I agree; however, those seniors have been paying out SS and medicare taxes all their lives and should reap the benefits. It's not an easy situation. The real problem occurs when you have a politican trying to bankrupt those two vaults by letting guys like you and me take it from them...
I'll let you do it....SS has been in effect , bankrupt for all intents and purposes...You and I pay into SS now so they can give it to elderly today but they are not getting $$ that was set aside for them 50 years ago, they are getting $$ that they took out of our check's last week....also, look at the Federal budget pie and you will see how much goes to those programs each year....if you recall Clinton put in a welfare reform bill ot help save it...I read once where the fed gov't has spent approximately trillion dollars on these social programs since 1968.....has the gap between rich and poor changed with these programs or increased?
The democrats want another charmer like Clinton in thee whitehouse. He can get blowjobs from his interns and create a smokescreen while these "good' politicians rape the public purse. Obviously the Iraq thing now seems also a farce. Damn politicians they're all the same, SCUM.
Lot's of false info and assumption is there. SS is currently not bankrupt in fact there is currently a SS surplus (that should be used to offset impending increased drawdowns that *could* bankrupt SS) that Bush administration is planning on raiding to offset those tax breaks to top .01 of Americans. HHS and Medicare costs *have* grown out of control - but they cannot be blamed for "bankrupting" any pension plans that I know of. The rise in these costs also has much to do with the aging population and the dismal state of healthcare economics in this country. Hardly a simple indictment of HHS/Medicare Welfare (other than Medicare = less than $100 Billion out of 2 Trillion plus federal budget) This is the biggest lie in government. The amount of federal and state dollars that actually get spent on poverty fighting programs like food stamps, homeless shelters, and child nutrition, etc. is less than 3 months of the Pentagon's current peacetime operating budget. Googled this up: Conservatives and liberals alike use this claim as proof that federal poverty programs don't work, since after all that "lavish" spending, people are still poor. But spending on AFDC, the program normally referred to as welfare, totaled less than $500 billion from 1964 to 1994--less than 1.5 percent of federal outlays for that period, and about what the Pentagon spends in two years. To get the $5 trillion figure, "welfare spending" must be defined to include all means-tested programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, student lunches, scholarship aid and many other programs. Medicaid, which is by far the largest component of the $5 trillion, goes mostly to the elderly and disabled; only about 16 percent of Medicaid spending goes to health care for AFDC recipients. ("What Do We Spend on 'Welfare'?," Center for Budget and Policy Priorities) Furthermore, the poverty rate did fall between 1964 and 1973, from 19 percent to 11 percent, with the advent of "Great Society" programs. Since the 1970s, economic forces like declining real wages as well as reduced benefit levels have contributed to rising poverty rates.
you need to take budget 101 ( im joking about thid because it is very complex)...THERE IS NO SURPLUS....In fact with our fed budget there was never a true surplus....it works like this...i If my budget projection says i will received X amount of revenue over the next 10 years and I received more then projected....they call it a surplus.....so what they do is start figuring in year one where to spend that surplus even though they are now projecting out over 9 years and have not yet collected all the revenues or PAID BACK THE treasury DEBT....A lot of these so called surpluses were mythical in nature and based on huge cap.gains tax revenue from 1995 that fueled the gov't...they never thought about the fact that ifthemarket flops....no more cap gains rev...Last year 30% of all the revenue received by the gov't was put into SS.....does this sound like a plan that is not essentially bankrupt and has real surpluses??? If that is the case and they are sitting on a pile of ss $$, shouldn't;t they ease the SS tax burden we now are face with? it';s all smoke and mirrors.
Budget 101 huh? If only it were that simple. This is a point of great debate for sure - but it is completely incidental to the original discussion (not irrelevant - just incidental). The fact remains however that SS is not currently bankrupt and the current surplus is derived from revenue IN HAND - not simply projected. For example: According to the 2000 Social Security Trustees Report, the Social Security fund spent less than 75 percent of what they collected in 1999, leaving a surplus of nearly $134 billion for the year. They now have more than $896 billion in their surplus account (closer to 1.2 trillion now I think) The problem is that, according to projections made by the Trustees, the fund actually will begin spending more than it takes in around the year 2015, and the surplus will be depleted in about 2037. After that, the amount collected will only pay about two-thirds of the benefits guaranteed to retirees, survivors, and the disabled. In 1983, a similar shortfall (the fund was completely wiped out that year) caused Congress to raise the payroll tax.
enter how much money you paid and it breaks it up into the different catagories http://www.nationalpriorities.org/taxes/IncomeTaxCHart.html#
Hey, leave me out of this. I didn't vote them in, therefore, I'm not guilty by association. Actually, as Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff, President of Huxley College, from "Horse Feathers". "I don't know what they have to say, it makes no difference anyway, whatever it is, I'm against it. No matter what it is or who commenced it, I'm against it. Your opposition may be good, but let's have one thing understood, whatever it is, I'm against it. And even when you've changed it or condensed it, I'm against it."
very cool link - thanks... and who said deficits weren't bad!? oh yeah, and fuck the military, too...and fuck the space shuttle also -- why the fuck do we need like 6 of them?? they cost how much -- $500bil each??? christ al-fucking-mighty...what a waste...just so we can see if peas can grow in zero gravity....will wonders never cease...