Category Archives: Social Security

January 31, 2013

Official Lies by Walter E. Williams

Posted on January 31, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“Which is the lie, Social Security checks must be delayed if the debt ceiling is not raised or there’s $2.7 trillion in the Social Security trust funds?”

Let’s expose presidential prevarication. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama warned that Social Security checks will be delayed if Congress fails to increase the government’s borrowing authority by raising the debt ceiling. However, there’s an issue with this warning. According to the 2012 Social Security trustees report, assets in Social Security’s trust funds totaled $2.7 trillion, and Social Security expenditures totaled $773 billion. Therefore, regardless of what Congress does about the debt limit, Social Security recipients are guaranteed their checks. Just take the money from the $2.7 trillion assets held in trust.

Which is the lie, Social Security checks must be delayed if the debt ceiling is not raised or there’s $2.7 trillion in the Social Security trust funds? The fact of the matter is that they are both lies. The Social Security trust funds contain nothing more than IOUs, bonds that have absolutely no market value. In other words, they are worthless bookkeeping entries. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, meaning that the taxes paid by today’s workers are immediately sent out as payment to today’s retirees. Social Security is just another federal program funded out of general revenues.

If the congressional Republicans had one ounce of brains, they could easily thwart the president and his leftist allies’ attempt to frighten older Americans about not receiving their Social Security checks and thwart their attempt to frighten other Americans by saying “we are not a deadbeat nation” and suggesting the possibility of default if the debt ceiling is not raised. In 2012, monthly federal tax revenue was about $200 billion. Monthly Social Security expenditures were about $65 billion per month, and the monthly interest payment on our $16 trillion national debt was about $30 billion. The House could simply enact a bill prioritizing how federal tax revenues will be spent. It could mandate that Social Security recipients and interest payments on the national debt be the first priorities and then send the measure to the Senate and the president for concurrence. It might not be a matter of brains as to why the Republican House wouldn’t enact such a measure; it likes spending just as the Democrats.

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Economy and Debt, Entitlements, Government, Obama, Radicals, Social Security, Walter E. Williams

January 27, 2013

Social Security’s disability trust fund could fail to cover all benefits early as 2016

Posted on January 27, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“If we don’t work together to strengthen our entitlement programs, they will go bankrupt,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in a floor speech. “Automatic cuts will be forced on seniors already receiving benefits, rendering worthless the promises that they built their retirements around.”

As President Obama faces pressure on the left to defend federal entitlement programs from the benefit cuts that the Republicans say are necessary to keep the programs solvent decades down the road, one part of Social Security could fall short of paying out full benefits within a few years — even while Obama is still president.

Over the long term, Social Security and Medicare have promised tens of trillions of dollars more in benefits than the nation can pay for under current policies. But Social Security’s disability trust fund is in even worse shape, and current estimates say by 2016 it won’t have enough money to pay full benefits.

“That’s three years from now,” Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center said. “And given the president’s rhetoric and his posture, it’s quite clear that he has no intention of doing anything about it.”

The fiscal security of the disability trust fund got rapidly worse as the unemployment rate rose. The number of applications has almost doubled in the last 10 years, from 1.5 million a year in 2001 to more than 2.8 million a year in 2012.

Obama has said little about how he would fix the fund’s finances.

“President Clinton talked about ‘mend it, don’t end it,’” Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute said. “To judge by (Obama’s) remarks, there’s nothing that needs mending in our entitlement systems.”

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Entitlements, Obama, Social Security

January 22, 2013

Federal Government Debt Undermines the Programs It Finances

Posted on January 22, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Those entitlement programs (mainly Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) are the largest share of federal spending, so those programs, as they presently exist, are the biggest threat to their own continuing existence. What’s worse, with Obamacare, our government has promised us even more.

Just looking at the rate at which the federal government’s debt is growing is unnerving. If you’re brave, you can look here. The table shows federal debt on September 30 of each year, the end of the federal government’s fiscal year. The numbers almost speak for themselves.

About 37.6% of that debt was accumulated during the last four years, from 2008 through 2012. Those years saw the federal debt grow by more than $6 trillion; quite amazing when you consider the federal debt was a bit under $5.7 trillion in 2000. The federal government’s debt has increased more under President Obama’s first four years than it did in the nation’s first 224 years.

The 12 Bush-Obama years account for about two-thirds of the federal debt. Under President Bush the federal debt increased by $4.4 trillion, and then another $6 trillion under President Obama.

One reason the federal debt presents a problem in the future is that interest must be paid on it. Today, with interest rates at historic lows, interest on the federal is still about 6% of federal spending. But that will go up when interest rates rise, and will go up because the federal debt will continue to increase.

