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“When people tell you Social Security is going broke, you look them in the eye and tell them they’re not telling you the truth,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at an event on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to petition Congress not to cut Social Security or Medicare. “Today, the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.8 trillion surplus,” Sanders said. […] As CNSNews.com previously reported, however, the Social Security program ran a $47.8 billion deficit in fiscal 2012 as the program brought in $725.429 billion in cash and paid $773.247 billion for benefits and overhead expenses, according...

The inspector general for the Social Security Administration has found that 6.5 million active Social Security cards belong to people claiming to be 112 years old or older. Worldwide, the number of people currently living to be 112 stands at 35. Clearly, most of those people are dead, and relatives never bothered to tell Social Security about it. But a significant number of those claiming to be 112 years old are thought to be stealing the identity of dead people. From Washington Post: "The Social Security Administration’s inspector general said in a report on Monday that the questionable identification numbers...

There are more than 6.5 million Americans over the age of 112, according to the Social Security Administration. If you are wondering about the accuracy of this count, you are not alone.After a man attempted to open bank accounts using active Social Security Numbers from both 1869 and 1893, the Office of the Inspector General decided to audit the SSA. They found that as of Oct. 2013, only 35 known individuals over the age of 112 are still living worldwide.The SSA’s Numerical Identification System (often shortened to Numident), contains all the Social Security Numbers tracing back to 1936 when they were...

Many people are living longer, but not to age 112 or beyond -- except in the records of the Social Security Administration. The SSA's inspector general has identified 6.5 million number-holders age 112 -- or older -- for whom no death date has been entered in the main electronic file, called Numident. The audit, dated March 4, 2015, concluded that SSA lacks the controls necessary to annote death information on the records of number-holders who exceed "maximum reasonable life expectancies." "We obtained Numident data that identified approximately 6.5 million numberholders born before June 16, 1901 who did not have a...

IRS defends giving refunds to illegals who never paid taxes Mar. 02, 2015 - 4:50 - Agency tells Congress in a new letter that lawyers have concluded getting a Social Security number justifies illegal immigrants' ability to go back and ask for previous refunds [Video]

Social Security is surging to the forefront of the political debate ahead of the race for the White House in 2016. The entitlement program has been thrust into the spotlight by a fight over the Social Security disability fund, which is expected to run dry by the end of next year. The looming shortfall is stirring a burst of activism on the left, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a likely 2016 candidate, and liberal hero Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) warning of an assault on the program from Republicans in Congress. "We’ve known for years that Social Security Disability Insurance is...

Did anybody else fail to receive the 01.6% raise on their S.S. check? I dread it but I have to go to the S.S. office to see what's going on or rather to see what's not going on. I suspect that raise went straight into Obama's stash. I'm 69 years old and am betting that I will be 30 years older than the next oldest person in that waiting room.

Last month, I posted “the cartoon argument” for Social Security reform. My main goal, as an American, is to achieve this important reform in the United States. And I’ve tried to bolster the argument by citing lots of hard data, including the fact that “funded” accounts already exist in nations such as Australia, Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands. In this spirit, I wrote an article for the most recent issue of Cayman Financial Review, and I looked at the issue from a global perspective. I first explained thatdemographics are destiny.

Today, Anthem Inc., the second largest health insurer in America revealed that hackers broke into the company’s servers and stole social security numbers and other personal information. This is a massive data breach with the potential to expose the information of nearly 80 million Anthem customers and has the potential to be the largest health care related data breach in history. The company notes that accounts associated with Anthem Blue Cross, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Amerigroup, Caremore, Unicare, Healthlink, and DeCare were all part of...

Early last year, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity released this video, narrated by yours truly, making the case that the United States and other nations should shift from a tax-and-transfer entitlement scheme to a system of personal retirement accounts.Some left wingers criticized the idea, saying the big drop in the stock market in 2008-2009 is proof that personal retirement accounts are too risky.You won’t be surprised to learn, though, that they are wrong. It is true that retirement income fluctuates with a system of personal accounts, but that simply means that it is difficult to predict how much...

