Posted on 08/29/2011 11:34:13 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is standing firm in insisting that Social Security, the federal government’s insurance programs for retirees and disabled, is a Ponzi scheme designed to deceive the young.
In a weekend campaign stop in Ottumwa, Iowa, Perry, who has surged into the lead in the Republican presidential sweepstakes in at least one major poll, repeated his characterization of the social insurance program that is generally supported by the electorate. He has made the same point before, especially in his book, “Fed Up!,” though at one point his campaign tried to explain that he had softened his language.
“It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people,” Perry insisted. “The idea that they’re working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie.”
At a later stop in Des Moines, he also threw cold water on his own campaign’s efforts to portray his position in a more tempered light. “I haven’t backed off anything in my book. So read the book again and get it right,” he said.
Perry’s stand is the type of vintage ferocity that the governor has generated in his Texas political career and even in his limited time as a GOP presidential hopeful. For example, he has suggested that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke would be behaving in a “treasonous” fashion, if he loosened the money supply in a presidential election year.
Despite complaints from some quarters that his choice of words in condemning the Fed was too strong, Perry has stood firm in that area as well, raising questions about when a colorful and forceful position crosses the line into political gaffe.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
He’s correct, but for those of us who have watched the Gov. over the years, talking a good game is his specialty.
BUUUTT someone said he's the only one who can beat Obama
He needs a new qualifier for the term ‘conservative’ to make him sound new
‘Compassionate conservative’??.... taken
‘Common sense conservative’??.... taken
HMMMM???
How about ‘creative conservative’?
If he’s photo-oping with La Raza and ACORN, what does he need my support for? Convince Obama to bring you on his ticket in 2012, and be done with it Perry.
How about “Creative Fraud “
I figure if we’re lucky we have at most 2 years to make drastic changes to reduce government spending, and the largest of these is health care and the interest on the debt. If we haven’t achieved anything by then, interest rates will increase and I see no way out from there.
” If he’s photo-oping with La Raza and ACORN, what does he need my support for? Convince Obama to bring Perry on his ticket in 2012, and be done with it Perry. “
Perry is a dutiful, pragmatic whore.....he can replace Biden : )
With his proclivity for forgetting what he supported in the past, how about “the Dimentia Conservative”?
I guess we could call him the Scampering Conservative.
We could support him as the “Man for All Reasons”, or we could support him as a Reagan Conservative, since he won’t remember who Reagan was anyway.
He clearly doesn’t remember the difference between Democrats and Republicans during the 80s. He doesn’t remember any reasons why he shouldn’t have backed Gore. He doesn’t remember any reasons why supporting open borders was wrong. He still doesn’t quite grasp why we need walls, even after going to Israel to see what they did to protect their citizens.
Ah who cares. He’s the perfect guy to lead folks who have complained about many of the things he has done, when Democrats were doing them. Now some of my buds here want him to lead us.
Here we go again, nature walks over into the mystical land of Marxism.
One truly wonders what these people think Conservatism stands for? They’ve been here for years, and still think Perry is bedrock Conservative.
Good grief.
Well, if you think about it, he certainly has the foot-in-mouth lame brain routine down pat. “Oh I didn’t really mean that...”
Sound familiar?
Am I being propositioned? On FR? Whoa Nellie!
Too familiar : )
Is Jim Robinson a RINO? Perry was on his list. He mentioned that he preferred Palin though.
I agree with you. I think that we need to get away from the $20 copay. HMO’s have ruined the Health industry. If you have the flu and have to go to the doctor you should just pay for it. Health insurance should really be for serious illness and injury. I carry a $2,500 deductible so I basically pay for everything unless its really serious. I have no problem with that.
I’m just pointing out that there are a lot of ideas out there that we should be looking at to lower the cost of health coverage.
You’re right. Congress actually created the HMO problem when they passed the HMO Act of 1973, which required private employers with 25 or more employees to offer federally certified HMO options IF they also offered traditional health insurance plans to employees. HMOs had been lobbying for it for years, and they basically used the force of government to push their way into the employer-employee relationship. Anyone who thinks that private health insurance companies aren’t screwed up simply doesn’t understand the health insurance industry. The private health insurance companies are protected from competition by almost insurmountable regulatory barriers. The costs of market entry are enormous, and these companies pay politicians to keep the regulations in place. We don’t have a free market in health care, even on the private side. If we had a free market in health care, the cost of care would decrease, like it has with plastic surgery and vision correction surgery.
