I don't understand what the legislation is supposed to do.
The IOU's in the social security trust fund are Federal T-Bills, notes and bonds. That's all Social Security is allowed to invest in, so of course it's going to have IOU's in it.
Did the legislation require them just to sit on the money in Social Security and not invest it at all? Just let inflation eat away at it and not even draw interest?
Until someone explains what the bill was really supposed to do, I view this as just a publicity stunt and probably the 45 that voted against it are the worst kind of politicians.
Just goes to show ya = too many politicians are fiscally irresponsible, just like the yokels who keep voting them back onto "The Hill."
I'll do my best. The surplus money collected from our paychecks is currently being used to fund an orgy of overspending that will devastate this country financially in a very few years.
Many on this forum, as well as I, have proposed that this money be put into an actual investment fund, rather than the farce of a huge drawer full of government IOU's.
If this money was used to fund FANNIE MAE mortgages, where homeowners will not only repay it, but actually pay REAL interest on the money, then FANNIE MAE would not be lending out money that instead increasingly comes from Arab and other foreign investors.
The huge amount of home loan interest being paid by American homeowners would not, therefore, flow out of the country to the pockets of hostile investors, but would rather begin to multiply through the force of compounding, into a fund which would ACTUALLY be able to provide retirement income.
I believe that if Americans knew that a constantly increasing amount of the home loan money in this country is coming from overseas, and the loans provided (and the risk undertaken by the Arab lenders) is guaranteed by our tax dollars, while at the same time our politicians mandate that the same opportunity CANNOT be made available to our own citizens... a pitchforks and torches moment would immediately ensue.
Imagine that the $400 to $600 you pay in Social Security every month, funded home mortgages such as the one in which you are paying that $ 800 or so for, each month. You would be in effect paying yourself all of the interest. And each month that you continue paying into the account, that you, and millions of other Americans would be bundling that money into yet more loans to Americans, who would add interest to that investment pool.
What absolute meatheads we all are to have let the powers to be tell us that we cannot have a REAL investment retirement program, because that would drain away the extra money that Senator Byrd needs to build yet more concrete monuments to himself.
By the time people wise up, we will no longer own this country.