Posted on 07/14/2011 10:39:16 AM PDT by Libloather
Reid: No Social Security checks without debt deal
AP – 10 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Echoing President Barack Obama's warning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says Social Security payments would stop if there is no deal to raise the government's borrowing limit by Aug. 2.
Speaking on the Senate floor, the Nevada Democrat said flatly that payments for veterans benefits and the military, as well as Social Security, would cease if the government defaults on its obligations. His statement goes beyond Obama, who said earlier this week that he could not guarantee Social Security checks will be issued on Aug. 3.
Later, a Reid spokesman said the senator meant to say the payments "could" stop, which would be consistent with the president's comments.
Republicans have called such statements scare tactics.
(Excerpt) Read more at my.news.yahoo.com ...
The last time I check him out he was just another old man with dementia...collecting tax dollars as his paycheck.
We need to make sure that in 2012 the Senate turns over to Republicans so that for the remainder of his time he goes to the back of the bus...
From what I understand, there is zero connection between VA and SS benefits and the debt ceiling deal. Zero.
I know from my involvement in the Amercian Legion that the Advanced Appropriations Law that passed last year ensures that in the event of any government shutdown, all of the VA hospitals continue to operate, including all vendor payments, etc.
This is an ENORMOUS OPENING if the GOP wants to take advantage of it.
You hold a press conference, and you say, look, everyone in DC knows that checks going out to SS recipients and the debt ceiling have literally no connection to one another.
If Reid and Obama want to arbitrarily hold up checks, that would be VOLUNTARY on their part. It would be their choice, and not something that the law is forcing them to do.
I would reming the President, that the American people, and most notably the generations of Americans that can’t vote yet, are already his hostages. He’s mortgaging their futures to buy votes, and that’s been too much the case for both parties for the last 60 years.
There is no more road down which to kick the can. The age of debt limit increases has come to an end, and the President has a unique historical opportunity - he could be the President that brought America back from the brink.
His could be the first Presidency that ended the suicidal tradition of national death by slow insolvency. We are unworthy of world leadership if we can’t right our own ship first.
These cuts we are talking about would be a start, not an end, and even he admits that we can’t continue to operate like this, which is why this is so baffling to us.
Apparently, SS brings in about $50 billion per month, and has obligations for about $29 billion per month. Thus, the obligations can indeed be paid, leaving $21 billion for zer0's favorite planned parenthood abortions, PBS, ACORN or the like. Furthermore, SS merely sends the tapes with the check info to the Treasury dept (aka, Geitner/zer0). No question on whose doorstep any non-payment of SS resides.
It's being done right now. Watch for even more apocalyptic statements over the next two weeks.
I would like to see the Federal Government NOT send out Social Security checks 1 time.
Can you imagine?
Millions of people don’t get what they are promised. Every politician would be run out of the country.
I cannot imagine any thing scarier that millions of REALLY angry Americans coming to Washington with blood in their eyes.
But I would love to see it.
“So, the dem’s are upping the ante. Time for the House to play their hand and pass the prioritized spending bill that puts defense, ss, and medicare as first to get paid.”
YUP.
And put in Reid’s hands and say - ‘here is your fix for that, Senator.’
We need to smoke out the scare tactics.
I heard something about the house introducing a bill to ensure that those checks will still go out. Don’t raise the debt limit, pass that bill and then challenge the Senate/WH to vote it down or veto it. Forcing the democrat party to take complete credit for not sending out checks will be a huge poison pill for them to swallow.
For those of you who don’t know Hairy’s background, let me school you.
I used to own a mortgage company in the mid 1980’s, and my specialty back then was financing hotel-casinos. Several owners of those casinos knew Dingy. He was a “bag man” for all the mafia owned strip clubs, and dabbled in land deals with Joe Conforte.
A real low life.
Harry Reid admits there is no Social Security Trust fund.
“I cannot imagine any thing scarier that millions of REALLY angry Americans coming to Washington with blood in their eyes.
But I would love to see it.”
I would too. It would be like a scene from “Night of the Living Dead.”
Old folks marching on DC with their walkers, or trailing their oxygen tanks, tubes sticking out of both nostrils.
A crush of old people in double knit polyester banging on the doors of the capitol with their canes.
Thousands of Lincolns, old Cadillacs, and Chryslers clogging DC, with thousands of other parked cars sideswiped and dinged.
Interstates and intersections clogged by cars driven by drivers that seemingly have two hands on the wheel, but no head.
Truly chilling.
Democrats thought they'd dammed up the truth about government's role in the financial crisis via Congress' Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. But the levies are breaking, thanks to a spate of rogue new books on the subject.
The latest, "Reckless Endangerment," shreds the narrative carefully constructed by Democrats and the liberal media that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were only bit players in the crisis and followed Wall Street into subprime lending.
