Posted on 06/10/2010 2:28:41 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
WASHINGTON – One of the oddest Web posts making the rounds is a series of blurry videos from Capitol Hill showing people coming and going from a closed-door meeting of President Barack Obama's new deficit commission.
The mundane scenes have a sinister cast for activists who say the commission is at work on a secret plan to gut Social Security. Nancy Altman, whose group, Social Security Works, shot the footage, says the threat to the nation's primary social safety net is greater now than at any time in the program's 75-year history.
"This is going to affect every single American if they reach agreement," she said. "People need to know what's going on."
The heated rhetoric is an ominous sign for Obama's deficit-fighting task force, which is charged with developing a bipartisan plan to stabilize the soaring national debt. Adjusting Social Security benefits is a likely point of consensus, commission members say. Now some of the same activists who helped derail a 2005 GOP plan to restructure the program are threatening to rally the public against any proposal to cut benefits.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
I’m 43 and I don’t expect Soc. Security to be around when I reach and age where I would now be “eligible.”
Hell, I imagine it will be pretty much useless within 10 years.
Remember how they demogogued Bush's plan to save SS 10 years ago.
But still he keeps spending spending spending. You might even think that he wants to bankrupt us so he can distribute what’s left to those who looked obedient when he was keeping score.
I survive on Social security disability; I paid into the system for years.
Gut SS, naw, never happen.
They are eying your 401K, IRA, etc.
Once and a while it wouldn't hurt if someone told the truth about social security. A more accurate description would be:
Social Security is one of the few government programs that has been funded well ahead of time. In fact, the SS fund now has a $2.5 trillion surplus and is solvent until the year 2037. But, unfortunately, due to the reckless and irresponsible spending and negligence of many congresses and presidents, over several decades the SS surpluses were seized by the government and put into the general fund, providing additional funds for the current year's spending and masking the true size of the annual deficits.
Now, because of the federal government's continued reckless spending, whether the government will be able to repay the $2.5 trillion owed SS on a timely basis is now in question, along with the financial health of our government in general. No single situation illustrates more starkly how irresponsible and reckless our government has been with our nations's finances than what was done with the $2.5 SS surplus collected from employees and employers over the past thirty or so years.
I can sympathize with you but you will take out far more than you paid in. There is no trust fund and if SSI is allowed to continue it will bankrupt our nation and enslave future generations who were born at the bottom of the pyramid scheme.
SSI must be abolished. It is the only moral thing to do for our children. The blame belongs to the politicians who started the program and all those who continued it (including voters).
Pyramid schemes are illegal for a reason.
Just give everyone their money back and call it a day.
Any deficit reduction plan which doesn't include entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and federal pensions is an absolute joke.
“Remember how they demogogued Bush’s plan to save SS 10 years ago”
Good thing too because Bush wanted to plant the money in the stock market.
How would that have worked out?
I’m 44, have paid over $200,000 into it, and any political party that denies me recovery of what I paid in is going to on the receiving side of my wrath.
I don’t believe there is a fund. It is a bunch of IOU’s in a file cabinet somewhere. Congress has spent the money.
There are too many who never paid into the system getting checks to add insult to injury.
Don’t worry. You will get your $200,000 when they print the money. It may only have the purchasing power of $20,000 if you are lucky.
That is what SSI will do because politicians will never refuse the benefit even if they have to print the money.
All done at the expense of young people and future Americans.
In my case I would have to live to the ripe old age of 107 to break even with what I put in.
I don't see that happening.
Thanks to inflation, the amount I put in over the earlier years would amount to one heck of a lot more in today's dollars.
For example, my weekly "contribution" to SS in 1965 of $43.00 would be equal to $289.34 in 2010 dollars, so there's more to it than meets the eye.
I’ve been saying that for years.. sadly they’ll never do that.
There's definitely no fund. It's a stack of non-negotiable notes from the US government. But there is $2.5 trillion that the government owes SS and that's included in the $13+ trillion national debt.
There are too many who never paid into the system getting checks to add insult to injury.
That's true. People would be even more furious if they knew all the facts on that subject. (I don't know them all. just some of it.)
With interest. I’ve been paying in over 30 years now. I’ll make due with that chunk of change.
Kudos to you for being one of the few. The vast majority of recipients will receive more than they put in and many contributed little to nothing at all.
It is unconstitutional and each American should have the God given right and responsibility to provide for themselves. You were not given the choice and neither were my kids.
Fine with me, just give me what I paid into SS + interest and I’ll be on my way.
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