Preserving our country’s long-term health requires addressing the growing cost of Social Security, President Obama said during his address to Congress Tuesday. But Obama’s biggest challenge will be convincing his fellow Democrats of this need. Liberals are concerned about possible benefit cuts, while some Democratic strategists worry that Obama’s political capital would be better spent on other priorities, such as health care. But others argue that now is an opportune time to seek bipartisan reform, because the stock market’s collapse has taken the idea of privatizing Social Security off the table. That had been the main stumbling block between Republicans and Democrats.
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
- Rage on Open thread 11/22
- cosmos_originally on Open thread 11/22
- Chas on Open thread 11/22
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/22
- Boxlock20 on Open thread 11/22
- satatom on Open thread 11/22
- JimJohnson on Open thread 11/22
38 Comments
Simply raise the cap.
Lets eat the elderly!
Aren’t they tough and stringy?
Mary I am just practicing in case I end up going to CPAC! You know “let them eat cake “ is so out dated.
But with a veg-o-matic and a George Foreman grill who knows! The children are tending to run away from Conservatives being afraid of the tendency to eat their young. Them old folks are not so fast anymore.
Been watching highlights from CPAC. Ann, Rush and Joe the Plumber maybe having an influence on me!
Good God I am starting to sound like Monkeyhawk… No offense.
I got mine: I don’t care about anyone else.
I am out of here for a bit not in a good mood as you might tell. Later…
I agree MP – raise the cap. In fact, I would probably remove it altogether.
I am sure that All those 20 year olds who are 40 years or more from retirement are mighty reticent about putting their inflatable social security dollars in the stock market.
They might actually get in when it is down to record lows. Yikes.
But . . . . but . . . . but . . . weren’t we just told not long ago that SS didn’t need reform? That talk of having to “fix” SS was just an attempt to gut it?
Why, yes, we were. By some of those same voices now expressing concern.
Disingenuous? Yup. Gosh – imagine that. In the meantime, Democrats shamelessly demogogued the issue, using fear to drive senior votes.
Sorry. Democrats have NO credibility on this issue.
I agree MP – raise the cap. In fact, I would probably remove it altogether.
That will of course, make most conservatives go ballistic. Why should someone making 100 grand a year contribute for a social insurance program going to someone else’s elderly parents?
I think the question kinda answers itself, but what do I know? I’m the kinda doofus who actually thinks government >i>could have saved a thousand or so people who died in Katrina, and that monitoring volcanoes isn’t a bad idea.
.ut . . . . but . . . . but . . . weren’t we just told not long ago that SS didn’t need reform? That talk of having to “fix” SS was just an attempt
to gut it?
That would be because it was, and indisputably so. The last time a Republican did anything to seriously fix Social Security (as opposed to destroy it) was when Bob Dole worked with the Democrats in 1985. And he deserves kudos for that, by the way.
That would be because it was, and indisputably so
Uh, no. I call bullsh**.
The one thing that is absolutely certain in this world is that when a liberal says something is indisputable, that’s when you look most closely. It almost certainly is not.
What Bush’s proposal really did was open the door to exploring real options to reform. Instead of walking together through that door, and de-electrifying that third rail of politics by participating in exploring reform options together, the Democrats instead proceeded to shamelessly demogogue the issue, playing on fear to court seniors.
Shame on you.
I don’t remember exactly remember the comment Bob Hope made about Social Security, but it was ‘dead on.’ Hope, worth hundreds of millions of dollars was getting his Social Security check like clock work.
That says a lot about the system that is broken and sends out checks blindly.
oops, subtract one of those “remembers”…early…coffee…yes..more coffee…
I think that removing the cap would be the way to go at least for a while. Another idea that would probably help even more is to force all of Congress to be placed in the Social Security system instead of their current tax payer funded retirement plan that allows them to draw full salary for life. Put them in SS and watch it get fixed then!!!!!
This was a worry that we progressives had with Obama on the campaign trail.
Don’t know which wing-nut got to him, but Social Security is the only program that runs a surplus.
Sure, you can crunch numbers to show 50 years out that we’re headed for a problem, or you can assume that growth we’ve had in the past is going to continue in which case there’s no problem.
A lot of ideas that people have put forward are not workable:
BAD IDEA 1. “Means test” it.
In other words, rich people should not be able to draw SS. That makes SS a program that rich (i.e. powerful) people have no vested interest in, so it could much more easily be cut or eliminated.
Programs for the poor become “poor” programs.
BAD IDEA 2. Eliminate the cap at 90,000 dollars.
