Greenspan Urges Reinstating Budget Rules [advocates SS cuts!]

[mumon]

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday Congress should reinstate budget rules that would force lawmakers to cover the estimated $1 trillion that it will cost to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent.

Greenspan said he favored reductions in government spending to pay for making the tax cuts permanent and suggested that one place to look should be in reducing the Social Security benefits paid to retirees.

Appearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Greenspan said he has been urging since the fall of 2002 that budget rules known as pay-go -- which require any tax cuts or increases in government entitlement spending be paid for by either raising taxes in other areas or cutting government spending -- be reinstated....


Greenspan, who chaired a Social Security commission during the Reagan administration, said that he ``strongly advocated'' indexing the retirement age to measurements that would capture longer life spans, forcing current workers to work longer before becoming eligible for Social Security benefits.




Wow! That's great- old people can eat cat food to pay for the Big Bush Tax giveaway!

It's time to sue that old codger for malpractice, and leave him with nothing but Social Security to live on.

[Frances]

1. Reduce Social Security

This should be a headline!

Greenspan is saying that the people who work at McDonald's for minimum wage should pay social security tax and not get the full benefit when they retire.

They pay their fair share into the system but they don't get their fair share out. All so Bush's super rich pals pay piddling income tax. Plus they get to pass all of their loot on to their kids without anybody paying tax on the loot.

[indepat]

6. And those social security taxes, not paid on higher incomes, are

subject to income tax in the year paid. So we put a payroll tax on lower incomes, make that tax subject to income tax, Excuse higher incomes from that tax, then renege on promised benefits so the most affluent won't have to send as large a percentage of their income to Uncle Sam as do lower-income people. By golly, I think I got it. This issue alone should be sufficient for every Democrat in the House and the Senate to censure Greenspan and for everyone in public office who concurs to be voted out of office. But what do I know?

[Hamlette]

2. disgusting

O'Niell talked about this in Suskind's book. He said he and Greenspan had a pact to make Bush and the congress adopt the pay-go principle but it was their intention at the time to do it to prevent the tax cuts from becoming permanent.

I knew it.

I knew it.

I knew it!

ALL OF THIS is to drown the federal government in the bathtub and in order to do that you have to get rid of social security.

Most of you are not old enough to worry about it. And some people my age have been lucky enough to save some for retirement. I'll tell you what gets you though: your parents. My dad's last illness, all 6 years of it, would have bankrupted our family to the 9th degree.

What pisses me off the most about the GOP is that many of them rely on safety nets for their family members (HELLO? Medicare???) yet they push these tax cuts as though it has nothing to do with them. Guess they figure they will be dead, or at least their parents will be, by the time the whole economy collapses.

Creep!!!!

Greenspan did NOTHING to help Clinton. Was always sniping at him, refused to lower interest rates. What a whore. He should be the second person the next Dem president replaces. Right after Ashcroft.

[lcordero]

3. "cut SS" is the code phrase for "we control the voting

machines and you can't do anything about it".

[MUAD_DIB]

4. In typical f@*k'n Republican fashion

Promise the world, ignore the problems, suck the coffers dry and expect somebody else to clean up the mess.

And just why Oh why does middle AmurKa put up with this bullshit time after time?

This country is overflowing with 21st c. peasants.

[movonne]

5. Link Please!!!!

[tlcandie]

9. Link requested ... also dupe ....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/02/12/national1311EST0625.DTL



See other topic started here on same article:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=360819

[jpak]

7. Greenspan just kicked the Third Rail

Sparks iz goin' to fly....

[Fovea]

8. I saw it differently

I saw him as daring the administration* to piss on the third rail in an election year.

[teryang]

10. F@*K Greenspan!

On addressing the issue of outsourcing jobs and the declining income of the "lower 80 percent" (Sen. Corzine) and the failure to address a new paradigm in international trade theory (Sen. Shumer), Greenspan (who appears to be getting largely out of date), brings up Adam Smith and individual achievement in the classroom.

If there are 5 million qualified software engineers in Asia willing to work for 20K a year, no amount of education is going to save American jobs in this area. When you open the domestic labor marketplace to unprotected competition from abroad, where the populations of highly literate and trained personnel are enormous, wages and labor markets are going to collapse domestically.

The state has to play a role in protecting its standard of living at home. Blind adherence to ideological notions of free trade and self correcting markets will be diastrous. The middle class of India, which is highly literate, is larger than the entire population of the US. Fortunately, the language barrier in China is still too great; when they master the english language, a world wide depression in labor will occur and American skilled jobs in some sectors will be completely wiped out.

Also Greenspan goes on about the benefits of education and individual achievement while ignoring the issues of supply and demand.

Corzine brings up the issue of US debt being held disproportionately in offshore Caribbean banks and Greenspan is dumbstruck. This has to do with US multinationals moving their profits offshore in sham transactions in order to avoid US taxation. These corporations are using American markets and infrastructure but not paying taxes.

Yet, Greenspan goes on at length about the benefits of law in encouraging commerce and economic growth when what we have is a manipulative, corrupt marketplace lacking entirely in integrity.

The diversion of SS funds to military uses, the intent to divert SS revenues to the stock market, the payment of SS benefits to the super rich, the regressive nature of the tax, and the intent to delay payments to eligible beneficiaries, all make me sick.

[stevebreeze]

11. Lets see we should cut SS benefits???? isn't SS collecting far more

then it pays out? of course it is. We (those of us who work for a paycheck) have been OVERPAYING SS every week of every year since the Greenspan commission recommended raising them in 1981.

Remember not too long ago at the first of the year how all those tax planning hint come out? It seem that if you delay paying a tax long enough the interest you earn on what you have deferred pays for some of the tax, thus reducing you tax burden. Again we have been overpaying for 20+ years. We should take a cut in SS so the rich can have even more? These bunch are just shameless criminals.

:kick:

[gate of the sun]

12. Well they've been wanting to do this all along

and I suspect one of the ways they could try and do it was bankrupting the country....bush doesn't dare do this before the election so let's just wait and see.....I'll tell you a story a women who lived in the town my Mother does couldn't afford her medicine and could barely afford to feed herself so she committed suicide.From talking to my Mother alot of people really suffering getting by on their SS so to cut it would be alot like murder.

[Ksec]

13. Greenspan is a Fascist

He should be lynched for supporting the destruction of a lifesaver for millions of retirees.

[hedgetrimmer]

14. Down with the Socialist bastards... reap back the funds and

funnel it up from the elderly who have banked away the money and raygun "borrowed" ... it is not enough, take more from the commies take it all, those socialist don't deserve to walk upon the same streets as us capitalist... to hell with them if they lived for 65 years and can't take care of themselves send them to mcdonalds and get to work... rape the coffers! Rape The Coffers! RAPE THE COFFERS!

sorry, just some anti-socialist regurgatation i've heard about..

greenspan needs a pay-cut. many blessings.

[brokensymmetry]

15. This is crazy.

The * admin makes provactive comments about exporting jobs. Then Greenspan starts talking about cutting SS. And they expect anyone to vote for them? :crazy: