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 ...
“Social Security is similar to public sector defined pension plans - they were overpromised, never adjusted, and now are collapsing by their own underfunded weight.”
Social Security was adjusted under Reagan.
Full Social Security availability will now start 20 months later for me (at age 66 years and 8 months).
Delaying the age when benefits is received is one of the better ways of dealing with the overpromised/underfunded problem.
Public employee pensions should be adjusted at the same time. This might be done by levying a 40% delayed income income tax on total government retirement payments (and CEO retirement payouts) in excess of $7,000/year unless an adjustment agreement to existing funding agreement is signed by the retired public employee.
One of the problems is that interest rates are low.
Older people like me are running out of money.
I will try to get by on food stamps after age 62 or 63 and after age 65 by Medicare premium assistance too.
https://www.healthmarkets.com/resources/medicare/help-with-medicare-premiums/
My house should have a new roof and new water heater by then.
“The SNAP and TANF benefits are from separate accounts.”
“The person simply got cash from the TANF side, which is what it is — a cash debit account.”
“There is no cash back from the food side.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3075970/posts
Why am I a conservative going to ask for (and hopefully get) SNAP and MSP benefits?
Because the Obama Administration Federal Reserve people cost me about $8,000 in lost interest income.
“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?”
No but ‘at this point what difference does it make’? Something drastic is going to have to be done eventually. The adults are going to have to make some difficult decisions and take some very harsh measures. We’ve past the point of charity and entered the realm of insanity.
It would be immoral and faithless to change Social Security for those already retired or even within a decade of retirement, when they are already planning the transition. However, it's just as immoral not to make changes, whether for those 10 years out or perhaps 15 years out from retirement.
The Normal Retirement Age is transitioning to 67 for those born in 1960. That is a reasonable and appropriate change, announced many years ago and applying to those retiring in 11 or more years. That age should be raised to perhaps 69 or 70 years old for normal retirement, not for those born in 1960, but perhaps for those born in 1965 or 1970. We simply cannot afford to have half the country on social security for as many years as today's older Americans live, and it's okay to change that age for those who are nowhere near retirement.
Note: One bonus of raising the age to a more appropriate level is that it allows for higher benefits once that age is reached, assuming it is done right. Fewer older Americans will be hurt as much by running short on money if we fix the system.
That’s fine.
But it remains that previous generations of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes for anything that it cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers, and other constitutionally enumerated justifications.
“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.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —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.
When Congress appropriates taxes for things that it cannot constitutionally justify, Congress is basically stealing state revenues imo. And the founders had noted that taking care of citizens is the job of the states, not the feds.
"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons, our property, our reputation and religious freedom [emphasis added]." --Thomas Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801.
In fact, the major constitutional problem with many federal social spending programs is the following.
When Congress established programs like Social Security (SS) for example, low-information members of the post-17th Amendment ratification Congress unthinkingly based SS on the General Welfare Clause (GWC; 1.8.1). The problem with doing so is that President James Madison, Madison generally regarded as the father of the Constitution, had clarified that the drafters of the Constitution had not intended for the GWC to be regarded as a specific delegation of power, but merely an introductory clause for the clauses in Section 8 that followed it, those clauses specific delegations of power.
Note that Madison had clarified the humble purpose of the GWC in the constitutionally required veto explanation when he vetoed Congress’s 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
Consider the following explanation as to what the annual federal budget should probably look like.
From a related thread …
Once again, it’s time for "Federal Government Annual Budget 101,” the constitutionally limited power federal government's annual budget as the Founding States had likely intended for the budget to be understood.
Note that regardless what FDR’s state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices wanted everybody to think about the scope of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers (1.8.3), a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified the following. Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue that Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers. This is evidenced by the excerpt below.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
“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.
In fact, based on the Court’s statements above, here is a rough estimate of how much taxpayers should be paying Congress annually to perform its Section 8-limited power duties.
Given that the plurality of clauses in Section 8 deal with defense, and given that the Department of Defense budget for 2015 was $500+ billion, I will generously round up the $500+ billion figure to $1 trillion (but probably much less) as the annual price tag of the federal government to the taxpayers.
In other words, the corrupt media, including Obama guard dog Fx Noise, should not be reporting multi-trillion dollar annual federal budgets without mentioning the Supreme Court’s clarification of Congress’s limited power to appropriate taxes in budget discussions.
In fact, noting that I voted for Trump and do not regret it, Constitution-savvy patriots need to get constitutionally low-information Trump up to speed with the idea that much of the federal taxes that he and his rich friends have always been paying are unconstitutional.
The bottom line is that the corrupt Washington cartel exists to steal 10th Amendment-protected state powers, state revenues and citizens' hard-earned dollars uniquely associate with those powers.
* * *
Read Ryan’s proposal...he wants to end Medicare for anyone born after 1957 (although that year may change) and give certain people a voucher to buy insurance on open market. The catch is, the insurance companies can AND will charge older people more because they are more likely to use and need medical care.
Go ahead, read his so called white paper on how to reform medicare. I anticipated no SS when I retired, so if that’s still there when I am 66, great. But I had not anticipated having to buy health insurance on open market at 66. If the premiums are 3000 a month for me and spouse, my years of saving and planning will not last long.
After what Obamacare did to the price of insurance on the open market I would be very leery that any such voucher would come close to matching the coverage Medicare provides.
Go ahead, read his so called white paper on how to reform medicare.
I've read it. Either Ryan doesn't know what he's talking about or he doesn't care about how his plans would impact people.
The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money.
Wages for those of us under 50 haven’t grown in over 10 years. The layoffs haven’t stopped and are increasing. I’m scared about home values and all the things that happened in 2008 repeating.
How do you expect your children and grandchildren to pay for your Medicare when you constantly cut them off at the economic knees?
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