Posted on 01/02/2011 10:24:47 AM PST by rabscuttle385
Seniors should be older before the receive Social Security and wealthy Americans should receive less benefits across the board, says Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
He made the argument in an interview on Sunday's Meet the Press, but it's a position Graham has advocated for on the stump in South Carolina, including a 2009 stop at The Citadel with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
"What I'm going to do is challenge this country to make some hard decisions," Graham said at the time, telling the crowd of cadets, Tea Partiers, and Graham supporters that they shouldn't give Congress a pass on the tough stuff.
(Excerpt) Read more at charlestoncitypaper.com ...
>You’ve not been paying attention. First, we start with the government retireds, then welfare, the various alphabet agencies and so forth. AFTER all that’s done, then we look at SS.
Yes and it has been pointed out why this is fiddling while Rome burns. You are suggesting a pittance of cuts which will be rough to accomplish. Thus you are just punting the problem down the road until it is worse and using this excuse as cover.
You have no proffered a real solution. You have proffered a bunch of malarkey as cover for not doing anything.
Government Retirees - that is 3% if you eliminate altogether. (I find it funny how people believe they are owed social security but government employees are not owed a pension).
Welfare - 14%. How far do you think this should be cut? Let's assume a 33% cut for now, that is a reduction of close to 5%.
Eliminate Alphabet Agencies - Maybe 1.5%. With those cuts we have reduced spending by less than 10%. As social security and medicare are set to explode, overall spending will increase by much more than the 10% you have identified for cuts. In short, your recommendation does nothing to end unsustainable government spending.
The longer the big ticket spending goes on unabated the more drastic the cuts need to be. My recommendation is to go after them first - then we can focus on the little stuff.
A person who has paid in (and had matching employer funds) the maximum or close to it for 40+ years would have a much higher income if that money had been invested in a private retirement account like a 401K AND they would still have plenty of it left to leave their heirs.
There's no question that something needs to be done with SS, but denying people money that they've paid in just because someone decides that they don't "need" the money is not the solution.
>I understand what you are trying to do. But, I think you are mistaken in believing it will succeed. All it will do is win another battle for the class warriors and increase their political power.
I’ll have to agree to disagree. I cannot imagine the program ever being seriously cut until you remove the universal nature of it. The fact that we have such virulent support for a welfare program from conservatives here shows why I make my case.
>If 25% of Social Security payments are eliminated at the upper end, it becomes solvent again. And then it will never be killed.
Yes, but then you will have removed plenty of the political support for it, and reform might actually be possible without armies of seniors storming Washington with pitchforks.
In any case, the 25% across the board cut is about as likely to happen as me growing wings. So I’m accepting an imperfect solution over an impossible one.
I hope you aren’t replying specifically to me, because I’ve made exactly those same points in other postings to this thread.
1. Abortion - I am against abortion, but I believe it must be ended by repealing Roe and working state-by-state, or by constitutional amendment. I disagree with the few Freepers who fantasize that it can be done by some sort of Presidential proclamation.
2. Euthanasia - There are several Freepers who believe that when the government decides not to pay for ultra high cost procedures with marginal chances of success, that is "euthanasia" and they equate it with Nazi eugenics. I'd be happy to point those Freepers to a good online dictionary so they can find out what "euthanasia" means.
3. Militant homosexualism - I am against homosexual marriage and homosexual military service. But I do not agree with some Freepers that sodomy should be re-criminalized. What that has to do with this thread is beyond me.
4. Redistribution of wealth - The current Medicare system (and to a much lesser extent, social security) redistributes wealth by taxing current workers (no matter how poor) and expending on current beneficiaries (no matter how wealthy). I am against that redistribution.
I agree that we should not B.S. people by telling them what they do and do not "need".
A non-judgmental statement like "In order to keep the program actuarily sound, benefits are being cut 25%" is much more appropriate.
It’s a start. You two seem to think all these cuts have to happen between now and this time next year.
They don’t.
Hell, I would be tickled to death to get the revenue/expenditure lines at least headed to where they would cross sometime in the future.
I’m not against cuts to SS or whatever else it takes. But I WILL NOT countenance being first to take the hit when all the tit-suckers get a pass.
That is politically stupid and furthermore, it is fundamentally Marxist in theory.
I think you are mistaking "I was forced into contributing, and I'm not giving that up" for "support".
Yes, but then you will have removed plenty of the political support for it, and reform might actually be possible without armies of seniors storming Washington with pitchforks.
What political support? The people who got screwed?
I've got news for you. No one cares about us. We are demagogued every evening on the news, and by every politician on the left and right.
We (the top 20%) are already paying nearly 70% of federal taxes (of all kinds). The top 10% are paying 55% -- more than half.
I'm tired of bending over and taking it in the behind, because everyone else tells me that I have to do so for the "greater good". If it's the "greater good", then everyone else is going to have to step up to the plate and contribute, or they can f*** off.
Yes!
