Graham: Reduce benefits for wealthy seniors

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.

Well, with that nonsensical argument, everything other than the money in your hands is gone. Gee, I hope you don’t put money in a bank. There is an accounting somewhere, sufficient to issue an IOU, as there is to send you a bank statement once a month. Sure it is not in a “Social Security fund” per se because that money has been subsumed into the general fund.

Technically, the money I put in the bank isn't mine anymore. I can't walk into the bank and take it without asking them, or get it back in any other way inconsistent with the terms of my deposit account. The bank simply has a contractual obligation to pay that money, on demand, to me or to those I order paid through a check or other method. If they don't pay, I can sue them on that contract.

There is no such contractual obligation with Social Security. If Congress decided tomorrow to permanently end all Social Security payments, no one would have any cause of action to sue to get their money back.

On another point, however, the SS was setup such that even though peeps may have input 100K$, actuarially, they likely will not get it all out. So the statements put forth here of getting out what was put in is also nonsense.

Or they could get much more than they paid in. The woman who received the first Social Security payment, Ida May Fuller, "paid in" $24.75. She "got back" nearly $23,000.

You did hit on something by using the word "actuarially". Social Security has never even purported to be anything like a savings account. Its closest analogy to a legitimate financial product is an insurance contract. It's insurance against getting too old to work, and like actual insurance contracts, the "premiums" (paid here in the form of FICA taxes) are indeed "gone". It is not a checking account or a savings account - you can't withdraw money from it or borrow against it. All you get is a monthly payment if you happen to reach retirement age. That payment is determined by statute, not by the terms of any agreement you made with the government. The payment is funded by taxes from current workers, not by taxes you paid in the past.

Unfortunately, Social Security is only insurance in theory. It certainly isn't run anything like an insurance company.

Oh, ok, so although you pay local taxes (e.g., property), I guess you would not expect any return on that as well? Roads, schools, local, regional, state administration... That money is gone, too, once it leaves your hands. Come on people.

Yes, I do expect a return on that, in the form of roads, schools, etc. Once the money is spent on roads and schools, I don't expect it to be paid back to me.

By that analogy, there have already been "returns" on the FICA tax money you and I have already paid. It has already been spent on current retirees benefits. Our "return" is similar to the "return" of any other welfare program: that we don't have the elderly living in poverty (which is the situation Social Security was intended to address). When I retire, the only way I am getting money is by taxing future generations. If you are currently collecting Social Security, the only way you are getting money is by taxing me.

That is the way it has always been, from day one. Ida May Fuller wasn't "getting back" money she paid in. She was paid nearly 100 times what she paid in, and she was paid out of the taxes of others. She exhausted any pretense of getting back "her money" by the time she cashed her second benefit check.

Trying to grab the moral high ground by pitting the life of a US child against a non-US child is bogus - a typical liberal strawman to incite compassion for your position. The whole debate stays in the US.

What is truly insane is expecting millions of hardworking forward-planning people who have contributed 30-40 years to SS simply give up the hope of every receiving any money from SS at retirement, rather than trying to fix the problem with cuts, taxes, blah, blah, and restoring in the “utes” the same hope we’ve had for decades. And for all you libtards that will quickly follow with “but the money is not there” - BS. The IOUs are there. The payouts can continue while fixing the system.

>Trying to grab the moral high ground by pitting the life of a US child against a non-US child is bogus - a typical liberal strawman to incite compassion for your position. The whole debate stays in the US.

Horse puckey. There is no intrinsically greater value to the life of a U.S. child than some other child. If you are actually going to try and make a moral case for the above, I will simply watch in pity because you are delusional.

$220000 can save a hell of a lot more than one life if spent well. This is simple cost benefit analysis (not something your ‘libtards’ bother with). You are just someone who can’t actually fashion a real argument so you toss around ad hominems.

>What is truly insane is expecting millions of hardworking forward-planning people who have contributed 30-40 years to SS simply give up the hope of every receiving any money from SS at retirement, rather than trying to fix the problem with cuts, taxes, blah, blah, and restoring in the “utes” the same hope we’ve had for decades. And for all you libtards that will quickly follow with “but the money is not there” - BS. The IOUs are there. The payouts can continue while fixing the system.

You are obviously as ignorant economically as you are morally.

The money isn’t there. It is a Ponzi scheme. Those always go broke. It is their very nature. The only thing you can do by stretching out a Ponzi scheme is make the crash harder and worse for more people.

The details of why we can’t just keep cruising ahead with the current system has been explained repeatedly here in a very clear manner. Just because you are either too obtuse to pay attention, or incapable of understanding it, doesn’t change the truth of it.

I think the age for getting Social Security should go up. When it was first established, people who were 65 were in pretty poor shape, compared to now.

I don't mean to just single you out as you are just one of many that post without understanding facts. The age of eligibility has gone up and is on a schedule to continue to rise.

The real problem is twofold. The money paid into the system by seniors like me has gone into the General Fund instead of the ficticional Lock Box. The economy is in horrible shape. I would be very happy to have taken the money that I have contributed for 50 years and invested it myself.

You are falling for the same fiction the progressives believe, that the only cuts in our budget can be found in SS. Try looking around at the massive waste in other sectors of the Gubment.

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