collect the same percentage from all wages. We know that will keep the system running for the next 100 years or more. Also the Feds MUST pay back all the $$ that has been “Borrowed” by the government from the fund. I have read there is talk of defaulting on those debts!!!
IMO, there shouldn’t be any excepted income. If you make enough money to pay more, then you should pay more. It’s not like you’re going to need it to get by in your old age, like some of the rest of us will.
I agree! It’s far too easy for people who’ll never NEED Social Security to decide that it’s better for US if it’s cut. They want to cut SSI so they can keep or increase their own tax cuts. It’s not like it’s going to hurt them.
As you say, Ms. Jane, with all due respect to Ms. Rivlin and what she imagines as why she is doing this, she sounds for all the world like a caricature of a multimillionaire Democratic “do gooder” [for whom?] that only David Brooks could concoct.
It is from Republicans, their Democratic fellow travelers, the billionaires, and the “classmates” who still think FDR is a traitor, that Social Security needs to be protected.
Middle America wants Social Security. It wants the program upgraded, not put on the shelf but with those same tax dollars flowing to Wall Street’s “solid investments” as if they were another subsidy for the haves and the have mores.
BTW, Ms. Rivlin, expect the public shortly to send Congress a dunning letter for those loans it took from the Social Security Trust Fund to balance its books when it ran short. Your efforts have convinced the public that Congress’s IOU’s are about as trustworthy as a campaign promise.
I wonder how many people made the decision to take social security at 62. I wonder how many people altered their plans or manipulated their personal lives in order to get social security so they could survive the NWO. It is nearly impossible to find employment if you are over 55 in any economy and, as we all know, this is a shitty economy. The one percenters must be in a panic cause we are eating up the money they could be stealing. Rat bastards.
eliminate the top stop.
nice slogan.
You’re so right, Mary. I’m 60, out of work for nearly 2 yrs now, spotty temporary and project assignments in those two years.
I want to wait until my (newly adjusted) date for receiving full benefits of age 66, but just recently began to wonder if I should go ahead and apply at 62, after all. The amount of money I would get (just got my update from SSA on benefits to expect) would be barely more than my current rent, but maybe I can move to a slum and get by on it.
My fury at the folks like Alan Simpson and Alice Rivlin and whatzisname Bowles who keep pushing this false story of SS bankruptcy knows no bounds.
Hmmm. The link in the first paragraph to Rivlin’s piece seems to be broken; I get a 404 error message.
Why does Alice Rivlin hate working and middle class Americans?
http://hubpages.com/hub/Bad-Cat-Food-Worst-to-Best-Cat-Food-Ratings-and-Reviews
I wanted to offer this to everyone. Just in case enough people that can actually do something about this fiasco ‘Debt Commission’ don’t get tired of the smell of their own nether regions.
You might want to know what you are buying while you can still afford Internet service.
Sorry ’bout that, fixed.
‘Gravy Pouches’ doesn’t sound too bad, I guess.
What stuns me is how when we have a Democratic House, Senate and someone who claims to be a Democrat in the White House could we be facing an out and out war to save Social Security.
Its just insane!
Re: folks that have a lack of knowledge about how Social Security works – just take a gander at Steny Hoyer – he totally clueless. That however doesn’t stop he from wanting to yank the retirement age up to 70.
The movie “Wall Street” was not seen as a cautionary tale but rather a blueprint for the plutocracy.
Gradually restoring the 90 percent is not only sound policy, but would go a long way to eliminating the projected deficit. No wonder Rivlin didn’t mention it. She apparently doesn’t understand how it works or even why it exists.
Oh, she understands all right. With this cast of characters, never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice.
Democrats in the midterms are going to be like a duck through a jet engine.
Hey folks just think of all the money wasted straight out the exhaust pipe of your car, over the years….. Lots of liberty lost! But no-one wants to talk about that? Systemic brainwashing and abdication of logic. Cat food, cat commissions yet all that liberty wasted/lost over multiple generations would certainly have insured a standard of living and dignity for Americans in the golden years. Like reduced corporate pensions earned by wage earners the politicians will find a way to subsidize a corporation or government entity with the wage-earner’s money, under the color of law.
Maybe we should quit electing millionaire bastards (R’s or D’s) that will never have to use SS and MC as a backstop in their retirement?
Just a thought.
So how many of us feel reassured by what the cat food commission is doing?
They need to modify the cap. Perhaps, like medicare, they shouild remove it.
The other thing they should look at is the impact of 179 expensing and accelerated depreciation. This saves the affluent a lot in Social Security and Medicare taxes. For the most part, it isn’t availble to middle class folks grinding out a living.
So reassured I have the ‘Meow Mix’ jingle permanently stuck in my head.
