Posted on 09/16/2007 4:23:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
Remember that middle class tax cut Bill Clinton promised us years ago, the one we never got? Well, now Hillary Clinton wants it back. That is, she wants to take back what was never given.
This must be the Clintonian equivalent of getting blood from a turnip.
Shocking, I know, that New York Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton might be considering hiking up our taxes, but look no further than an article headlined "Clinton Rules Out Cuts In Social Security," from a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal.
Speaking before an American Association of Retired Persons convention in Boston, Hillary pledged, if and when she becomes president, to quickly solve Social Security's long-term financial insolvency, now totaling an incredible $84 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
How will she do it? With the daring and courage only she can provide. That is, by not allowing any meaningful reform of Social Security.
"When I'm president," Hillary intoned, "privatization is off the table because it's not the answer to anything." Sure, in some countries average folks are investing through government retirement programs and growing wealthier, but Americans aren't so smart. We need Congress to spend — er, save and take care of — our retirement money for us.
AARP's shindig also offered Mrs. Clinton the chance to score some points against Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Earlier this year, Obama told AARP that "everything should be on the table" in reforming Social Security. What a rookie mistake. Hillary wasted no time in reassuring the AARP crowd that any cuts in benefits as well as any raising of the retirement age were "off the table" during her administration.
So, what is left on her table? What will President Hillary offer to deal with the coming shortfall for Social Security?
No. Not a lock-box. But good guess, Al.
Yes. A tax increase. A payroll tax increase. An increase that will sock it hard to the middle class. That's a bit odd considering that politicians like Hillary constantly talk about how much they want to help the middle class.
I guess it's true, that old saying, we only hurt the ones we love.
When Journal reporter Jackie Calmes deduced that raising the payroll tax was Mrs. Clinton's only remaining option, she followed up with Clinton spokesman Phil Singer, reporting:
"When it comes to Social Security," [Mrs. Clinton] will stand her ground, Mr. Singer said. "People rely on Social Security." Asked if that would mean an increase in the current payroll tax, he said, "Among other things, yes."
But don't go thinking "yes" means "yes." It doesn't — Hillary's last name is Clinton, remember? After pandering to the powerful AARP, Hillary felt an egalitarian need to pander to average Americans, too. She no doubt senses that Mr. and Mrs. Average do not want to hear that she plans to raise their taxes. So, Hillary's campaign website soon posted this statement in response:
The print edition of today's Wall Street Journal suggests that Hillary Clinton would be open to an increase in the payroll tax for Social Security. That is not correct. Hillary Clinton would not increase payroll taxes for Social Security as President.
Whew! That was close. We almost had a tax increase. Well, I mean if Hillary were to win the presidency — and then do what she said she'd do before she said she wouldn't do it.
But there's just one more thing: How would Mrs. President Clinton actually protect Social Security?
Not for continued looting by Congress, mind you, but for those people who have worked and paid into the system and, in their golden years, actually need to buy stuff like groceries. Hillary did promise to do that, along about the same time she was getting applause for taking all the specific ways to shore up the program off the proverbial table.
For decades, we've known we face a pretty simple math problem. Social Security doesn't involve saving or investing for retirement. It takes money from one generation and gives it to another, young to old. The day is coming when more will be owed to retirees in benefits than what hits the coffers of the Social Security Administration, as extracted from workers. "Annual cost will begin to exceed tax income in 2017" warns the 2006 annual report on Social Security.
Last year, Congress spent $200 billion in payroll tax money over and above what was paid out in benefits. But what will the big spenders do when this $200 billion "surplus" (and more) gets gobbled up in payments to the coming wave of baby boom retirees? That's sort of a double whammy for our slippery solons, having to fund the Social Security shortfall and having to fund the programs currently being funded by the so-called surplus.
In their 2006 annual report to Congress, Social Security's trustees pointed out the importance of addressing the shortfall problem sooner rather than later: "The projected trust fund deficits should be addressed in a timely way to allow for a gradual phasing in of the necessary changes and to provide advance notice to workers. Making adjustments sooner will allow them to be spread over more generations."
