Posted on 01/15/2015 5:20:35 AM PST by Kaslin
My first memory of hearing about the need to revise Social Security dates back to the 1970s. Guarded fiercely by senior citizens, it is often thought of as sacrosanct, as are Medicare and Medicaid. Politicians unable to articulate the real challenges of Social Security, or ineffective at describing its future demise, have battled and come away scarred, but failed to achieve their goal long term.
Ah, but as Scarlett O'Hara said, "Tomorrow is another day," and, well, tomorrow is now.
And it comes in the form of Rep. Tom Price. Slight of build, with frameless glasses and what appears to be a mild demeanor, the new chairman of the House Budget Committee may not initially look like much of a threat. But looks can be deceiving, and it would not be wise to underestimate the Republican from Georgia.
The prestigious and important post he now occupies was most recently held by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who has moved on to chair the House Ways and Means Committee. Together, these committees shepherd through the taxation (revenue) and spending bills of the House of Representatives.
Government spending and taxes -- aren't they controlled by the president?
Well, no. The president gets to submit his budget wish list to the legislative branch (House and Senate), but the U.S. Constitution mandates that all bills that raise money through taxes and borrowing and then spend that money must originate in the House of Representatives. This is by design. House members are elected every two years. Senators, with the president, are elected every four years. Therefore, the will of the House members should most closely reflect the will of the people. The bills begin in the House, and then move to the Senate and finally make their way to the president's desk.
On the Senate side, the budget process is being led by Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, and Thad Cochran, R-Miss., the chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
The first shot over the bow this Congressional session was the passage of a House rule. While it may sound boring and mundane -- it set the stage for high drama. Any estimate of major legislation "requires the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation, to the extent practicable, to incorporate the macroeconomic effects of 'major legislation' into the official cost estimates used for enforcing the budget resolution and the other rules of the House," according to the House Budget Committee website.
This means that any legislation that is expected to increase economic growth will be reflected in the forward-looking analysis.
Having secured the passage of this important but little noticed step, Price laid out the Budget Committee Agenda earlier this week: "(W)e're on an absolutely unsustainable path," he said. "Revenue isn't the problem. ... The problem is spending."
Annual government spending is $3.6 trillion. More than 70 percent of that sum goes to entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) and debt interest. It's virtually impossible to make real changes by focusing solely on the 27 percent of discretionary spending that remains.
Price outlined three ways to address the issue: "You can raise taxes ... decrease spending ... and/or you can grow the economy." According to Price, his focus will be on the third option, with the budget committee "laying out the vision for how we would grow our economy in a very, very positive way, expand success for -- for the American people."
While discretionary spending will not be the focus, Price specifically put the three large entitlement programs on the table, noting that the goal is "to save and strengthen and secure Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security," with the implicit understanding that this means the framework of the programs will have to change because, as they currently stand, they are "going broke."
So what are the options? "Whether it's means testing, whether it's increasing the age of eligibility. The kind of choices -- whether it's providing much greater choices for individuals to voluntarily select the kind of manner in which they believe they ought to be able to invest their working dollars as they go through their lifetime. All those things ought to be on the table and discussed," Price said.
In the Senate, Sessions is supporting a grow-the-economy model, noting on the committee website that, "We need to grow the economy, not the government."
While opponents of such change will call for backing away from this hard work, it is work that needs to be done.
With Price and Ryan leading the House Ways and Means and the Budget Committees, and Cochran and Sessions at the helm of the Senate committees, Republicans have a real chance of placing a forward-looking, growth-focused, fiscally responsible bill on the president's desk.
Of course it is as it’s really worked well in the last couple of elections.
Oh perhaps they can talk about lowering taxes again, I mean it really gets the people out to vote.
SARC
Social issues will never be mentioned and it will be the usual same boring crap as usual with this GOP. Don’t offend muslims, don’t offend illegals and try to be to the left of center
Growing the economy by the feds is best done by removing roadblocks and restrictions. I pray they don’t try to “help” by subsidy and selecting which industry should gain over another.
Horsecarp
“Growing the economy” with amnesty for low end laborers to cheapen wages there and visas for foreign high tech workers to cheapen the wages at the higher end.
The Uniparty has gotten good at claiming to bring improvement to the economy when its all a mirage except for the favored elites like health care-pharmaceuticals, financial institutions etc.
We have the best Republicans and Democrats that money can buy.
DISMANTLING the BIG GOVERNMENT leviathan ISN’T the focus as the republicans take leadership?
“Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.”
“Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.”
“It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution — some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.”
“Socialism Is Legal Plunder”
“The Results of Legal Plunder”
“It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.”
/Bastiat
BIG GOVERNMENT IS CRONY SOCIALISM
BUMP!
I’d like to be optimistic.
And I do believe that growth is part (but only part) of a sound strategy to attack the debt and deficit.
But if they think they can make a few tweaks around the edges, and continue to pick winners and losers by subsidizing winners or penalizing losers into submission, while taxing and regulating everyone else to death, then they may as well just abandon the whole idea right now.
