Posted on 02/03/2014 4:40:09 AM PST by Kaslin
The president’s annual state of the union address is another example of how dysfunctional our government in Washington has become.
Article 2, section 3 of the US Constitution says that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union….”
The president is the chief executive of our government. As chief executive, it makes sense that he report periodically about the state of affairs to the body responsible for passing laws, the Congress, so they have a sense of what needs to be done.
If handled correctly, the State of the Union should be like the annual report of a corporate chief executive to shareholders. It should convey key information so that stakeholders know what’s going on.
But that’s not what happens. This isn’t about informing stakeholders. It’s about political calculations and pitching a laundry list of proposals, invariably with wonderful benefits, and rarely any perceivable costs, designed to make the President and his party look good.
President Obama introduced in this year’s State of the Union address his proposal to create new retirement accounts for, in the words of the White House, “the millions of low and middle-income households earning up to $191,000.” What they are calling “MyRAs.”
How could enhancing retirement savings not be a good idea? And, even better, it is a free lunch. Again in the words of the White House, “the account balance will never go down in value” and will be totally secure because it will be “backed by the U.S. government.”
President Obama is creating these accounts with the greatest of ease, without even a new law from Congress, by doing what he has done better than any president in American history. Drive the U.S. government into debt.
These wonderful new retirement accounts will receive bonds from the U.S. Government. And who guarantees them?
Please, dear reader, if you are a U.S. taxpayer, look in the mirror and say “me.”
If the State of the Union was really about the president informing Congress and the nation, he would have reported the following from the recent 2013 Long-Term Budget Outlook report of the Congressional Budget Office:
“Federal debt held by the public is now about 73 percent of the economy’s annual output…higher than at any point in U.S. history, except a brief period around World War II, and it is twice the percentage at the end of 2007.”
“CBO projects,” the report continues, “that federal debt held by the public would reach 100 percent of GDP by 2038….even without accounting for the harmful effects that growing debt would have on the economy.”
Meanwhile, as President Obama uses U.S. government bonds to create magical new risk-free retirement savings accounts, there was not a word in the State of the Union of the broken state of affairs of the government’s oldest retirement plan – Social Security.
According to Social Security’s latest trustees report, the revenue shortfall, in today’s dollars, of projected requirements of Social Security to meet its long-term obligations is $9.6 trillion. Beginning in 2033, when those now in their late forties start retiring, there will be only funds “sufficient to pay 77 percent of scheduled benefits.”
If the president really wants to enhance retirement savings of low and middle income Americans, and create real savings and investment while addressing the fiscal disaster of Social Security, let these folks opt out of the Social Security black hole and use those funds to open a real retirement account.
This is what was done in Chile and it worked. The Chilean economy grew because the new retirement accounts directed investments into the real economy (as opposed to creating more government debt) and Chilean workers have achieved real returns and newly created wealth.
Wouldn’t it be novel if the president really reported on the State of the Union each year and if we solved our existing problems before creating new ones?
> How could enhancing retirement savings not be a good idea? And, even better, it is a free lunch. Again in the words of the White House, “the account balance will never go down in value” and will be totally secure because it will be “backed by the U.S. government.”
It’s not like he’s lied about anything else to us, right?.../s
giving more money to the same people that have stolen 15% of our income our entire lives would just be stupid
then again, he was ‘elected’ ... twice
Soros has really been doing his homework on how to kill a superpower. Bankrupt it, kill the family unit, and emasculate and demoralize the military. Sounds like he’s on course. Oh that and put an inept moron in charge...
GOVERNMENT: “Yeah, we are getting tired of getting your money through payroll deductions and quarterly taxes. We need BIGGER chunks of your money because we have a lot of leeches to feed.”
A conservative POTUS could make a big splash by returning the SOTU to just a written document, like it was from the time of Jefferson to that of Woodrow Wilson. It would stop the waste of a month of government time and tens of millions of dollars on that utterly nonsensical “dog and pony show”.
The conservative POTUS could do even more by removing Washington, D.C., especially the POTUS, from the news every single night. Perhaps once a month, the White House would put out a statement to the press, covering the previous month’s highlights, and that is it.
The truth is that America is sick to death of the “dope opera” of egoists in Washington, D.C. They are supposed to run the government, not just continuously brawl on “info-tainment” “news” shows.
The bottom line of a conservative POTUS doing this would be to make what statements the White House put out important again, eliminating the obsessive trivia that invades and annoys the lives of the citizenry.
I don’t really understand how these are different from IRAs. Are there minimums (de jure or de facto) for IRAs?
“A conservative POTUS could make a big splash by returning the SOTU to just a written document...”
Yes, it could be a big part of the UN-DO agenda I’d like our next (non-dem) president to enact.
Or how about this, give the state of the union directly to the public, via TV, etc. No stage craft for congress. They can all watch TV too, if they are so inclined.
I think this is a scheme to roll successful IRA accounts into the MYRA program, “to protect” investors.
Your IRA = MyRA
A true conservative POTUS would cut the federal government in half and the federal budget by one trillion dollars in four years. How?
