Gutting Social Security

[eaprez]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04049/274402.stm

Editorial: Social insecurity / Cutting retirement benefits to pay for a tax cut

Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Alan Greenspan's latest prescription for fiscal responsibility hasn't gotten widespread attention, which is probably a good thing. It makes no sense to institutionalize huge tax cuts if it puts Social Security at risk.

The Federal Reserve chairman and economic guru for assorted presidents told the House Financial Services Committee last week that Congress should make President Bush's tax cuts permanent and -- here's the political bombshell -- pay the $1 trillion cost by cutting Social Security and other entitlement programs.

Specifically, Mr. Greenspan told lawmakers they should consider raising the retirement age and use a less generous formula for figuring Social Security's annual cost-of-living adjustment, which was 2.1 percent this year.

Does Mr. Bush really want to run for re-election from a platform that includes cutting Social Security? With 77 million Americans in the baby boom generation nearing retirement, we doubt it.

Mr. Greenspan's musings put him in danger of occupying the same unwitting spoiler's role he held during the 1992 campaign, when he was accused by some in that Bush camp of failing to sufficiently trumpet revival of the economy under the president's father, who went on to lose to Bill Clinton.

In lecturing the House panel last week, the Fed chief warned that it would be better to rethink Social Security and other entitlements now than to find out later that there is not enough money to pay for them.

"My real concern is that when the time comes to start to pay these benefits, we're going to find that we are in very serious fiscal difficulty," Mr. Greenspan said. "I do think it's important for the people who are retiring to have a sense of security that what is being promised to them as they retire will indeed be there."

Precisely. That's the very point that we and other tax cut opponents have been making all along. It makes no sense to institutionalize huge tax cuts -- mostly for upper-income individuals who will never have to worry about making ends meet in old age -- if the result is to steal small retirement stipends from the very people who will need them the most.

[revcarol]

1. The ones who would lose the most:

women. A MAJORITY of the population.

I think we should be trumpeting this around. Greenspan is a tool for Bush.

[Sugarbleus]

2. I've been following this subject a bit by way

of committee meetups of various groups on C-span. It is a scary thought. I don't believe it's implausible to think this could have been a pre designed setup by the neocons since forever..run the deficit up so we HAVE to cut programs he he he

bastards :grr:

[The Zanti Regent]

3. Remember what Norquist said

That pig said that the happiest day of his life will occur when Social Security and Medicare are repealed.

I hope the pig gets a crippling stroke and winds up begging on the streets!

[MasonJar]

4. I guess Stump has discovered that Social Security is a federal

program, just another one to rape and pillage. Companies and citizens put this money in for their retirement. It should not be subject to any other use.

[Moderator]

5. eaprez

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
news source.

Thank you.


DU Moderator

[teryang]

6. The federal government will never cut FICA

...revenues. They may gut the benefits. They may give the revenues to their cronies in the defense contractor and health contractor business, but they will never give up this regressive tax which weighs most heavily on the working people of this nation.

The truth is that the federal government and its programs including the defense department couldn't possibly survive without converting social security revenues. This is the huge fraud on the taxpayer.

When the baby boomers start collecting in earnest, the rich and the corporations will have to start paying taxes again. Otherwise you're gonna have a bunch of sixty year old plus terrorists running around.

[Chicago Democrat]

7. I so agree with you!

Well said! Remember those FICA taxes are completely regressive! Only paid by the poor.

[strategery blunder]

8. Social security might survive without huge cuts

But it will require the political will to repeal the ceiling on the income subjected to the Social Security tax.

Also, I don't like the thought of this country running huge deficits, but as long as it does, why not put Social Security revenues in Treasuries to increase the trust fund's growth rate?

I am NOT advocating privatazation; investing in Treasuries is a lot different than "investing" in Enron. Furthermore, I believe that such Treasuries should be allowed to mature so the Social Security fund would not be subject to market speculation.

This won't completely solve the problem, but it will help to ease the pain. Also it would help if the $$$ wasn't spent on other things like Halliburton.