The way SS works is that the more you pay in, the more you get back.
So if you pay in hundreds of thousands a year, then you should get hundreds of thousands a year back when you retire.
Do we really want a government pension program paying Bill Gates or Magic Johnson 1.5 million a year?
BAD IDEA 3. Let people divert money from SS to invest in stocks and bonds
Hehehe, check your 401k’s.
*****
Possible good ideas:
* Let the government invest some portion of SS money in relatively safe investments. This idea was rejected by CONs at the time of SS’s founding as socialism, but state pensions have been doing well (for the most part) investing in private stocks and bonds.
* Raise the retirement age for certain professions such as white collar work that doesn’t require “heavy lifting.” It only makes sense given our longer life-spans.
* Pay down the national debt as soon as the economy recovers (as Clinton was doing) so that SS surpluses can be saved instead of instantly spent as we do now.
The simple fact is that before SS, 40 percent of retirees lived in poverty. After, it was 10 percent. Today, without SS, exactly 40 percent of retirees would live in poverty again.
This is a “big government” program that has worked for over 70 years. Just because the CONs don’t like it and have never liked it is no reason to abandon what has been proven to work.
Let people invest social security in their home mortgages and other real estate.
“BAD IDEA 3. Let people divert money from SS to invest in stocks and bonds
Hehehe, check your 401k’s.”
hehehe. Yeah Capn. When stocks go up, will you kindly Let people make their own decisions? Thanks for looking out for all of us, but I think people should be able to make that decision for themselves.
That is of course the whole idea associated with liberty and freedom. Such archaic concepts I know to a progressive liberal.
“…will you kindly Let people make their own decisions?”
———
Too many will end up spending that money to be less hungry today. Social security works. How many Republicans who profess social security goes against “liberty and freedom” turn down those dollars when they or their parents reach the age of drawing those funds.
Republicans, if you want to wander in the wilderness for many years and become truly forgotten as a political philosophy, all you need to do is threaten the security of social security.
Go ahead, put your actions where your mouths are. We’ll stand back and watch.
Good answer, Linda.
RFL, but you can’t have it both ways. You either have security as in social security or you have freedom to invest.
If some people are allowed to invest and lose their money, do we then just let them starve for making what turned out to be bad investments?
We’re either responsible for each other’s basic survival needs or we’re not.
I believe that in the richest country in the world, we are.
Is it possible Republicans don’t know how many ‘boomers’ there are? Or maybe they don’t know the age of the oldest of those ‘boomers?’
A political party which already lacks adequate numbers to win an election might want to study up on how many fall in that ‘boomer’ category.
“How many Republicans who profess social security goes against “liberty and freedom” turn down those dollars ….”
Liberal meme:
Only the people who vote to support big government are supposed to accept the pennies on the dollar in return for their deposits.
This meme has no basis in logic. Everybody accepts government money because government money is EVERYBODY’s money.
If you oppose bigger government, but government grows and taxes you more to pay for itself, you are still paying into big government the same as everyone else not because you want to but because you have no choice on the matter.
I believe that in the richest country in the world, people can find a way to invest for themselves while they are young and do so in a manner that does not lead to starvation.
RFL,
I know a bunch of Democrats who save and invest in addition to the money that is withheld for F.I.C.A. and Medicare. Is it only Democrats who are capable of taking care of themselves and making sure most American citizens have some financial and medical security in their older years?
But go ahead with your plans. Spread your ideas far and wide, loudly proclaim your plans. It might help your party that already doesn’t have enough votes to win an election.
Face it. SS is a big chunk of bucks and nothing attracts a politician like a pile of money.
And why shouldn’t Bob Hope have gotten his checks? He earned them. If he made extra millions, power to him. I’m sure he paid a lot of taxes every year.
The problem with SS is keeping the grasping political hands off.
Dennis
accept the pennies on the dollar in return for their deposits
False.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1227/p01s03-cogn.html
By doing it yourself, you can stow some money in the stock market, and over the long run will get a better return on that investment than today’s Social Security system offers.
The idea is broadly accepted. That’s why the administration’s plan to partially privatize the system sounds appealing to many. But that better return won’t always happen.
Just ask Stanley Logue of San Diego.
For 45 years, the defense-industry analyst paid into the system until his retirement in 1994. But with all the recent hoopla over reform, Mr. Logue, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, decided to go back and check his own records. Would he have done better investing his money than the bureaucrats at the Social Security Administration?
