Posted on 10/01/2007 1:51:56 PM PDT by Graybeard58
For nearly two decades, Congress and the White House have known Social Security is unsustainable because it pays today's retirees with contributions from tomorrow's pensioners. People who have run retirement programs on the same model — Ponzi schemes — soon found themselves behind bars.
According to the Trustees for Social Security and Medicare, those entitlement programs combine for $83 trillion in unfunded liabilities with Social Security accounting for $12 trillion. (Today's national debt is only $7 trillion.) By 2018, Social Security will begin paying out more than it takes in, so taxpayers will have to start making good on all those trillions in government bonds masquerading as the "Social Security Trust Fund." By 2030, benefits will consume more than half of all income-tax revenues. By 2069, if it hasn't collapsed, Social Security will require every income-tax dollar to keep it afloat. How the nation will afford this and fix Medicare with its $71 trillion unfunded liability is an open question no one on Capitol Hill wants to hear.
President Bush tried to reform Social Security, but Democrats so thoroughly demagogued his idea for private accounts for younger workers that even some free-market Republicans were afraid to support him. And when the AARP's scare-mongering convinced its members the president intended to reduce today's retirees' benefits — he proposed nothing of the sort — his proposal never came up for a vote in Congress.
Yet the time bomb continues ticking. Everyone knows the choices: raise taxes, reduce benefits or both; or transform it from Socialist Insecurity into a market-driven system akin to 401(k)s. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reminded Congress last week of the economic peril, the hard choices and the significant cost of delaying reform. The response from Congress: Crickets.
Because the bomb is not going to go off before the next election, the denizens of Capitol Hill are in no hurry to defuse it. Once the new Congress is seated in January 2009, members will say it's too close to the 2012 election to do anything. And they will continue to put off reform until the full-blown crisis explodes. Those counting on Social Security as their primary source of retirement income are advised to begin saving as much as they can.
Done.
(Silly you..there is no big problem here. In a few years,Congress will mimic the GM solution, set up a VEBA,to be run by AARP..(I mean, can they do any worse than the UAW?) and fund it with a few trillion in government bonds..see..problem solved, (er, postponed) for a few decades more.
Actually, that is part of the plan. With Fed Health Care, they can just deny your care and you die.
Social Security saved.
I can hardly wait.
They don’t even have to “make” retirement illegal, sometimes it takes care of itself. There are a LOT of people in their 70s and 80s who are working today and not by choice, since their gold-plated pension fund went belly up along with the company back in the 80s. I suppose that was a portent of things to come on a smaller scale.
The difference now is a HUGH demographic of “baby boomers” who will probably overwhelm the system just as they did for everything else.
Fortunately, the baby boomers won't live forever. In another twenty to thirty years, they'll be dying off in record numbers.
Look for tax increases and benefit reductions. Politicians know that to let SS sink, means "out of power". Our current remedy? Deny everything and shift the blame. Oh yeah, how is Medicare Part D working out for everyone? Thanks Big Government Republicans, thanks a lot.
Seriously, I think you're onto something. Euthanasia (in fact, if not in name) will indeed take care of the Social Security shortfall. It's just the dirty little secret they'll never let you in on.
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