The interest rate the federal government pays on its debt averages 2.2% in today’s low-interest environment, but it is not difficult to imagine that rate doubling to 4.4% or tripling to 6.6%, in which case the interest on today’s debt would go to 12% or 18% of the federal budget, ignoring any impact of future deficits.

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Posted in Debt, Entitlements, Government, Social Security

January 5, 2013

The Republicans – after Dunkirk by Pat Buchanan

Posted on January 5, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Most Democrats are not going to agree to freeze or cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, food stamps, federal aid to education, Head Start, Pell Grants, housing subsidies, welfare, earned income tax credits or unemployment checks. These are the party’s pride and joy, the reason the Democratic Party exists.

At the Potsdam conference with Harry Truman and Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill learned that the voters of the nation he had led for five years through World War II had just voted to throw him out of office.

“It may well be a blessing in disguise,” said his wife Clementine.

“At the moment, it seems quite effectively disguised,” replied Churchill.

Republicans must feel that way today. For they have survived their own Dunkirk. They may have left their helmets, canteens and rifles behind, but they did finally get off the beach.

That Republicans suffered a rout, as the British did with the fall of France and evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940, is undeniable.

The party that blocked tax increases since George H.W. Bush agreed to raise Ronald Reagan’s top rate of 28 percent to 35 percent, thus repudiating his “no-new-taxes” pledge, just signed on to one of the largest tax increases in history.

Payroll taxes on working Americans will rise by a third, from 4.2 percent of wages and salaries to 6.2 percent. For couples earning $450,000, the tax rate rises from 15 to 20 percent on dividends and capital gains, and from 35 to 39.6 percent on ordinary income. The death tax will rise from 35 to 40 percent on estates over $5 million.

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Posted in Conservatism, Democrats/Progressives, Entitlements, Pat Buchanan, Radicals, Republicans/Neo-Cons, Social Security

July 6, 2012

Frustrated Montana Woman Tells It Like It Is by Frosty Wooldridge

Posted on July 6, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give our money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud.”

Most Americans feel utter despair about the dysfunctionality of our current president and his Congress. Obama and 535 representatives fail to correct our economic decline, our trade deficit, our financial debt, enforce our immigration laws, correct our joblessness as well as our drop in standard of living for average Americans.

With 14 million unemployed and 7 million underemployed, and 46 million subsisting on food stamps, the numbers don’t lie. Obama and Congress fail our citizens at every level.

Astoundingly, those folks in Washington DC constitute the prime reason for America’s predicament. They engineered it with free foreign trade that killed our manufacturing; insourcing, offshoring and outsourcing of our jobs which they mandated; importing 3.1 million foreigners annually without pause for the past 40 years, which has created too many workers and not enough jobs, endless welfare programs for illiterate high school dropouts to live on forever, etc. Today, while Congressional critters enjoy wealth and privilege, we pay their bills and we eat the consequences.

At the same time, while Americans could vote them out of office, they re-elect most incumbents decade after decade. A senator must die before he finally vanishes from the halls of Congress, i.e., Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts, Strom Thurmond and at some point, John McCain of Arizona. You could name a dozen more career do-nothing senators that voters continued to vote into office long after the senators’ useful lives as to governing.

Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming, Co-Chair of Obama’s deficit commission, calls senior citizens the Greediest Generation, as he compared “Social Security” to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats.

I ran across a Montana ranch woman, Patty Myers who spoke directly to exactly what we see happening in Congress.

“Hey Alan, let’s get a few things straight!” she wrote to Simpson. “As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for fifty years. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 years (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63).

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Posted in Entitlements, Free Speech, Frosty Wooldridge, Government, Social Security

May 26, 2012

What happens to the economy in Vegas, doesn’t stay in Vegas

Posted on May 26, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Many are milking unemployment benefits until the last possible day, then switching to welfare, food stamps, and other government handouts. Some are 62 or older and stayed on unemployment just long enough to retire and seamlessly move on to Social Security after their jobless benefits are done.

The Obama apologists and mainstream media (sorry for repeating myself) claim the economy is improving and unemployment declining.

Really?

You mean like in Las Vegas?

April’s numbers show joblessness fell in Nevada below 12% for the first time in 3 years. Hip Hip Hooray! Break out the champagne. Obama has pulled off a miracle.

Right?

Well, not exactly. You see in Obama’s world, down is up, while misleading statistics and outright lies are “facts.” The truth is the shrinking unemployment number proves the job picture is getting worse, not better.

Let me explain:

The only reason Obama can claim unemployment is shrinking is because people are leaving the workforce in droves.

Here are the Las Vegas numbers — read ‘em and weep. The facts are that during the past 12 months 2,000 Las Vegans found jobs, while 20,000 gave up looking for work.