Rather than spreading the problem over "more generations," why not put back onto the table the idea of making Social Security into a real retirement savings program? One controlled by each individual worker, rather than politicians.
Like many Americans, I've not counted on receiving any Social Security benefits when making plans for retirement. It's a lot of money to pay out year after year, without return. Still, I'll survive.
But how will my kids fair in an economy increasingly strangled with absurdly high payroll taxes?
That's what's coming, unless career politicians like Hillary change their spots.
Not likely. There are elections to win. Interest groups to pander to. Both sides of the mouth to talk out of.
the “american electorate” will elect her again. they love the class warfare, they love the marxist rhetoric and the hard left becomes more influential, inflexible, psychotic and obnoxious.
hold on to your pocketbooks. a new, new deal is coming.
heil hillary!
Like the whore said, she plans to take more of My MONEY away to do with what she thinks best.
Hillary Clinton is very dangerous to this country and it’s our job to warn Americans.
I do not believe that she said that “American aren’t so smart.”
Seriously, who would elect her? Oh, I know the not so smart?
Oh I believe it. Unfortunately there will be people who are naive enough to vote for her
These Democrats are so “into” benchmarks in Iraq: I want benchmarks for all of their social programs... Let’s see the benchmarks for The War on Poverty! Or reforming Social Security and Medicare!
Dems couldn’t stand benchmarks because their policies are based on fictions and a history showing that their social engineering never works. But don’t you dare hold them accountable for it!
Anyone who truly wanted the senior vote would take up the cause of the 25% of poor old women who are impoverished after their husbands die to to quirks in the Social Security law. We all know one or two of them trying to get by on $500/mo, and they have children. Acting as if the status quo is perfect flies in the face of reality, and commissions have reccommended changing that. This is the situation the law was passed to prevent, yet we still have it after 70 years.
No matter what the tax rate is...The rich will always get richer via loopholes.
So she won't cut benefits, raise the retirement age, or increase payroll taxes? If such statements are to be taken at face value -- which they aren't, but leave that aside -- that leaves some combination of increasing or removing the income cap, extending the tax to unearned income, or general revenue financing.
All of these options, of course, further reduce the linkage between Social Security "contributions" and benefits. That linkage is already so tenuous that only the dim take it seriously, but at some point the mythology will collapse utterly and this brings that point nearer. The endgame for Hillary's apparent strategy is a means-tested old wage welfare system.
From the beginning, it was simply a "Dem pot plot". Almost no one would ever collect. It would grow and be robbed on a regular basis.
Is there any other way than taxing the middle class according to the dimwits?
Please. The Clintons dislike the word “taxation” preferring to call the money wrested from citizens at the point of a gun “contributions.” Nuance is important to Democats and “contribution” is properly nuanced and avoids the harshness of “creative and ruinious confiscatory taxation” which, if spoken aloud, would perhaps alarm the sheeple.
Sphinx,
You may have nailed it, For her "according to their means" is a tape that cannot be erased in her Marxist brain.
However, I could see her removing the earnings cap ($90k-ish) that is taxable. This would fit into her desire to play out the class warfare card.
What is funny is she has abandoned her husband's privatization "scheme" (Greenspan nixed it, to much gov't control :-), no freedom of choice) yet her program would have the guberment yielding total control. Man is she a control freak or what?
“Hillary’s middle class tax increase”
The agenda is to eliminate the American middle class, the bulwark of freedom in the world, and replace it with a rich/poor combination, like that of third world countries like Mexico.
Stop Hillary.
The Democrats will just wait until the 401k pool is nicely sized, big enough to cover the Social Security deficit, and seize that. They’ll be enabled by the Republicans, and it will all be done in the name of the “poor”, because if it weren’t for their efforts you wouldn’t have been able to accumulate that huge pile of illicit money, yada, yada, yada.
She’s a communist and will not be happy until all money is taken from the middle class and above and everyone is poor except the elite consisting of celebrities and rich democrat donors.
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