If the Sun Rises in the East Today, You Can Bet the President's Lying
Just read a great post at the deliciously-named Frog Soup blog, and wanted to share some of it with you. It's titled Eskimo Retirement Party (!!), and it contains some seriously worthwhile information contradicting the lie Preznit Prevaricate keeps telling anyone who'll listen -- that seniors 55 and older will not be affected by privatizing Social Security. Here's an excerpt from Monkey99's post:
"He made the same statement in this year's SOTU speech, so I'll quote him dirctly from the whitehouse website:
'I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you; for you, the Social Security system will not change in any way. (Applause.)'
"Actually, according to his own plan, at least any sketch of it he has allowed the public to see, this statement is a lie. For retired or nearly retired Americans, the Social Security system will change in a fundamental and drastic way. It's going to lose its sole source of funding: payroll taxes. According to the commonly circulated but-not-quite-official White House proposal, as much as a third of payroll taxes (for starters) will be diverted into individual accounts. That money is currently used to fund retirees' benefits. Now, the missing funding, in order to keep the president's promise, will have to be made up somehow from the general budget. Either taxes will have to be raised (snort!) or, let's be serious, the money will have to be borrowed.
"I hear a lot of buzz about the extra borrowing, but not a lot about the fact that the 'grandfathered in' traditional Social Security beneficiaries will basically be standing in the same line as everyone else for their benefits. Gone will be the dedicated funding stream. And I guarantee that once the Republicans are finished cutting taxes on unearned wealth as close to zero as they can manage, they will magically metamorphize back into budget hawks. There will be nothing keeping them from cutting those benefits except a promise. Look at all the other programs Bush has promised money to, how are those programs doing?"
And to see just how the Preznit's evil plan would work in real life, here's a study, courtesy of Senator Barbara Boxer and the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, of three counties in Texas that opted for privatized accounts for their public employees in lieu of Social Security. The bottom line is that the public employees got screwed, and that they all would have been better off sticking with Social Security in the first place.
Quelle surprise!
"He made the same statement in this year's SOTU speech, so I'll quote him dirctly from the whitehouse website:
'I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you; for you, the Social Security system will not change in any way. (Applause.)'
"Actually, according to his own plan, at least any sketch of it he has allowed the public to see, this statement is a lie. For retired or nearly retired Americans, the Social Security system will change in a fundamental and drastic way. It's going to lose its sole source of funding: payroll taxes. According to the commonly circulated but-not-quite-official White House proposal, as much as a third of payroll taxes (for starters) will be diverted into individual accounts. That money is currently used to fund retirees' benefits. Now, the missing funding, in order to keep the president's promise, will have to be made up somehow from the general budget. Either taxes will have to be raised (snort!) or, let's be serious, the money will have to be borrowed.
"I hear a lot of buzz about the extra borrowing, but not a lot about the fact that the 'grandfathered in' traditional Social Security beneficiaries will basically be standing in the same line as everyone else for their benefits. Gone will be the dedicated funding stream. And I guarantee that once the Republicans are finished cutting taxes on unearned wealth as close to zero as they can manage, they will magically metamorphize back into budget hawks. There will be nothing keeping them from cutting those benefits except a promise. Look at all the other programs Bush has promised money to, how are those programs doing?"
And to see just how the Preznit's evil plan would work in real life, here's a study, courtesy of Senator Barbara Boxer and the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, of three counties in Texas that opted for privatized accounts for their public employees in lieu of Social Security. The bottom line is that the public employees got screwed, and that they all would have been better off sticking with Social Security in the first place.
Quelle surprise!
posted by Generik at 8:57 AM
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