He recorded all the payroll taxes he paid into the system (including the matching amount from his employer), tracked down the return the Social Security Trust Fund earned for each of the 45 years, and then compared the result with what he would have gotten had he been able to invest the same amount of payroll tax money over the same period in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (including dividends).
To his surprise, the Social Security investment won out: $261,372 versus $255,499, a difference of $5,873.
From the same article:
Under Britain’s privatized pension system, so many retirees are doing so poorly at this moment [2004] that a commission warned this fall that widespread poverty among the elderly may be returning, which could require massive new government spending.
CONs address public policy with their theology first. They come up with the solution and then lie and manipulate facts to support it.
They hate the very idea of Social Security on economic theology despite it’s the most successful governmental program in the history of Western Civilization.
The “crisis” with Social Security is a demographic blip, the classic “Pig in a Python” that’ll happen with Baby Boomers reaching retirement age and living longer than their grandparents (largely due to Social Security and Medicare protections). But even we Baby Boomers will die off and the Social Security system will return to an easily-sustainable — and essential — safety net.
RFL,
“I believe that in the richest country in the world, people can find a way to invest for themselves while they are young and do so in a manner that does not lead to starvation.”
Does that include all those millionaires who invested everything they had so wisely with Madoff? Social Security is all some of them have to live on now!
Maybe you are so astute and so downright lucky that you’ll never need a safety net, but normal people investing in the market as it currently stands are taking slightly more risk with their retirement than they would at a Blackjack table.
LMAO!
Bob Hope on Zombies and Democrats. He was ahead of his time!
http://www.liberalquicksand.com/humor/1274/bob-hope-talking-about-zombies-and-democrats/
They hate the very idea of Social Security
It is this tripe that prevents real solutions, and keeps SS the third rail it is. When Democrats quit demonizing Republicans by ascribing false motives, then we can get somewhere.
What democrats have demonstrated is that they’re not interested in a fix, they’re interested in using the issue as a political club. Thus the demonization and false motives club noted above.
Obama has opened the door to do otherwise. I wish him luck; with his “allies” in Congress, he’ll need it.
No, “GMC70″ –
The problem is when CONs talk about “fixing” Social Security, they use the term the same way one refers to “fixing” their dog.
MH –
I’ll be blunt and to the point. Speaking as a conservative, Bullsh**.
GMC70
Posted February 27, 2009 at 8:35 am | Permalink
What Bush’s proposal really did was open the door to exploring real options to reform. Instead of walking together through that door, and de-electrifying that third rail of politics by participating in exploring reform options together, the Democrats instead proceeded to shamelessly demogogue the issue, playing on fear to court seniors.
—
Although I’m sure it looked just this way to you, a guy comfortable with the GOP in power and who believes that in his heart he can devine the true motives of Bush conservatives, you’re wrong.
At least from the outside, from the pov of the Democrats you accuse of demogoguing the issue, who the heck knew what Bush was up to?
Look at the context:
1. Bush was in the pocket of Grover Norquist’s Club for Growth. Norquist has written extensively about his desire to shrink government down to a size manageable enough to drag it to the bathtub to drown it.
2. Karl Rove had talked Bush into running on something called the Ownership Society. Rove is on record having written that the New Deal was a colossal mistake and that his fervent wish was to dismantle it all, even FICA.
3. In 2002 the Democrats caved in and voted to grant Bush the power to invade Iraq if necessary. Bush openly and obviously ginned up the “if necessary” part, to the Democrats’ dismay we ended up fighting a ricidulous and completely unnecessary war..that Bush used shamelessly to his political ends (terrorism alerts, all manner of talk of mushroom clouds, 9/11, and the demonization of Democrats including a roundhouse from the heels delivered to John Kerry.
Given all that the Democrats would have been idiots to “walk together through that door” since Bush had clearly shown them the other side held death preceded by humiliation and ridicule at the hands of a man no Democrat respected.
Of course you couldn’t or wouldn’t see that, but believe me it’s a far better explanation of what happened than the Democrats inexplicably “proceede[ing]to shamelessly demogogue the issue, playing on fear to court seniors.”
It ain’t like the Democrats didn’t have perfectly understandable motives.
“GMC70″ explains –
“MH -
I’ll be blunt and to the point. Speaking as a conservative, Bullsh**.”
Ah! The eloquent debating tactics of a trained legal mind….
“GMC70″ explains –
“MH -
I’ll be blunt and to the point. Speaking as a conservative, Bullsh**.”
Ah! The eloquent debating tactics of a trained legal mind….
Oops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.
?????? ????-????? 2008 ???? ?? 200 ??. ???? ????????. ??????!!!
+7 960 200 9209