Posted on 11/17/2016 8:34:20 AM PST by MadIsh32
“We’re not going to hurt the people who have been paying into Social Security their whole life,” Trump declared, calling the payment of promised benefits “honoring a deal.”
But the man heading the Trump transition team’s Social Security effort? Michael Korbey, a former lobbyist who has spent much of his career advocating for cutting and privatizing the program, according to Yahoo News.
“It’s a failed system, broken and bankrupt,” Korbey said as a lobbyist in the mid 1990s. Korbey acknowledged that some of the reforms his group backed would hurt retirees, but “our constituents aren’t just senior citizens,” he told a newspaper in 1996. A decade later, as a senior adviser to the Social Security Administration, Korbey was a public advocate for the George W. Bush administration’s failed attempt to privatize Social Security.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Medicare is on it’s way to privatization already. One can use their Medicare premium as a credit and pay a little more to buy private insurance, like in my state , Blue Cross or Humana.
Trump said repeatedly, he was not going to make any changes to SS. To do so would hurt his new coalition of red states that now include the rust belt. If Trump breaks his promise, just like when Bush broke his “read my lips” pledge from 1988, you can say hello to the next slick willie, democrat President in 2020.
Paying into social security for forty years isn’t the same thing as the Tooth Fairy and as someone who receives SS, it infuriates me that people believe it is a government handout.
My mother worked her whole life a day died a month before she would have gotten her first check.
Failed and bankrupt because Congress stole the cash, then began to give whatever was left to illegal immigrants to destroy our sovereignty.
You can’t fix a Ponzi scheme.Call it what you want. It's not your money nor is it their money.
(Greedy) people willingly bought into the Ponzi scheme(s). Not so with SS. It was/is sucked out of our pockets.
And Medicare. And Medicaid.
First thing to deal with is the $60 BILLION yearly in Fraud.
The major constitutional problem with Social Security is this. The states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for programs like Social Security and Medicare.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
So justification for these programs is not a matter of political opinion. The states must either be allowed to run their own custom social security programs with their 10th Amendment-protected powers, or the states must amend the Constitution to grant the feds the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for Social Securit and Medicare and other social spending programs.
Promising these unconstitutional federal spending programs to low-information citizens has has been a great way for federal lawmakers to get themselves elected.
What’s going on is that several generations of low-information members of Congress, particularly since the time of FDR, the ill-conceived 17th Amendment no help either, have been wrongly using the Constitution’s General Welfare Clause (GWC; 1.8.1) to justify programs like Social Security.
But the problem with using GWC to justify federal social spending programs is this. James Madison, Madison generally regarded as the father of the Constitution, had clarified that the drafters of the Constitution did not intend for the GWC to be understood as a specific delegation of power. The GWC was intended only as an introductory clause for the clauses that followed it in Section 8, those clauses specific delegations of power.
In fact, President Madison had explained the purpose of the GWC in the constitutionally required veto letter to Congress when he vetoed the public works bill of 1817.
”To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust.” —James Madison, Veto of federal public works bill, 1817
Patriots can argue that a given federal domestic spending program outside the scope of the US Mail Service (1.8.7) is unconstitutional and be right most of the time.
MSM=lying, enemies of the people.
Three Ways Trump, GOP May Cut Social Security, Medicare
Just more words of wit from bags of $hit.
The Social Security old age system has worked well for nearly 80 years.
Yes, SS old age benefits will have to be reduced, probably by about 20 percent.
If benefits are not reduced fairly soon, the system will go bankrupt. In which case benefits will have to be reduced by nearly 30 percent starting about 10 years from now.
There simply isn’t enough reasonably priced investment grade assets available to fully privatize Social Security.
Most stocks are overpriced. Most housing is badly outdated.
The housing voucher program used by 2.1 million households needs to be reined in. Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for people to live in high-rent regions. Rental housing in those regions could lose about half its value.
Social Security was created after the great market crash of 1929. Stock values simply evaporated from 1929 to 1932.
What may be possible is that FICA/self-employment tax contributions might get family restricted to you or your parents.