The Dems get baited with this every ten years like clock work.
It’s a bright shiny object to keep your attention diverted while they work behind the scenes looting and pillaging every thing else that isn’t nailed down.
There are a lot of Boomers getting ready to retire and this is yet another fear inducing tactic by these rotten sonsabitches.
There are a lot of boomers period. They vote too.
I’ve always thought about wet cat food. Much smellier!
It is always the right thing to do to take the money at 62 if you are living on the edge. Figure out the amount you will get in the fours years if you start at 62. Then figure out if you live to be, say, 80 how much you will have “lost” by doing this.
Money has become more valuable. Just having some is a bright spot in this economy.
Ron and I got divorced so I could claim widow’s benefits from my first marriage. If I had not done this we would living on an income of $985.
We did our own divorce. As I stood in line at the courthouse (went about 15 times)I met many people getting divorced for financial reasons. Some were there for the benefits of social security. Some were there to indemnify themselves against their partners medical bills. One couple I met was getting divorced so the woman’s son from a previous marriage could qualify for more student loans for college.
Gradually, like yesterday please.
Having the government default on it’s loans and at the same time stab it’s workers in the back is not very reassuring to me.
Guess the bottom line is anyone not rich is no longer considered an “American.”
The problem for the “I’ve got mine; screw you, Jack!” crowd, is that the SS program is stable and solvent.
The “we need to open the lockbox for Wall Street because in 25 years it might be less solid.” argument, as Jane observes so accurately, is arrant horseshit.
This nonsense gets pimped with every conservative “surge”. The floating crap game that is Wall Street looks at all that money in the SS cupboard and starts breathing heavy and getting glassy-eyed.
Put it like this; the “fix” that was attempted when Bush was still in, would have left SS to the tender mercies of people like AIG and Goldman Sachs. And we all know what happened, and is STILL happening, to the wonderful “marketplace”.
I am so pissed that we missed out on the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of THAT. Who should we blame? :o)
It does not take much effort to look up the tax rates for the 20th century. For most of the 20th century the top tax rates were over 70% and as high as 94%. During those years, the people new that we were the greatest nation on Earth where people could get good paying jobs that you could expect to stay and retire from those jobs.
Today, the rich have cheated on the program and have twisted the US into a fascist nation that caters only to the rich.
http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm
Hmm. Brookings, the same tank that hatched the idea of annuitizing 401(k)s for Federal fun and profit. This is supposed to be a good platform for reassuring us that, even though Rivlin doesn’t actually understand Social Security, she wants to “save” it because it will make Americans feel a smidgen better about the future. Of course save could mean a boat load of things when it comes from the designated speaker for the cat food commission. My wife found a dead cicada that she put on her car dash yesterday. Saving something is relative to the goals you have.
Saving something for it’s reassurance value contrary-wise does not in fact reassure anyone that understands this is not about feeling good simply about keeping the retired from going extinct before their time.
Thanks so much Jane for bringing this subject to the forefront again, it is so critical!
I join some of the other commenters here in defining in personal terms how much the SS benefits represent the difference between squeaking by or simply not making it from day to day. Without these benefits for a myriad of people that are not only elderly, but unemployed, incapacitated by physical/medical handicaps, and such, they would be in deep trouble, or already are.
My wife and I are not at full retirement age yet, but after working consistently for 40+ some years and paying in to the SS, we need to draw upon SS to make ends meet. We have been unemployed for the last 2 years because although we are professionals that are at the top of our respective careers, no one will even talk to us about employment if you fall in our age bracket.
When you are unemployed, with no healthcare, diminishing retirement savings, and not ‘fat cats’ living large, SS is extremely important. The fact that these cretins wish to ROB us of these benefits to enrich their insatiable hunger for every god damn penny of OUR money, is the unforgivable depth of them being immoral, degenerate, and inhumane. But when you ‘got yours’ in spades, I guess that means absolutely nothing to the MOTU!
“Democrats in the mid-terms are going to be like a duck through a jet engine.”
I like that. :o) Hope you don’t mind, Jake, it’s going up at Digby’s, for her nearly incessant polishing of Obama’s glutes.
And, it works for me. I think this “centrist” jellyfish herd is now more valuable to progressives as a political sacrifice than as a government.
And, I don’t think the republicans are going to have any more “rescueing” Social Security than are the democrats. They’ve both got it backwards; with so many people worried about their deteriorating economic state, the seniors will stop it. That Obama is even flirting around with this nonsense is going to hurt he and the dems in 12 weeks.
One thing that I don’t understand, is how increasing the % of U.S. wages that are insured by SS works to help the program. Wouldn’t such an increase be basically revenue neutral, as increased income is offset by increased benefits paid on the newly insured income?
Shorter:
Corporate amurka has basically taken over the U.S. Government at the same time they screwed the pooch with their stupid greed. Now they want to use SS to cover their ass for another run at it.
I don’t believe they can do it.
Pete Petersen does. He must collect it, btw, as there’s no “means test” that would preclude his (or Warren Buffett’s) receiving it owing to his high income. There’s another idea: no SS payments to those with gross (not AGI) retirement age incomes exceeding $100,000. That would cost Mr. Petersen what, one lunch at the Savoy with a few friends?
To answer your question, just imagine the reverse; decrease the % wages insured.
If we allow the citizens from the countries to the south of us to come here and work wouldn’t their contributions help? We have an aging population. We need more people. And as global warming messes with their ability to grow food they are coming anyway.
People Like Van Jones, Barney Frank, think progressives should keep supporting Obama. WHY? please tell us WHY?
Obama could have picked anyone to be on the cat food commission or “the we hate social security committee” and he picked the most anti group of social security people he could find!
I hope one day soon progressives and other americans that love the USA will wake up in realize, that OBAMA is a TROJAN HORSE!
Obama is not being force to do anything. Obama is intentionally wrecking the democratic party and attacking progressives every chance he gets.
Progressives please wake up!
the only issue in the USA the last two years has been JOBS! Obama ignored the main issue in the USA Jobs to pursue issues his masters told him to pursue.
Obama always wanted the individual mandate without a Public Option. (this was always the plan. Did anyone in the WHite House ever say they wanted the Public Option? No! but when it came to attacking UNIONS the White House had no problem)
Obama pick a group of anti social security people who are basically anti USA to destroy social security.
Obama and the white house are covering up for BP!!! BP is killing the GULF of Mexico and the people who live on the Gulf, and Obama and the white house are not saying anything or doing anything to stop them. (look at anderson cooper on CNN, last night we all learned how eager the coast guard is to help BP cover up their diaster, it is almost like Obama thinks Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, are not part of the USA)
Everyday people come on here and say I am not voting democrat, this is what the Trojan Horse Obama and his creators want to happen! Obama only mission was to stop and halt the progressive movement of 2008. Poll after Poll now show americans are more progressive than conservative these days. (If Obama wanted to be the most popular USA president ever he could have been, all he had to do was follow the path created by FDR, instead Obama wants to be worse than Hoover)
Obama main supporters and protectors is the so call liberal media own by rich republicans that hate progressives. Al Franken said it best, the USA has better kill the idea of corporate media, because a nation that has a corporate led media is not really a nation. can you say slavery! (the main stream corporate media loves to cover the wacky, insane tea party, they never mentioned netroot nation much last week) can we all call the Tea Party what it is a circus created by rich people, everyday the rich must get a huge laugh at the tea party, what has OBAMA done that makes one believe he is a socialist?)
Another question all americans are going to have to ask: Is a Corporation that has it’s head quarters located in NEW YORK CITY and all their factories located in CHINA an United States Corporation? the answer is NO
The americans citizens are going to have to abandon the idea of FREE TRADE, GLOBALISM, because at the present time no other nation on the face of the Earth believes in such crazy talk. Does anyone think the Chinese, Japnese, Germans, going to let their MFG bases be wipe out by another nation? NO
History tells us all, no super power has every had a third world economy!
I’m obviously missing something very basic, as I would imagine that would also generally be revenue neutral (i guess operating expenses would increase as a percentage of revenue). Wouldn’t the decrease in income be offset by a decrease in paid benefits?
Karl Denninger said SS will stop directly the Chinese quit buying our bonds.
Rather a compelling argument considering our interest payments exceed the military budget.
History tells us only that we fail to learn from it. This is a “new” economy by the way; it’s reported as if it were still nationally based, but it is now class based, a virtual economy assembled not from territory, but like corporations, from the bits and pieces that contribute to it that are scattered round the globe: a hedge fund in NY, a portfolio in the Isle of Man, property in London and Tokyo, a bank in Zurich, businesses in Frankfurt, Shanghai and Beijing.
The “economy” that matters to Ms. Rivlin, Mr. Petersen, the Waltons is that economy, not the traditional national one. To the politically different Buffetts and Gateses, whose resources are as rich, it still matters how well America does. But they are the odd ones out among their peers, the Roosevelts among the Rockefellers and the Bushes.
That suggests that domestic American politics are likely to get hotter along with the globe’s.
By all means, spread it far and wide among the Obamabots. The real fun won’t start until Obama starts his 2012 “I ran as a progressive but ruled as a fascist” campaign.
I’m a big fan of your posts btw. We are on the same wavelength.
Your answering the very question you asked.
Since the effective rate has shrunk from the 90% to the 84% as Jane has pointed out, benefits do not equal income in 2037, yet still pay at 75% of benefits.
Were the caps raised back to a 90% effective rate, the benefits paid out would be covered for X period of years (probably many many years) in the future BEYOND 2037.
The short answer is: no.
If you took the cap off, a person paying on $1,068,000 would not get 10 times the benefit of a person paying on $106,800.
The tax is regressive, but the payments are progressive.
One other thing…
Isn’t part of the plan for OBAMA’S CATFOOD COMMISSION to say that senior’s will be exempt from any cuts to SS, the cuts will come from those younger, who have already been propagandized that “Social Security won’t be there for you”?
BTW this is the mission of the cat food commission as per Obama’s executive order:
There is a lot that is really squirrely and contradictory in that mission statement, but note that it targets specifically “entitlements”: Social Security and Medicare. And look at the use of the word “meaningfully” as in big, or, given the makeup of this commission, big cuts. Then too there is the “projected”. Whose projections? Pete Peterson’s? We all understand that such projection are largely meaningless beyond about one to two years, and sometimes a lot less. But this is the formulation they are using.
Note to the convoluted structure: “gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government”. Obama didn’t just call this the “deficit” for a very real reason. Social Security funds are not part of the regular budget. They are “off-budget”. If you look at a breakdown of government budget numbers, there is always one column for “off-budget”. This is almost entirely Social Security money, the surpluses. And it has been used to reduce the size of the overall government deficits for decades. Total deficit – Social Security surpluses = “off-budget deficit. It is this last which is always reported as “the Deficit”. But when the situation reverses and the government needs to start paying back what it borrowed or stole from Social Security, the off-budget deficit will become larger that the “total” or on-budget deficit. You see up to this point Social Security was taken as a revenue stream, but it wasn’t. It was debt. But now that the time for repaying is approaching, Obama wants to redefine this as an expenditure. Well, it is, but this masks the nature of the expenditure. So is paying interest on the national debt, but here there is a distinction being made. Repayment of Social Security surpluses is being treated like expenditures to pay for tanks or bureaucrats’ salaries, items which can modified by not buying as many tanks or getting rid of employees. What is not being treated like is paying off Treasuries. What Obama is saying is that not all debt is equal. Some he will treat as sacrosanct and some not so much. Sorry for my own convoluted explanation. But this is why I think Obama avoided the use of the word “deficit” in what should have been its natural context and why he substituted “expenditures” in its place.
Yeah, I saw something that gave an indication that it wouldn’t affect anyone over a certain age at the time of any change but I don’t remember what the age was. There prolly would be a revolt if folks in their 60s were all of a sudden faced with either no or greatly reduced SS benefits.
I agree with your post about this new economy.
More and more americans are starting to understand, the fact that strong nations make and produce products for the world to buy.
The RUSSIANS and the Chinese are laughing their heads off, at the USA. (the movie SALT made an excellent point, maybe the RUSSIANS have planted people all across the USA GOVT and Industry that have one mission, kill the USA, because the USA is being destroyed from within)
Could a phony news network like FOX existed 40 years ago? No
Could a company like the current GM, that has it’s head quarters in the USA and few to no factories in the USA call itself a USA company 40 years ago? No
Could a commission designed to kill social security avoid a direct attack from real news people like Walter Cronkite 40 years ago? No
Great post. Why are so many supposedly smart people so dumb. What would the world do without a few “libruls” around to keep the smart people smart. Appears we don’t need to do much of anything except maybe to raise the cap – -er to reassure the American people.
As I see it, it is not a case of rivlin not understanding what she was talking about, but a case of deliberately misleading people. They are not out of touch with what is happening, and will happen to the people affected, they don’t care. All they want is to get this money in their hands. How much they have to lie is not a problem because it is for the “greater good of the nation,” i.e. the elites. obamarahma is killing the middle class deliberately, but, after all, fascism is another name for corporatism. I just have to laugh at all of the “conservatives” that call him a socialist. I just can’t stomach the “progressives” that tout the wonderful job that he has done.
You know, I’m starting to think there is something to that. The NYTM article “Democrat in Chief?” where Rahm, probably, bragged about Obama being the worst fund raiser for his party in a long time….along with everything else we have seen…..I don’t think the White House gives a rat’s ass if the Dems get swept from power in Congress. No more kabuki to get the bills they want on his desk. Unfortunately, I can’t excuse the Congressional Dems because they went down as easy as Rahm’s mother. They needed to break with the president when they realized his agenda, and they did nothing.
Where we’re going to have to get Obama (politically) is when he runs for re-election. Hold him to 4 years, that will put a hurting on those jackholes.
I agree. Take the caps off FICA. Exempt no income form it, and means test the high end.
