Lucius Flatley convened a special session of the coffee house philosophers this week to discuss the flatulent information on Social Security that has recently been polluting the national air. Because the group had discussed Social Security just a few weeks ago, he apologized for “harping on the subject.” But with the first meaningful proposal for changes now on the table, he felt it was time to expose the scare tactics employed by the Chicken Littles who are predicting a collapse of the security sky – and to offer some background.
There are, he told the group, several constants about Social Security that everyone should keep in mind, especially when Tea Party bull poop hits the airways. These doomsayers who are using Social Security as a whipping boy should be lashed with wet Fox News noodles-perhaps administered by one of its vacuous news commentators. (Why does the old saw about the mental capacity of blondes have to be so consistently reinforced by the commentators hired by Fox News?)
The basic facts:
Social Security is not broke. The system was designed to be a self-sustaining trust fund and it has in fact, performed beyond forecasts. Every dollar taken in has been invested in gilt-edged securities. According to its balance sheet, it will not begin to enter risky financial waters until 2035 (by which time the tea party will be only a painful memory). The problems of alleged bankruptcy originate with the quality of the trust fund investments – gilt-edged as they seemed to be. Unfortunately, these are government IOUs, obligations which, if we are to believe these Claghorns of doom, need not be met.
Flatley called to the attention of the group a historical screwing of the middle class engineered by an earlier “reform” of Social Security. Designed by the economist Alan Greenspan, he of the Bush financial debacle and second greatest Depression in history, and enabled by that great Republican, Ronald Reagan, a shell pea game was played on the working American public. General income taxes were reduced on those with higher incomes, while the Social Security withholding was raised sharply on workers. It was sold as “reforming Social Security,” but since the government was spending the money on non-retirement matters as fast as it came in, rather than placing it in trust, the maneuver was a despicable way of shifting much of the general tax burden on to the middle class.
The money so painfully extracted from working people and entrusted to the care of the government has been borrowed and spent by successive Congresses and administrations. In other words, money banked by workers and entrusted to the U.S. treasury has been used for other government expenses – year after year – by Democrats and Republicans alike. Among the criticisms of Congress that come to mind, to borrow dollars that were specifically earmarked for retirement and then not pay them back is immoral, indelicate, insane, and downright indecent. That money was intended for old age – not for agricultural subsidies, congressional medical care and border fences with Mexico. Before we spend one more dollar on the pay and retirement of congressmen and women, we should repay this trust fund.
The simple fact is that the Republicans don’t want to face the taxes necessary to repay the loan. These statesmen are willing to make the IOUs worthless. Remember the Tea Party mantra -“No tax increase – and no compromise!!!”
Another fact to keep in mind: The simple, most fair, solution – and one that would make the fund solvent until long after we are out of Afghanistan – would be to raise the taxable level of incomes by including those above $106,800 (wages beyond that are now exempt). However, since the tea baggers (who apparently control the GOP House) adamantly forbid anything that sounds like a tax, most particularly a tax on upper-income people, and since compromise is a dirty word, the ball is in the air.
Led by their baying hounds in Congress, it appears that the financial masters of America will shaft the middle class again. The most likely actions are: an advance of the age of eligibility a year at a time, beginning with those now (say) 55, and then a change of the formula by which cost of living adjustment is set for future years and, also by “means testing,” restriction of eligibility due to income. Distasteful as they are, those schemes are politically palatable because they would be gradually implemented. By not hammering present victims, our political masters will face little or no outcry.
They are gambling that the working people who are not immediately flustered by the problem will act like the frog in the gradually warming dinner pot. They’ll be victims without realizing what is happening until they become another unfortunate historical error (crime?).
Rodney Quinn, a former Maine secretary of state, lives in Gorham. He can be reached at rquinn@maine.rr.com.
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