It details how the federally chartered mortgage giants in fact led the way in relaxing underwriting standards for the entire industry — thanks to relentless pressure from Democrats, who used them as off-budget piggy banks to fund their social crusade to boost minority homeownership (and shore up their voting base).
Though "Reckless Endangerment" largely repeats what conservative books like "The Great American Bank Robbery" and "The Housing Boom and Bust" have said, "Reckless" is written by a New York Times business writer.
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NOTE: Harry Reid now says he regrets naming fellow Democrat Byron Georgiou to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. because of "ethical concerns" WRT Georgiou's tenure at the FCIC. "I wish I hadn't done it," Reid said. The Senate majority leader complained that Georgiou, one of six Democrats appointed to the 10-member panel, misled him about his affiliations.
Reid's sudden renouncement casts doubt on the FCIC's findings, which were released in its final report last January. The panel pinned the mortgage mess on Wall Street......when many savvy observers say Fannie and Freddy bore the responsibility.
more below
REFERENCE---BY MICHELLE MALKIN Fannie Mae serves as an industrial-sized patronage factory -- sharing profits with political allies, spreading taxpayer funds to voting blocs----like ethnic groups-----and doling out jobs to left-wing academics, Washington has-beens and back-scratching buddies. Obama insider Fannie Mae exec Jim Johnson got sweetheart loans from shady subprime Countrywide. Pols raked in six-figure salaries as F/F engaged in Enron-style accounting, plunged into debt and helped usher in the subprime housing meltdown through cockamamie lending practices.
Bill Clinton appointed Franklin Raines, Daley and Rahm Emanuel just as the quasi-governmental F/M engaged in rampant book-cooking so that F/M insider could help themselves to massive bonuses. The Chi/Tribune exposed how Emanuel's "profitable stint" was low-show w/ no work involved. Emanuel was not even assigned to committees, according to company proxy statements (more on Raines and Emanuel below).
Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other insiders qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, public records indicate. W/ Wall Street Emanuel there, accounting tricks were used to mislead shareholders about outsize profits F/M reaped from risky investments. The goal was to cook the books to keep fraudulent earnings on the books, to make Freddie Mac look profitable on paper-----AND to fraudulently obtain humongous annual bonuses for political insiders.
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Freddie and Fannie, the two big quasi-govt mortgage banks that HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED HUGE federal bailouts, had huge lobbying budgets that they used for political contributions to keep regulators off their backs.
So which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions.
The top three U.S. Senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and number two was then-Senator Barack Obama who had only been in the Senate four years but still managed to grab the number two spot ahead of John Kerry, decades in the senate, and Chris Dodd then-chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee.
Fannie and Freddie were creations of the Congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people, and as it turned out, some many many who couldn’t afford them.
Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions.
The Clinton Administration’s White House budget director Franklin Raines was appointed by Clinton to run Fannie........ and collected $50 million dollars. Jamie Gurilli Gorelick (now BP's attorney), a Clinton Justice Apartment Official, worked for Fannie and took home $26 million dollars in mfg bonuses.
Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama’s VP search committee hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job. Now remember, Obama’s ads and stump speeches attacked McCain and Republican policies for the financial turmoil. It is demonstrably not Republican policy and worse, it appears the man attacking McCain, Senator Obama, was at the head of the line when the piggy’s lined up at the Fannie and Freddie trough for campaign bucks...." - FoxNews, Sept. 2008
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report reported that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives.
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Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets (by cooking the books).
Ex-Fannie CEO Franklin Raines (Clinton appointee) is a parasitic crook of the first order. This thief cooked the FM books precipitating losses of $9BILLION (that we know of) for the single purpose of creating $50 million fraudulent bonuses for himself (and millions for other F/M insiders). The SEC said Raines broke accounting rules by playing with risky derivatives.
The US Government filed suit against Franklin Raines when the depth of the F/M accounting scandal became clear. READ IT HERE http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/fannie-charges/
The Government noted, "The 101 charges reveal how the individuals improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public.....explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner."
These charges were made in 2006. The Court ordered Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the misstated Fannie Mae profits. (Soon going to trial.)
Make no mistake, we democrats will everything we can to make sure that the people will be hurt first if we don’t get our way!
Why aren’t the pubs calling them out on that?
I know another ‘religion’ that uses this tactic also. Wonder who taught who? I do know that LDS is a baby among faiths.
I saw some of that at the 9/12/09 March on DC. Seniors there were angry over the death panels in Obamacare. They came in wheelchairs and on walkers. So don’t underestimate them! The Dems hold back SS at their own peril!
We heard all about Hayworth's associations (Abramoff) from the media, but nothing about Reid.
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