“Our side” still has not figured out that growth happens when they get out of the way and confiscate less.
“Senators, with the president, are elected every four years.”
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The writer appears to be either very careless or very confused.
Isn’t it six years?
Not that SS shouldn’t be reformed, but retirees and soon to be retirees have paid into it all their lives. They weren’t asked to participate in this “wonderful retirement plan”, they weren’t given an option. Now that the politicians have bankrupted it, seniors are told the problem is their fault. Meanwhile, I never hear about cutting any welfare program, and benefits to illegals are never touched. The Food stamp program never seems to be in danger of default. Why?
Confused is more likely. Her father was a congressman
He who governs least governs best!
Just remove the ROADBLOCKS TO PROSPERITY that Government has set up, and we Americans will do the rest.
It really IS that simple!
Republicans are such stupid boobs. Same playbook. They will try to tinker with the economy, then get relentlessly vilified in the media as racists and anti-everything. They will dutifully go on defense and spend most of their energy trying to explain that they dont hate flowers and little children.
There is only ONE problem with Social Security, and it is that it WAS NEVER DESIGNED to handle the things it does.
When Social Security was enacted, it paid ‘benefits’ (IE it gave you YOUR OWN MONEY back) after age 65.
But the average life expectancy at the time was 57.
It was a money grab. Pure and simple.
Since they only had to pay out few claims, they put the SS money into the GENERAL FUND AND SPEND IT and they put an I.O.U. back into the SS bank account. They still do.
Since every penny that came into the program from your paychecks was spent, the ‘benefits’ are paid out from current taxes received by the government.
In other words they spent the money you gave them, and they are paying you from the money they are currently taxing your children.
This was OK when life expectancy was only 57 because they had to pay out so little.
But today the life expectancy is well into the 70’s.
On top of that they have declare so many things to need SS benefits. Like for alcoholics, and for ‘crazy checks’ (look it up- you will go pretty crazy yourself when you read about it)
And they are getting past the point where the money from current SS taxes will be able to pay the current benefits, and its getting worse. There are only a few years before it is totally insolvent
I first heard about this as a potential problem in the 70’s when I was in high school. Nothing was done then, and nothing is being done now.
The government is run by people who set up things like this.
Thanks go to our parents and grandparents generations, who voted themselves our money years ago. (mostly the Democrats in government - the average person was unaware of most of this)
Copy this info to your Facebook accounts and spread it around- Inexplicably, in 2015 FR does not have a ‘like’ or ‘share’ button and we are preaching to the choir here.
their focus should be to remove the stain from the office and remove all the ‘laws’ they’ve put on the books over the last 6 years
Now that the politicians have bankrupted [Social Security], seniors are told the problem is their fault.
When all the "adjustments" started in the 70s, I was just entering the job market. All through the first decade, I was told that Social Security, coupled with the pensions from the people I worked for, will take care of me during my retirement. It became clear over the decades that Social Security would not be there for me when I retired. And those pensions? Gone, poof. At one point, I tried starting a business, and it didn't pan out -- so there went my savings.
So I went from job to job, trying to earn enough to save up for my later years. Ended up living paycheck to paycheck because the businesses I worked for didn't earn enough to increase my take-home. Oh, my gross increased at a nice pace...but not enough to keep up with inflation and all the new taxes and tax increases. Funny how the "tax cuts" didn't make much of a positive dent in my take-home pay. And it was only last year that I became eligible to participate in a 401(k) plan.
The last time I talked with a "wealth adviser" he showed me a chart, based on my pay over the decades, to show what would have happened if the money I paid to FICA would have instead been invested in a proper retirement fund: I would be a millionaire now, with enough capital in the pot to earn enough income to live until the day I die. What do I face now? "Income" that won't pay the rent, let alone food and medical and especially those insane ObamaCare premiums. Rob from the "rich" and give to the "poor"? Don't make me laugh!
So, the plan? Work until they carry me out feet first. I wish our congressmen would reply on Social Security for their pensions -- if they did, they would fix the problems. Ditto if they had to buy their health insurance on an Exchange.
As for the 40-plus percent who are on some form of government assistance? What have the politicians done to implement that good Christian story: "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach the man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime." The War on Poverty has been fought with taxpayer money that does the former instead of the latter. And the pages and pages of crap in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) just makes it all that much harder to put the good citizens to useful and paying work, so they can stop needing handouts.
And consider that the current plans to "reform" immigration will flood the job market in every single niche...except CEOs, bureaucrats and law-makers. No job pressure there! Just pressure on middle-class STEM jobs, and lower-end craft jobs, so the majority and minorities already here will need more of that giveaway money.
It would be good if Congress would begin with the priorities of fasting, prayer and confession of sin.
And after that, begin to cut the budgets of the dangerous alphabet agencies by 90%.
Yes, terms are six years but elections are staggered so that one third of the senate is up for election every two years.
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