Benefits are capped as is the amount of income subject to the tax. If the statute changes the top limit, then it may or may not increase the cap for payments. If it does, likely the top income earners get less than a proportionate share of the increase. Right now, the first x dollars are replaced at a fixed rate, the next y dollars at a lower fixed rate, and the balance up to a limit by a lower fixed rate.
Thank you, that answers my question.
“…interest payments exceed the military budget.”
I believe this statement is false.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
Interest payments have never exceeded a half trillion dollars in 1 fiscal year.
China and Japan hold similar amounts of US debt:
http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt
They’re so totally clueless because, unlike the rest of us, they don’t have to worry about whether they’ll be able to afford to retire.
I completely agree. No wages should be exempt from SSI.
We progressives only listen to Obama words we did not look at his friends. (Grand Ma said it best birds of the same feather flock together)
Obama best friends are Joe Lieberman, Rahm Emmanuel, these are not people who are fans of progressives.
Obama picks a group of anti social security people, to develop a plan to save social security. (how do you think this story is going to end)
Obama appoints and puts an insurance executive over the Bob Dole Health Care Plan he got the phony or very dumb Dems in congress to pass. (Obama did not help Dawn Johnsen, and he will probably eventually kill the Elizabeth Warren nomination, remember Obama can appoint Elizabeth Warren today, he does not need congress to do this)
Obama pick Tim “the crook” Geithner and Larry “the dumb” Summers to fix the economy they broke.
Obama action have been very clear, Obama only mission is to destroy real democrats and help the phony ones deceive the Democratic base.
Obama told us all something we did not pay much attention, why is Obama reading about Lincoln knowing the USA is heading into a great depression, Obama should have at least pick up a book written by FDR.
Obama also said he loved Reagan.
Thanks for the coverage of yet-another Obamarahma outrage (someone here said that their view of O had fallen to “loathe” after the Shirley Sharrod fiasco, what comes after loathe?). Few other sites seem to be covering it in any depth, especially not the millionaires at HP. The only place I saw a clearheaded analysis of the consequences of the abomination the “deficit commission” was on the Christian Science Monitor, of all places.
No “earnings” (where are the euphemisms, when we have need of them?) should be exempted from SS, or taxed at a lower rate, (at least about a certain portion of total “income”, however hidden, obscured or off-shored).
Also, since corporations are now “people”, what is the “price” of “person-hood” for the fictitious? Why do some corporations pay no taxes at all nor contribute to the general welfare?
DW
Current 6 month interest payment on National Debt = $355 billions … $710 billion for year.
Dept of Defense Budget $653 billions.
When interest payments exceed defense budget, society is screwed.
Obama and Rivlin: “We must destroy the village to save it”.
No thanks.
mary – sorry I missed your reply – had to leave the keyboard for awhile right after posting. Skimmed the Rivlin article in the meantime (I see the link’s been fixed; thx, JH).
I remember when you got divorced and why; didn’t realize so many folks were finding themselves in the same boat.
Well, I wasn’t fooled by Obama, ever. Though I teared up during his election night speech in front of all those people in Chicago (shaddup. It was dusty in my family room). I hoped he would govern to 35% of what he promised. I certainly thought we would see movement towards a “green economy”, and significant investment in high speed trains, etc., real movement on reducing dirty energy, etc. etc. etc. Of course, as we all found out, his big message “Change” was really preceded by an invisible “Nothing Will”.
I supported Edwards, and gave a lot of money. My initial read on Obama, just a quick judgement, was that he was an arrogant phony. I can remember the first mailing I got from Obama was a whole lot of the use of “change” without any specifics about what that change actually entailed. I think it mostly meant that you are electing him. That is what change stood for for Obama. I didn’t buy it and sent nothing.
The fiscal year starts October 1. The $355 billion in interest is for 9 months of the fiscal year, not 6 months.
Jake, could be, but if they start “investing” SS, it’ll be Katy-bar-the-door. At that point, it will be nothing but a prop to cover Wall Street’s ass.
You’re absolutely right. I should have written “earnings,” rather than wages, since so many “earnings” are actually “un”earned.
That whole corporations acting as persons thing just makes me want to throw up.
Thanks, bakatcha, dude. :o)
You know, when the repubs tried to get their hands on SS, the response was outraged enough that the idea was killed…for the umpteenth time.
Now that Obama’s trying to help them do it, or, to help them start carving it up, I just refuse to believe that the people basically living on it (that would be me. :o) ) and the people who are GOING to be living on it, will buy this snakeoil-and-bullshit “medicine”.
If I were a democrat running in the mid-terms, I’d take on Obama just like the repubs, in fact, I’d lump them together and then I’d put as much distance between myself and Mr. Centrist as I could.