Because I have pretty serious health issues I spend a lot of time in Doctors offices and hospitals. The biggest problem I see for health insurance costs is that people are programmed to run to the Docs every time they get a sniffle or stub their toe because TV runs all these “Preventative medicine - don’t wait” (Does a 20 year old really ‘need’ prostate exams?) and “Ask your doctor if Snarfblat is right for you” commercials... Oprah and co. tell parents they are abusers if they don’t run their kid straight into the Ritalin factory if he isn’t a docile post turtle etc.
And so we are a nation of hypochondriacs. All the totally unneeded ‘care’ costs a fortune... and it has to be paid for.
Or we could act with a little intelligence and save the Doc trips for when they are truly needed/warranted and bring the costs down.
Agreed. My Doc has been harrassing me for 5 years to get a colonoscopy. I told her that colon cance does not run in my family and I have no problems that I am aware of and basically I am not planning on having one unless I develop a problem. She is totally annoyed with me. They just want to make everyone have one because now that they have come up with this procedure they want to do a million of them at $1,000 each. Forget it.
According to today's accounting rules, any legal entity with a wholly-owned subsidiary that declares "assets" that are debts of that same entity, or another wholly-owned subsidiary, has committed a major no-no. Wholly-owned subsidiaries are supposed have their books consolidated with the parent's.
By that standard, SSA has no assets. Also, the Treasury securities issued to SSA don't exist as real liabilities.
Someone could muddy the issue and say that SSA isn't like a wholly-owned subsidiary because it isn't owned, but the lines of authority make it clear that it's a subsidiary of FedGov. The Treasury is under the President; so is the SSA. Their top bosses both serve at pleasure of the President of the United States. By the pragmatists' duck criterion, SSA is a de facto wholly-owned subsidiary of the U.S. government by the lines-of-authority test. So is Treasury. Thus, they should be consolidated.
Seen in this light, there's a better analogy for Social Sercurity: Enron.
I should note that applying the consolidation rule means that Treaury debt is significantly lower than the stated total. Debt held by SSA shouldn't be counted in the total. That means the total funded debt load of the U.S. government isn't 100% of GDP; it's more like 70%. Of course, the unfunded liabilities (using the moral-obligation standard) are much higher.
Watch the personal attacks.
If you don’t like being told that your posts are idiotic garbage then stop posting idiotic garbage.
It is really that simple.
The legal claim held by SSA is much stronger and can only be restructured by a vote of congress, not the executive as in most business entities.
Because the claim is stronger than a normal subsidiary, I think the SSA Trust Funds should be treated as a separate entity. And that the treasury should report the debt. And SSA should report the unfunded liabilities as well as the trust fund growth projections.
That would put pressure on SSA to do better reporting on the status of their trust fund vs projected liabilities than they do today. And it would put pressure on Congress to bring down the total debt.
Perry is not wrong, it does resemble a ponzi scheme because the trust fund is not large enough to cover the liability that was incurred. And they are using way too much of current SSI taxes just to pay the liabilities incurred yesteryear.
The Treasury debt to SSA is reported as footnotes to the financial statements. And of course SSA's separate entity report shows it in full.
You can see a report on the SSA trust fund here.
SSA Trust Fund Data
SSA Trust Fund
SSA Trust Fund Outlook
The fund is sitting on $2.4 Trillion in Debt owed to it by the U.S. Treasury. SSA currently pays out $585 Billion a year in benefits, so the trust fund is sufficient to cover 4 years, if they stopped the program today. In My opinion it needs to be at least 15 x current benefits, just for those already retired.
I think they should actually split the OASI trust fund into three parts. Survivors Insurance should be it's own fund. And then the SSA fund needs to be split into an endowment for those retired. And an endowment for those still working. When someone retires, they should shift an appropriate amount of funds from the working fund to the retirement fund.
It makes no sense to report the way SSA does now that the trust fund is 400% of current outlays.
So President Obama's threat during the debt-ceiling flap was no more than hot air? He did say that Social Security payments would be threatened if the debt ceiling - the Teasury debt ceiling - wasn't raised.
If what you said was true, then a debt-ceiling freeze would not affect SSI assets until its holdings shrunk to zero.
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