Your kids’ FICA/self-employment tax contributions would get family restricted to you, their other parent(s), themselves.
During the few periods when assets are generally reasonably priced, Congress might allow you to invest that part of your FICA contributions in the market or in real estate.
“The major constitutional problem with Social Security is this. The states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for programs like Social Security and Medicare.”
What you say is absolutely true.
However, Congress has the absolute right under Amendment XVI to take your income - 5 percent, 7.65 percent or even 90 percent.
If Congress continues to choose to give it back you after age 65, I doubt you would refuse your monthly refunds.
It is Constitutional for Congress to take your money (and then give it back to you 20 to 40 years later).
Perhaps you missed the point? Social Security was initially passed in the 30's as a "Social Net" promising full benefits at age 65 (when actuarial data indicated an average lifespan of 65 years). At its passage, it was only a 1 % tax on the first $3000 of earnings ($30/year).Over the years, it was expanded many times to cover all manner of "politically popular" adverse contingencies. Back in the 60's, the "Trust Funds" were converted to merely IOU's as government spent the money (to a great degree on the Vietnam War, for which they would not ask taxpayers to suffer a a tax funded burden).
Bottom-line..., there is nothing in the Social Security Trust Fund but Federal IOUs today and there are Supreme Court Decisions which deny any individual right to their contributions!
The USA (like European Socialist Nations) has promised its citizens far more than can EVER be delivered WITHOUT accelerating currency inflation and..., ever increasing reductions in purchasing power of our currency!
Politicians can either truly fix Social Security and other entitlements (whether earned or magnanimously "Granted") or continue to "Kick the can down the road" and pray that their is not a SHTF moment on their watch! Given human nature..., what do you think they will do?
We have a deficit of $20b. That isn’t because of SS. Make cuts elsewhere.
Social Security is similar to public sector defined pension plans - they were overpromised, never adjusted, and now are collapsing by their own underfunded weight.
The epitome of “fuzzy math”.
Trillion
Don't look now, but SS is already means-tested. But they called that turkey a sparrow and nobody noticed.
Let me explain. Way back when I was a teenager, my grandfather was on SS. As I came into adulthood my family discussed financial matters with me in order to teach me money management. One of the things I learned was that his SS payments were exempt from taxes. That's right, no federal taxes on SS payments.
Now, today grandpa is long gone, and I am retired and collecting SS. But, 85% of my SS is taxed. For low income people that might fall into the standard deduction, or it might be taxed at the lowest rate. But, we saved and planned for retirement, so we have income, and DW and I are taxed at 33%. So, 85% of my SS income is taxed at 33%, or lets just say the feds claw back 28% of the SS they pay us.
What really happened over the years is that people with little income pay no taxes on their SS, while we pay 28%. This is a means test by another name. I am already being punished for saving and preparing, and you will be too.
Last week I was standing behind a ‘lady’ in the grocery store. She paid for her groceries with her EBT card. Then somehow she got cash back. Can you do that? She then used some of her cash to buy two six packs of beer and a carton of cigarettes. Is that legal?
Imagine if Social Security was wiped out.
What would seniors do?
Vote to end “free” K-12 public education?
Parents would simply pay K-12 school tuition instead of FICA taxes.
Lower income parents would pay a lower yearly tuition followed by annual teacher retirement payments guaranteed by themselves and their offspring.
Imagine if Medicare was wiped out.
What would seniors do?
Demand the end of unrestricted pricing drug patents?
Demand the breakup of hospital systems and then buy say three hours of pre-paid surgical time [surgeon, anesthesiologist, two nurses, one room] at a nearby surgical facility for say $7,000 like they do pre-paid funerals?
You might say all of that is good and so would I.
However, don’t attack the system at its strongest points first. You may get nowhere.
Deal with the easy and non-controversial stuff like excessive government regulations first.
Also cut the costs lower income people face so both spending and taxes can be reduced.
Social Security retirement age should continue rising, but the proposal has to come from a democrat. We've proposed that far too many times because it's the right thing. The problem is the democrats are power hungry and would rather use our proposal to attack us than to fix a real problem.
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