Spot on, Karen, about the “corporations are people” thing. It was a knee to the groin for economic democracy. :o(
Once again, I must write, that had he been 100% white, Obama probably would have run as a Republican, but as we know that would not have been allowed in today’s “Republican” party.
That’s an important point that Mr. Obama hopes is lost in the bureaucratese. This is his mission, his priority, his choice about the future of the middle class and the wealth of the wealthy.
This is not about setting up a firebreak to stop the Repubs from doing more harm to the most successful government program in a hundred years, nor is it about filling gaps or improving it; this is giving opponents of Social Security and other safety net programs the legislative and regulatory keys to do their damndest. They will, at Obama’s invitation.
I still do not understand how these meetings can be legally closed and why there has been no legal challenge to that. Could someone please address this? Or maybe someone has and I’ve missed it but I’ve searched this site and all over the Internets and all I found was another commenter on this site asking the same thing.
I’ve looked at the Federal Advisory Committee Act and I can find no exemption or reason why the so-called fiscal responsibility commission should be allowed to close its doors to the public.
I’ve also looked at the schedule of meetings on the Commission’s own website and I find no mention of closed door meetings. How is this possible? These closed door meetings seem entirely illegal.
Here is Judicial Watch’s challenge to the secret meetings of Cheney’s energy task force and here is the abstract of the Association of American Physicians’ challenge of Hillary Clinton’s closed health care task force meetings. Neither of these failed challenges (stupid decisions anyway) seem to apply.
I am 53 years old and have always supported the gradual increase of the age eligibility for collecting SS benes. I am currently indexed for benefits at 66 yrs. and 6 months and think that should be raised to at least 70 and anyone younger than 40 the age should be 75. Shared pain for all the masses !! — Here a copy of a letter I sent to my congressman back in 2008 about the bailouts at the time and what we as citizens should be prepared to sacrifice for the greater good (btw, have never made more than $55,000 a year and was laid off in Nov. 2008 and was back to work in Feb. 2009).
September 30, 2008
Congressman John E. Peterson
123 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Re: Bailout Legislation
Dear Congressman Peterson,
I am a lifelong Republican and have always supported your votes in Congress but was very much distressed when I saw that you had voted “Yes” in the recent bailout legislation. I, along with a majority of Americans disagree with this reckless and irresponsible vote.
I ask that, when this type of legislation comes up for a vote again, that you vote “NO” — to any type of bailout. The actions of Wall Street firms must be allowed to play out, no matter what the consequences may be.
I am a 51 years old and work as a Project Engineer for a central PA based Heavy Highway construction firm. There have been recent rumblings at work that there be might be cause for layoffs within the office ranks if the economy does not turn around. If that comes to pass and I am laid off, I accept that as my responsibility as a dutiful citizen.
To vote for any bailout is tacit approval that it is okay to fail — “the government will take care of us weak-minded citizens”. That is what it seems like as we wander through this mess.
• If you vote “Yes” on any type of bailout legislation you will not ever again have my support or more importantly, my vote. I have spoken to many of my friends and they are of this same attitude.
Please vote “NO” on any further type of bailout legislation.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
SS was never meant to be what it has morphed into in today’s world — stop the madness and get the government out of the business of “personal responsibility” , ie; “the nanny state”
You might have a point if things like guaranteed pension plans were still being used or if the banksters hadn’t managed to destroy the value of so many 401ks and IRAs.
But why do you want to see the Government default on the Treasury Bonds (those little pieces of paper in a filing cabinet somewhere)? Do you think the government should start making a habit of defaulting on moneys lent to it? If so, where does it stop? Savings Bonds? Payments to businesses? Payments to other countries?
People have been paying into Social Security at a higher rate than needed for more than 25 years in order to build up a surplus to cover the Boomer generation. I’m sorry for you that you’ve bought into the kool-aide that Social Security is the problem rather than the looting of Social Security to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
It’s OUR FICA CONTRIBUTIONS we have all made since we started working.
Fuck sacrificing that to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
You know what, at this point, I’d rather see “privatize” than raising the retirement age to 70 ( ~ = 20% benefit cut). The market sucks, and will continue to, but I’d take my chances with that rather than see 1/5 just go bye bye.
That’s how dire things look.
People forced to work into their late 60s will be dropping like flies. That may be the whole idea, make people drop from work so that the MOTU can get their hands on the SS trust money for more stock jobbing. Requiring people to work past the age of 60 even is something we see in Third World countries (or, I should say, other Third World countries). My own great grandfather was already in his forties when SS started and so received very little benefits when old enough to draw it. When he was in his sixties, after living in abject poverty for the twenty-five years after the coal mine in my hometown closed, he found out that if he worked a few months in a nearby town’s mine he would qualify for a little pension. Two months of that was enough to give him a fatal heart attack, he died 13 years before I was born. That is essentially the fate you are consigning millions of people to suffer.