1. Eliminate DoE, DoEd, Labor, Commerce.
2. Cut EPA, TSA, IRS, DoJ, NSA and half the people at the Pentagon.
3. Privatize USPS, Fannie and Freddie Mae.
4. Audit the Federal Reserve.
5. Cut taxes.
And on the second day,
For starters, people WITH IRA's would certainly NOT roll over into a "MyRA," as the government bon route pays practically nothing. There seems to be no comprehesible reason for switching to a MyRA if you have your money elsewhere. Even if your current IRA is poorly invested, a MyRA would probably be the last place you'd want to move it.
The MyRA to me, sounds more like an additional Social Security tax, especially if you sign up for automatic payroll deductions.
I haven't heard about the payment schedule, or any projected withdrawl restrictions on an MyRA account. I assume if you had one, the payout would be somehow prorated and paid out as an additional payment, once you reach retirement age. Whether or not you have control over the entire balance--to my knowledge--has not been mentioned.
Whether or not there are any special tax treatments is unclear. It's not clear whether the contributions are pre-tax, or whether the contributions reduce your adjusted income on which you pay taxes. Any interest (projected) paid on your MyRA balance would be tax-deferred.
I would also think that your MyRA asset would not be transferable to anyone other than a spouse, but that was not made clear. Liberals seem to detest any "wealth transfers" between generations of people, so I would think after your death, or the death of a spouse, the government keeps whatever's left.
My...My! A new scam just like the lies told the first to “volunteer” their contributions to the beginning of the Social Security scam.
Is anyone so stupid (or indoctrinated to the government way) as to fall for this scam?
In ALL CASES any wonderful government program that deals with money of any kind, will become a beast that will suck the financial blood of those fools who allowed it to be born. Best of all, any volunteer type of government plan will quickly become mandatory and the IRS will ensure you pay.
Only Obama voters are fool enough to fall for this.
The scam, if you will, is finding a way that encourages people to purchase government bills and bonds.
America is dependent on entities willing to purchase government bonds. This will become more urgent as quantitative easing dwindles down.
The Fake White Indian wants to dispense with the income cap on SS taxes, and actually INCREASE benefits.
Look at how well that polls, and then abandon all hope.
While those are indeed goals, it is beyond treating them as a punchline: they need to be seriously “timetabled”, as part of the “1st hundred days” of a new administration.
(This assumes conservatives in control of the house and senate, and a conservative POTUS.)
The very first thing is to get the branches of the government reordered, to make undoing the changes much harder. This means the POTUS working with congress to reduce the power of the “imperial presidency”.
Then it means conservative chairmen of the house and senate judiciary committees letting the judiciary know that it will not interfere with, or try to block the process of downsizing the government, which otherwise it would do. This is pretty much a threat, that if they try to, and they will, this power will be taken from them.
Then the POTUS will nominate cabinet officers whose entire purpose is to downsize their agencies. This means that when congress zeroes the budget for that agency, except for funds to shut it down, they will have to work with these cabinet officers to do so in a methodical manner.
Because a lot of federal employees have job security, before they can be fired, they must be transferred to jobs that are not protected, so they will lose this security.
The budget process will have to move full steam ahead, and congress will need to split off the condemned agencies from others that are just to be reformed. Until congress completes its agency budgets, they will likely still be egregiously wasting money from the last Obama budget.
Behind the scenes there will have to be a purge list of federal employees who were engaged in improper political actions, corrupt activities, and unconstitutional acts. And this list is going to be very long indeed, including a lot of senior military personnel.
Then among the reforms, non-police, non-military and non-intelligence agencies are going to have to be “de-paramilitarized”, stripped of their weapons and SWAT teams. A major reorganization of the 16 intelligence agencies.
Lots of laws will need to be restored as well, including the War Powers and Posse Comitatus Acts.
Vast amounts of land takings by the federal government need to be restored to the states, again without judicial interference.
Streamlining of the appeals process for state and federal death penalty cases. The recreation of the US energy and heavy industry, even if foreign treaties need to be abrogated to do so.
The list goes on and on. They’ve got their work cut out for them.
The Founding Fathers would have known what to do. They would have dragged this scoundrel out of the legislative chambers, tarred and feathered him, and run him out of town on a rail.
Above everything else, I would consider that a MyRA is highly susceptible to “rules changes” along the way. Obama’s wont and habit it to ignore previous contracts and take what he wants when he wants it, with the demonization of those from whom he’s taking it, just in case he needs some LIVs to bark for him.
HF
Instead of appointing new cabinet officials to monitor the phase out, why not just not avoid appointing anyone? Accept resignations, start transferring people and hiring freeze on all department hiring and zero budgets.
It is nowhere that easy. Federal agencies are somewhat like malignant tumors, sending tendrils out, in the form of existing contracts, regulations, pending lawsuits, funds to disperse, etc., etc. And GS personnel are protected from being dismissed by the government employee union.
As a wild guess, to shut down an agency may cost between $500 million and a billion dollars.
And if the agency does anything that congress still wants done, they must legally transfer that function to a different agency.
Add it all up, and you need someone at the helm to guide that agency to the scrap heap, and they must have the full backing of the POTUS, the congress, and no interference from the courts to do it as well.
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