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Debt Commissioners: Baby Boomers Will Crush Social Security, Medicare
Fox News ^ | Nov. 14, 2010 | Staff

Posted on 11/14/2010 1:07:03 PM PST by La Enchiladita

Baby boomers withdrawing funds from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are going to "crush the system" in a matter of years, a member of President Obama's blue-ribbon commission on the debt warned Sunday.

David Cote, CEO of Honeywell and one of a handful of private-sector chiefs appointed to the 18-member fiscal reform commission issuing its final recommendations on Dec. 1, said he didn't realize -- even perched at the top of his field -- that the next decade will be disastrous to the nation's accounts ledger unless something drastic is done.

"It scares me that as a financially conversant CEO, I didn't know how bad this was going to get in the next 10 years," Cote said on ABC's "This Week." "The thing that everybody misses is it's my generation, the baby boomers, who are going to flow through Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. It's going to crush the system."

"Social Security is going to go cash negative in five years. It's going to go broke in 2037," added Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., another member of the commission who appeared with Cote.

Medicare is "prepared to go permanently cash negative in just 10 years. So, obviously, those things have to be reformed; there have to be some changes," Conrad said.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Front Page News; Government
KEYWORDS: babyboomers; debtcommission; entitlements; federalspending; seniors
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To: SumProVita

Fortunately, we HAVE done that with part of our discretionary income. ;-)


21 posted on 11/14/2010 1:24:34 PM PST by SumProVita (Cogito, ergo...Sum Pro Vita. (Modified Decartes))
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To: La Enchiladita
Real reform: Cut off ALL drug addicts from Social Security.

Clean up ‘disability fraud’... Alcoholism is NOT a disability - it's a life choice. ETC.

ETC

Target those who abuse the system rather than the hard working middle class Americans who support the system.

22 posted on 11/14/2010 1:24:49 PM PST by GOPJ ('Power abdicates only under the stress of counter-power." Martin Buber /a Tea-nami's coming..)
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To: La Enchiladita
Social Security is subject to taxation (under a variety of conditions). Those taxes are returned to the General Accounts, not back into Social Security.

Given the far higher incomes many of us receive from retirement systems and investment accounts these days, we reach the standards for having our Social Security taxed ~ fortunately with a great deal of ease.

That SS money is then taxed at our highest applicable rate!

Congress should act to revert taxes paid on Social Security to the Social Security side of the ledger.

23 posted on 11/14/2010 1:24:49 PM PST by muawiyah (GIT OUT THE WAY ~ REPUBLICANS COMIN' THROUGH)
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To: dragnet2
We should just give the billions they confiscated from us, over the past 50 years, back to the government....Just tell them to keep what they took...

If there were someway for them to keep taking our money after killing SS, I'm sure they would take you up on your offer.

24 posted on 11/14/2010 1:26:31 PM PST by Dixie Yooper (Ephesians 6:11)
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To: La Enchiladita

There is so much to cut out of the federal government’s mission creep before stranding the elderly who planned on and paid for these “benifits” in retirement. Make no mistake, for many of the elderly Social Security stands between paying the bills and being homeless. Not everyone can be a bankster or government union worker and someone was performing those low wage service jobs.

But, the elderly don’t riot and don’t understand what is happening to them. The Dems have committed to actually killing boomers with death care and most don’t have a clue. Now I guess that is not fast enough. They have to starve them to make them homeless, too.


25 posted on 11/14/2010 1:27:14 PM PST by SaraJohnson
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To: La Enchiladita

You are talking way too much common sense and freedom....along with the attendant virtues of self-discipline and prudence. ;-/


26 posted on 11/14/2010 1:27:36 PM PST by SumProVita (Cogito, ergo...Sum Pro Vita. (Modified Decartes))
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To: Cheetahcat

The money gone fools! And guess what? There are not enough people of working age to carry the load.


27 posted on 11/14/2010 1:28:28 PM PST by GlockThe Vote
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To: Cheetahcat

The money gone fools! And guess what? There are not enough people of working age to carry the load.


28 posted on 11/14/2010 1:28:28 PM PST by GlockThe Vote
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To: La Enchiladita
we baby boomers in our late 50's have been paid in the highest SS tax, for longer, and now we're supposed to believe that we're the problem....

what the hell have they done with OUR money from my hubby and I with a combined work history of over 75 working years....

GIVE ME BACK MY MONEY!

