Time To Get A Grip On The Third Rail

Investors.com ^ | March 15, 2010 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Unlimited Liability: While the Democratic leadership is trying to force a health care entitlement on a country that doesn't want it, the mother of all entitlements is in the red. Get used to it. It's only going to get worse.

While it doesn't have the voltage it once did, Social Security is still the third rail of politics. Politicians are afraid to touch it out of fear of damaging their careers.

Their decades of cowardice have led us to 2010, the year that Social Security begins its descent into the financial abyss. This year it will pay out $29 billion more in benefits than it takes in through the payroll tax that funds the retirement program.

A Sunday Associated Press report highlighting this deficit suggests that "it's time to start cashing" in the $2.5 trillion Social Security trust fund that has built up through the decades of the system taking in more than it has paid out.

Only problem: There is no trust fund.

As the story notes, "the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs."

[pogo101]

There IS no trust fund.

[muir_redwoods]

SS was taken from me, ultimately, at the point of a gun since I started working in 1965. If the government reneges on paying me, “the point of a gun” might be a good image for my personal reaction.

[reefdiver]

Why do you think they are coming after our savings accounts (401 K) I don’t know how it will be done, but there is a load of cash (trillion +) that a congress critter will get

They just do that stuff and get away with it.

[Need4Truth]

Rejection at the polls this fall will be followed by a growing awareness that Democrats have been on the wrong side of almost every policy debate for generations.

Now that would be real hope and change.

[Need4Truth]

Why do you think they are coming after our savings accounts (401 K)

That's "only" about 3 or 4 trillion. Obama could blow that in a year or two.

[VRWC For Truth]

The SSI lock box if full of IOUs. Congress took the money and never intended to pay it back. They will be jailed by citizen tribunals. This Constituional crisis is the spark. F’em. RICO, RICO, RICO. These FILTH must rot in JAIL.

[thulldud]

These FILTH must rot in JAIL.

Trouble with that is, most of the filth that caused this problem are already rotting somewhere else.

[highlander_UW]

I remember back in the 90’s there was all this talk of a “lock box” that held our social security money. Well, the fact is the politicians raided the lock box and the money was wasted on who knows what. Congress owes Madoff an apology...he's a piker compared to their level of theft.