A decent, humane society with any resources at all (e.g. Europe, Japan, Canada) does not force people to work into their sixties and certainly not until 70.
How decent of this old elitist hag to advocate “saving” Social Security just to “assure” us. Jane’s right, save it from whom?
I’m sick of amoral elites of both political stripes making money and business the determinant of how morally decent this country will or will not be.
And I’m sick of their treating me like a “consumer” to be fed at the corporate cow’s teat, rather than a citizen with the right and responsibility to tell them to turn the cow out or send it to the slaughterhouse when it becomes bloated and fills the barn with too much bullshit.
Alice, spare us your misdirected sympathy. If you’re so interested in solving the deficit, figure out who sucked the country dry the past 10 years – legally or illegally – and find a way to make them give it back or pay the equivalent from future earnings.
I don’t think they care if the people “buy it” or not. They are going to ram it through after the midterms. It’s not like Obama and the other corporatist criminals are going to be studying the polling numbers on this.
As Johnny Caspar said in “Miller’s Crossing”….
Listen, I ain’t
askin’ you for permission.
I’m tellin’ you as a courtesy.
I need to do this thing,
so it’s gonna get done.
Most people are not relying on Soc Sec to support them into old age. Some people continue working for many years past 65 quite successfully, but some cannot. Citizens who must rely on manual labor to support themselves often cannot keep working indefinitely because their bodies give out. These are the very people who need Soc Sec the most, but the highest rate (based on what THEY contributed) will be denied.
Nice to sit in an ivory tower of white-collared entitlement. Guess if you got yours, then everyone else can get stuffed… all in the name of Rush telling you about the nanny state (which is inaccurate rightwing propoganda not based much on fact).
Setting an arbitrary age of 70 for the younger generation for retirement just because you think that makes sense flies in the face of reality and actuarial tables.
Why are citizens requiring a “nanny state” when collecting money that THEY contributed? Why are citizens supposed to wait longer and longer for money that THEY saved?? Why are you so interested in supporting super wealthy people who don’t need help??
There may be some need at some point to make improvements to Soc Sec to ensure it’s overall health and well-being. Raising the income deduction cap would be step number one. It’s incredibly regressive right now, but I never see the wealthy suggesting this. Instead, less wealthy citizens are just supposed to “suck it up” and accept less than what they contributed all in the name of the wealthy calling it an “entitlement.” It’s not an entitlement; it’s a savings account that we paid into. I want my money. If you want to give yours to obscenely wealthy people: be my guest, but do it with your own moeny, not mine.
I agree with much of what you say, but what do you mean we, Kemosabi? There are quite a few million people for whom SS is the only income, and many for whom it pays for daily necessities like food and rent. It is indispensable for keeping people off the streets and off a more well-to-do neighbor’s couch.
“Suck it up” is not a phrase any Democrat should use, except to a formerly outsourced defense or intelligence contractor who has to find something to do but live off endless war. Even then, they wouldn’t be telling it to someone for whom “suck it up” means a two dollar bus ride to Walmart to be a greeter at 70, or to meet and greet other seventy-year olds looking for the $1.99 lunch special at Costco while they wait for their government-program paid meds at the pharmacy.
golfingary56 proves the point that great nation are always destroyed from within.
no nation on the planet earth is going to attack the USA with war ships, air planes, tanks, missles, etc.
to destroy a nation like the USA the enemy would need to dumb down their population to level of moron. (fox news, rush limbaugh, sarah palin do this task daily)
we progressive must understand that the elites who run this nation want to make us all golfingary56. (see in golfingary world the rich got rich via hard work, and they stay rich by hard work)in the real world the rich rob and steal from the govt, and rob tax payers daily.
see old golfingary56 thinks that washington dc owns wall street, well he is completely wrong wall street nows owns washington dc.
golfingary thinks he is a strong minded person? because he thinks it is the year 1950. in 1950 when GM done well the USA done well.
golfingary56 also thinks that if GM and other so call american companies want to have their head quarters in New York City and their factories in China and India that this is good for the USA. (golfingary56 kids are learning MANDARIN, we all hope, because their dad is going to make them slaves of the CHinese.
golfingary56 letter is not really logical, this guy works for a highway construction firm? I think the govt funds most highway projects, thus he makes a living off the american tax payer.
personal responsibility is a new code word the elites have develop to control their ignorant masses. The rich have the govt to bail them out, the rest of us get personal responsibility.
golfingary56 see us progressive know that the people who work in these corporation look just like you and me, and they are not chosen ones, that are going to save anyone or anything, a matter of fact they are probably the ones that will kill us all
golfingary56 probably thinks BP is doing a wonderful job “Killing” the Gulf of Mexico and the americans who live there, because you can’t love corporations and govt, you have to hate one and love the other in golfingary56 world.