29 posted on 11/14/2010 1:30:22 PM PST by cherry
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To: La Enchiladita

Where is the Captain Obvious cartoon???


30 posted on 11/14/2010 1:30:44 PM PST by Le Chien Rouge
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To: Dixie Yooper
I'll be honest with you...I almost wish the government would tell people, after taking hundreds of thousands out of each of their their pay checks......It's all gone...We looted the fund...

I'd almost pay to watch the epic anger that will be directed at this government...

That is a show, I don't want to miss.

31 posted on 11/14/2010 1:31:02 PM PST by dragnet2
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To: GlockThe Vote

These people saying ‘just give me back what I put in’ are clueless. Might as well go to the casino and lose and say that.


32 posted on 11/14/2010 1:31:08 PM PST by Tolsti2
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To: Personal Responsibility
I know disabed people ....I also know fat asses who got a lawyer to get them onto the system and are receiving high SS payments due to their "disability" ...yet they travel, gamble,have sports cars, etc....

these are the creeps we support....

33 posted on 11/14/2010 1:32:25 PM PST by cherry
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To: La Enchiladita
LBJ and a Democratic Congress rewrote the original Social Security contract merging the SS Trust Fund with the general fund. Jimmy Carter led Congress to grant elderly immigrants SS annuities even though they had not paid a cent in withholding.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/socialsecurity/changes.asp

34 posted on 11/14/2010 1:37:08 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee (A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.)
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To: La Enchiladita

fact is, there are people that never worked and never contributed who are on SS and living long lives..there are people here as immigrants who state they are 65 without a BC and they get SS....an American marries a much younger person with children and they get SS....don’t get me started on the many on disability for the flimiest of reasons.


35 posted on 11/14/2010 1:37:35 PM PST by cherry
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To: La Enchiladita

But Obamacare will be just peachy.


36 posted on 11/14/2010 1:38:22 PM PST by dhs12345
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To: SunkenCiv
David Cote ... said he didn't realize... that the next decade will be disastrous to the nation's accounts ledger unless something drastic is done.

Then, David Cote is a dumbass. We were told, repeatedly, what the situation was and the man saying it was called a liar at best,a fear monger and much, much worse.

If we do not act to fix Social Security now, the only solutions will be dramatically higher taxes, massive new borrowing or sudden and severe cuts in Social Security benefits or other government programs.

■Just 13 years from now, in 2017, the government will begin to pay out more in Social Security benefits than it collects in payroll taxes – and shortfalls then will grow larger with each passing year.

■By the year 2027, the government will somehow have to come up with an extra $200 billion a year to keep the system afloat.

■By 2033, the annual shortfall will be more than $300 billion a year.

■By 2041, when workers in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt – unless we act now to save it.


37 posted on 11/14/2010 1:38:41 PM PST by Just A Nobody ( (Better Dead than RED! NEVER AGAIN...Support our Troops! Beware the ENEMEDIA))
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To: La Enchiladita

The fact of the matter is that boomers have floated SS and MC to date. Without the huge wave of boomers paying SS and MC, not to mention income, taxes all these years, the wheels would have come off long before. These programs are and always have been Ponzi schemes, and would have been indictable offenses if put forward by anyone but the Feds.

So, yes, the wheels are gonna come off, but it ain’t the fault of the boomers.


38 posted on 11/14/2010 1:42:10 PM PST by RedElement
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To: Normal4me
Enjoy my 30 years of contributions you old farts.

My wife and I were born in 1946. We are the first of the Baby Boomers to retire and collect S/S. And we both start on Medicare next year. We are in very good health, so who knows, maybe it will be 35 years, not 30?! Of course, we have our S/S checks direct deposited because we travel so much.

39 posted on 11/14/2010 1:42:22 PM PST by ExtremeUnction
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To: SumProVita

“My husband and I have put a lot of our money into the social security system over our lifetime. If we had been able to invest that same money as we saw fit....we’d be much better off today.”

This is the real tragedy Big Government democrats took away your financial freedom and forced you to invest in theses ponzi scheme.

This is just one of the reasons why i am conveced we must privatize and individualize Socail Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as soon as possable.
The sooner we get this money and “IOU’s” out of the hands of the same corrupt incompetent politicians that never could balance a budget the better off we will be.


40 posted on 11/14/2010 1:43:02 PM PST by Monorprise
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