Some new media critics really need to make up their minds. It’s either a Do Nothing Congress or a Do Something Awful Congress. If you ask the folks at Talking Points Memo, we’ll be leaning toward the latter because the House was getting busy taking care of business before half of the new members had located the bathrooms. A minor rules change was put in place which modifies the way tax revenues are occasionally shuffled between the Social Security trust fund and the Social Security disability program. There’s a reason for this, as we’ll get to below, but to...

For 32 years I’ve been advocating a major tax on petroleum. I’ve got as much chance this time around as did Don Quixote with windmills. But I shall tilt my lance once more. The only time you can even think of proposing a gas-tax increase is when oil prices are at rock bottom. When I last suggested the idea six years ago, oil was selling at $40 a barrel. It eventually rose back to $110. It’s now around $48. Correspondingly, the price at the pump has fallen in the last three months by more than a dollar to about $2.20...

When that old man in a long white beard turns over the New Year to a robust round baby in diapers, they share framed edges of life, one at the end and one just beginning. With the help of science, an old man today passing the baton has a greater life expectancy than his predecessor did in 1840 when data began to show steady increases. The baby this year is lively and bouncing, and need not worry as much about infant mortality. At the beginning of the 20th century, a baby born in America was expected to reach the ripe...

To those nattering nabobs of negativity who don’t trust government to do the right thing, or even to stop doing the wrong thing once discovered, I just want to say: “You’re right.” Again. Last April, a Washington Post exposé about a bizarrely tyrannical debt collection program caused the Social Security Administration (SAA) to publicly promise it would cease and desist from said program. The Social Security bureaucracy had been snatching the income tax refund checks of grown children whose parents, many decades ago, had allegedly been sent excess money intended for the care and feeding of these then-youngsters by this...

Just got my annual 1.7% increase notice and with it the statement ;

The Social Security Administration, which announced in April that it would stop trying to collect debts from the children of people who were allegedly overpaid benefits decades ago, has continued to demand such payments and now defends that practice in court documents. After The Washington Post reported in April that the Treasury Department had confiscated $75 million in tax refunds due to about 400,000 Americans whose ancestors owed money to Social Security, the agency’s acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, said efforts to collect on those old debts would cease immediately. But although some people whose refunds were seized were reimbursed in...

This so-called insurance meant from the beginning not merely compulsory insurance it also meant compulsory membership in a unitary system controlled and enforced by the state. The concept of a social safety net is well accepted throughout the Western World. The idea that some provision should be made for those who through no fault of their own are unable to provide for themselves first appeared as a state policy in Germany in the 19th century as the Iron Chancellor, Bismarck, sought to co-opt the popular appeal of socialism and strengthen the newly founded German Imperial state. The idea struck a...

Under President Obama’s new program to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, many of those affected will be eligible to receive Social Security, Medicare and a wide array of other federal benefits, a White House official said Tuesday. In his speech Thursday night, the president touted his plan as a means of bringing accountability to a broken immigration system, under which 11 million or more people are estimated to be living in this country illegally. “We’re going to offer the following deal: If you’ve with been in America more than five years. If you have children who are American citizens...

One of the issues that killed the Senate’s hated “Gang of Eight” amnesty for illegal aliens bill was that it allowed the amnestied illegal aliens to immediately access public benefits reserved for citizens and legal immigrants. House conservatives correctly argued that the “Gang of Eight” bill and its various House companion bills would allow illegal aliens immediate access to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and various other welfare programs, such as food stamps. While the proponents of the “Gang of Eight” bill tried to finesse the issue the bottom line was and is that once the government gives a Social Security...

Dear Editor, Considering all of the craziness that we’ve all had to deal with when it comes to this past election, I figured that I would hold off on anything politically related for a while. Plus for me, I tend to note things more on a national level anyway, and I’m not wanting to write anything national for a local paper. However, considering the opinion piece that was put into Sunday’s issue, I felt that this basically gave me the entrance that I need to get a few things clear for the people in the first place. Now, considering that...