I'm sorry, but I don't follow your math. Why does a 25% reduction in Social Security require an "individual reduction of 40%"? Do you mean 40% reduction in individual benefits?I come up with the 40% number as the life expectancy is now much longer and the boomers are starting to retire. Therefore there will be a lot more people in the system but actual spending needs to be reduced. Therefore individual benefits must be reduced by much more than 25% in order to get the 25% reduction in expense. Granted, I guessed at the 40% number but the number is much larger than 25%.
Based on your response, I think you understand the need to cut which is much better than 90% of the posters here on this thread!
So if we take the average life expectancy(78.5)and subtract the retirement age (62) giving us 16.5, multiply by 60%(to give us 40% spending reduction) and add back to 62, we get a new retirement age of 72.4.
So the problem of social security cuts could be done by drastically increasing the retirement age. As this is not feasible, every year lower would require a decrease in benefits paid.
I would prefer this to be means tested but across the board would cuts would be much preferable to doing nothing.
Would you support increasing the retirement age?
Yup, them’s the ones.
The ONLY acceptable solution is a pro-life constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court opinion acknowledging personhood rights of the unborn.
Sending abortion back to the states is nothing more than a "pro-choice by state" scheme and won't save a single life.
2. Euthanasia - There are several Freepers who believe that when the government decides not to pay for ultra high cost procedures with marginal chances of success, that is "euthanasia" and they equate it with Nazi eugenics.
Can you name some of these "ultra high cost" procedures with "marginal" success rates? What about specific victims, can you name them?
Do you realize that as soon as we determine that a person can be denied health care once it costs "X" number of dollars that there is NOTHING to stop that number from dropping?
Nevertheless, I was talking about ACTUAL euthanasia. I meant taking deliberate steps designed to kill a person.
3. Militant homosexualism - I am against homosexual marriage and homosexual military service. But I do not agree with some Freepers that sodomy should be re-criminalized. What that has to do with this thread is beyond me.
You were the one who asked BykrBayb why some people are branded liberal trolls and this is one of the reasons.
4. Redistribution of wealth - The current Medicare system (and to a much lesser extent, social security) redistributes wealth by taxing current workers (no matter how poor) and expending on current beneficiaries (no matter how wealthy). I am against that redistribution.
That's fine, I was talking about the plan to lower Social Security payments to those people who are deemed "wealthy" by some arbitrary standard (e.g. denying them money they have paid in).
Denial: "This was PROMISED to me, and the government dare not break their promise!"
Anger: "You ungrateful young twerps! I put you through college! How DARE you say that I may not be able to get that government funded kidney transplant when I'm 92!!"
Bargaining: "If we can just cut Senator's salaries, and..and..Foreign Aid...and...and..Subsidies for artichoke growers...then we can keep the SS and Medicare train rolling!!"
Depression and Acceptance will come. It's just a question of whether they come while the massive default can still be averted.
With so many Freepers still in the first two stages, and with what that implies about the much dumber and more liberal population outside FR, I doubt it very, very much.
That will be an EASY decision for Americans to make...guess he just presumed it would be hard, huh?!
Again, you are going to have to make up your mind whether you are discussing Social Security or something else.
I come up with the 40% number as the life expectancy is now much longer and the boomers are starting to retire.
In other words, you pulled a number out of your behind.
I suggest that you stop right now and go read the Social Security Trustee's Annual report:
They take the expected changes in life expectancy, productivity, wage growth, fertility etc. into account and come up with estimates about the actuarial status of Social Security.
Based on your response, I think you understand the need to cut which is much better than 90% of the posters here on this thread!
Again, you misunderstand. I recognized the need to reduce Social Security 30 years ago. I'm objecting to the method proposed by Graham, because it's wrong to impose that cost on a small group of people with insufficient political power to prevent it.
Would you support increasing the retirement age?
That would be the same as reducing benefits across the board. So, yes -- I would. Someone that wanted to start receiving benefits earlier could take the reduced benefit.
Some more grist.
The other welfare
A legacy of unintended side effects
Geneva Fielding, a single mother since age 16, has struggled to raise her three energetic boys in the housing projects of Roxbury. Nothing has come easily, least of all money.
Even so, she resisted some years back when neighbors told her about a federal program called SSI that could pay her thousands of dollars a year. The benefit was a lot like welfare, better in many ways, but it came with a catch: To qualify, a child had to be disabled. And if the disability was mental or behavioral — something like ADHD — the child pretty much had to be taking psychotropic drugs.
snip
Graham is looking more like Edwards every day.
Denials have been in force in the private insurance sector for years. There are "lifetime benefit limits" and once you exceed them you are on your own dime. And insurance companies have denied transplants and other high cost procedures which in their estimation have a minimal success rate.
I don't recall that any Freepers have ever called that "free market euthanasia" nor referred to the private insurance companies as "profit making death panels".
Correct me if I’m wrong here.
Even if insurance runs out, at least the person needing treatment COULD raise money from elsewhere and have the procedure done.
With the Death Panels, the private pay option goes away and you just die.
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