According to Obamanomics and the president’s crack statisticians that means the unemployment rate went down. Does that make sense to you?

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Posted in Economy and Debt, Employment, Obama, Social Security

May 19, 2012

Government Parties While Social Security Burns

Posted on May 19, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Where did all the money go? Certainly not to America’s seniors who depend on Social Security. And not to the more than 10 million disabled Americans who depend on disability benefits. Their benefits are now projected to run out of money in just 4 years.

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Comedian Jimmy Kimmel high-fived President Barack Obama after his hosting gig at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

While the Obama administration scrambles to explain why taxpayer dollars were wasted on lavish Las Vegas parties with clowns and mind-readers, the government has a new fire to fight: Social Security running out of money faster than ever before.

According to the annual report of the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, Social Security – which 45 million Americans depend upon – will be insolvent 3 years earlier than the government projected just last year. That means the wildly overspending Obama administration has knocked 3 years off the life expectancy of Social Security in just 1 year.

Social Security does not provide security. It provides looming insecurity for Americans.

Where did all the money go? Certainly not to America’s seniors who depend on Social Security. And not to the more than 10 million disabled Americans who depend on disability benefits. Their benefits are now projected to run out of money in just 4 years.

No money for seniors, no money for the disabled, and certainly no money for today’s workers and their children, who have long-since given up hope that Social Security will be there for them when they retire.

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Entitlements, Government, Radicals, Social Security

May 7, 2012

2.2 Million Go On Disability Since Mid-2010; Fraud Explains Falling Unemployment Rate

Posted on May 7, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Since mid-2010, precisely at the time millions of US citizens used up all of their 99 week of unemployment insurance, disability claims have risen by 2.2 million. Those on disability are not counted in the workforce and are not considered unemployed.

The number of workers receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) jumped 22 percent to 8.7 million in April from 7.1 million in December 2007, Social Security data show. That helps explain as much as one quarter of the decline in the U.S. labor-force participation rate during the period, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley.

The participation rate — the share of working-age people holding a job or seeking one — was 63.8 percent in March after falling to a three-decade low of 63.7 percent in January. Disability recipients may account for as much as 0.5 percentage point of the more than 2 point drop since the end of 2007, the economists calculate, and that contribution could grow when some extended unemployment benefits expire at the end of this year.

“How we measure and understand what’s going on in the economy can be influenced by the degree to which various public- support programs are available and being used,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan in New York. “With a rising number of disability beneficiaries, there are both lower unemployment rates and lower participation rates.”

More than 99 percent of all SSDI beneficiaries remain in the program until retirement age, David Greenlaw, a managing director in New York at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a March research note, citing government data. The program provides an average of $1,111 in monthly income to eligible workers with a physical or mental impairment that will last at least 12 months or result in death, according to Social Security.

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Posted in Employment, Entitlements, Fraud, Social Security

April 28, 2012

Harry Reid’s Plan to Underfund Social Security and Create a GOP Senate Majority (Video)

Posted on April 28, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democrats are pushing the same old message regarding taxes and spending. But will the Democrats’ payroll tax cut result in higher taxes later? Could Sen. Harry Reid’s shiftless Senate message actually turn the Senate over to the Republicans?

[Note: This article was originally posted on December 21st, 2011. The IFNM website was attacked by hackers and many articles are now gone from the archives. As a public service, IFNM is now reposting said articles.]


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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Government, Radicals, Social Security

April 24, 2012

Social Security heading for insolvency even faster

Posted on April 24, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

America’s aging population — increased by millions of retiring baby boomers — is straining both Social Security and Medicare. Potential options to reduce Social Security costs include raising the full retirement age, which already is being gradually increased to 67, reducing annual benefit increases and limiting benefits for wealthier Americans.


Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner listens during a news conference on the Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports, Monday, April 23, 2012, at the Treasury Department in Washington.

Social Security is rushing even faster toward insolvency, driven by retiring baby boomers, a weak economy and politicians’ reluctance to take painful action to fix the huge retirement and disability program.

The trust funds that support Social Security will run dry in 2033 — three years earlier than previously projected — the government said Monday.

There was no change in the year that Medicare’s hospital insurance fund is projected to run out of money. It’s still 2024. The program’s trustees, however, said the pace of Medicare spending continues to accelerate. Congress enacted a 2 percent cut for Medicare last year, and that is the main reason the trust fund exhaustion date did not advance.

The trustees who oversee both programs say high energy prices are suppressing workers’ wages, a trend they see continuing. They also expect people to work fewer hours than previously projected, even after the economy recovers. Both trends would lead to lower payroll tax receipts, which support both programs.

Unless Congress acts — and forcefully — payments to millions of Americans could be cut.

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Posted in Economy and Debt, Population, Social Security