Don’t be dumbfounded. They’re just acting according to a script, that’s all. They don’t care that they don’t know anything about Social Security. It doesn’t affect them. They care about their private investments.
Well said Earl!
and I also agree with much of what onitgoes declared…
truth be told, there are a lot of folks just makin it with their SS funds and they also did not expect that after working all their lives they would have to depend on SS…but along the way, the insidious money vampires were successful in sucking dry so many people’s nest eggs that those folks had scrimped and SACRIFICED for so they could at least have a chance in their old age!
This country’s populace seems to have really short memories on the many schemes and underhanded robbery that took place along the way with pensions and savings and etc, that impacted so many trusting citizens over the years.
We need to stop with the ‘your responsibility’ man up dogma and point the fingers at the immoral, Robber Barons who have committed the REAL atrocities that they continue to jam down our throats.
and golfingary…I implore you to try an old sage quote:
“Do not judge a person, until you have walked a mile in their shoes!”
“Those who believe that slowing federal spending growth is necessary to curb future deficits, but want to exempt programs for the aged, need to say why, for example, it is more important to continue increasing benefits for upper-income retirees than to nourish low-income children.”
So in the insulated world of the “Cat Food” Commission the only options being discussed for addressing the deficit are; cutting Social Security benefits or cutting subsidies for infant formula and food stamps for pregnant woman and children?
The millionaires and billionaires in the political class and media elite can rest easy … their Commission is hard at work.
Great comment, thank you.
Thank you Teddy, for all that you do!
By the way, I wish you and your partner all the very best in your anticipated move to Oregon. Be well and prosper…
“14 of 18 members of the Catfood Commission are white men”
So?
Is a terrible idea easier to swallow if half the people suggesting it are women?
Well, their skills are so much in demand right up until their death, how could they possibly retire and deprive society of the benefit of their considerable expertise???
Jim Clyburn also made the excellent point, as did Maureen Dowd, that there aren’t enough African-American people in the White House, people with a real understanding of being descended from slaves and having grandparents who came up in the South of America under Jim Crow. Obama was, as we know, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia. Valerie Jarrett, ModO told me, was brought up in Iran.
So there isn’t anyone near him who might recognize the name Sherrod, for instance, when it crossed the White House radar (if it did, and I think it did). He’s ill-served by the Hedge Fund Executive Rahm Emanuel and Montanan Jim Messina. He needs more Southern black people in the West Wing.
Hard to believe that’s the case for the first black President of the United States of America, but there you are.
Fine with me – I especially like the part about not electing bastards to the House or Senate.
No, of course not. So let’s have the commission that will determine government policies toward family planning staffed by Southern European, celibate, white, male members of Opus Dei. Let’s have the commission on aging staffed only by genetically perfect, 18-24 year-olds from families of fortune. And let’s not object when the president personally appoints to a commission reviewing Social Security primarily conservative male millionaires whose principal interest in devoting time to that appointment is in not paying taxes to support a program they will never need, and to channel a trillion tax dollars into Wall Street’s warm, welcoming, and waiting hands. Shall we?
Or we could appoint to a commission credible representatives of groups directly affected by its work. The sort of thing governments round the world have been doing for generations. That might include representatives of banks, insurers and health care providers, academics and government bureaucrats. It would not be overwhelmed by conservative millionaire men. But it would have significant representation from people who actually need the government services the commission claims its aim is to improve, which would be the elderly and those who provide services to them.
Like you, mary and TaosJohn, I’m on social security.
Setting aside the problems that we, here, now, face, what I never see explained by these Cat Food Commission criminals is how, exactly, folks in the future are supposed to save for their “retirement.”
**put money in an IRA??? And invest it where? In stocks? In Treasuries? Ask any of us who used to have an IRA or 401(k) that we though was going to supplement our social security income how much we’ve got left after the 2008 melt-down.
**borrow against our house, or at least enjoy living in it because we’ve paid off the mortgage? Again, ask those of us who own a house whose value has cratered and who struggle to keep up with property taxes.
**rely on a pension from our employer? Insert maniacal laugh here.
**buy gold from Glenn Beck?
In short, there’s NO reliable way workers can save for retirement. We need what social security can provide for us.
Great catch, Jane. Alice Rivlin has been around DC for a very long time, and she is one of the people most responsible for the Democratic Party’s embrace of neo-liberal economics. She is a nice, convivial, and dignified lady; but her career has been deadly for the the interests of working people.
I think it’s outrageous that she’s one of the Democrats on the Catfood Commission. She may not be a white male, but she’s just as deficit hawkish as Alan Simpson or Erskine Bowles or any of the white male members, in my view.