"Indiana���s seniors would see their life savings recklessly gambled on Wall Street under this proposal"

Since when are government IOUs "live savings"?

n/t

The ignorance on this site is Rampant

Bruce Bartlett, of Forbes Magazine said it best:
This week, the federal government published two important reports on long-term budgetary trends. They both show that we are on an unsustainable path that will almost certainly result in massively higher taxes.

The first report is from the trustees of the Social Security system. News reports emphasized that the date when its trust fund will be exhausted is now four years earlier than estimated last year. But in truth, this is an utterly meaningless fact because the trust fund itself is economically meaningless.

The 2010 budget, which was finally released this week, confirms this fact. As it explains in Chapter 21, government trust funds bear no meaningful comparison to those in the private sector. Whereas the beneficiary of a private trust fund legally owns the income from it, the same is not true of a government trust fund, which is really nothing but an accounting device.

Most Americans believe that the Social Security trust fund contains a pot of money that is sitting somewhere earning interest to pay their benefits when they retire. On paper this is true; somewhere in a Treasury Department ledger there are $2.4 trillion worth of assets labeled "Social Security trust fund."
The problem is that by law 100% of these "assets" are invested in Treasury securities. Therefore, the trust fund does not have any actual resources with which to pay Social Security benefits.

It's as if you wrote an IOU to yourself; no matter how large the IOU is it doesn't increase your net worth.

This fact is documented in the budget, which says on page 345: "The existence of large trust fund balances ��� does not, by itself, increase the government's ability to pay benefits. Put differently, these trust fund balances are assets of the program agencies and corresponding liabilities of the Treasury, netting to zero for the government as a whole."

Consequently, whether there is $2.4 trillion in the Social Security trust fund or $240 trillion has no bearing on the federal government's ability to pay benefits that have been promised. In a very technical sense, it would lose the ability to pay benefits in excess of current tax revenues once the trust fund is exhausted. But long before that date Congress would simply change the law to explicitly allow general revenues to be used to pay Social Security benefits, something it could easily do in a day.

The trust fund is better thought of as budget authority giving the federal government legal permission to use general revenues to pay Social Security benefits when current Social Security taxes are insufficient to pay current benefits--something that will happen in 2016. Effectively, general revenues will finance Social Security when the trust fund redeems its Treasury bonds for cash to pay benefits.

Social Security's actuaries make such a calculation on page 64. It says that Social Security's unfunded liability in perpetuity is $17.5 trillion (treating the trust fund as meaningless). The program would need that much money today in a real trust fund outside the government earning a true return to pay for all the benefits that have been promised over and above future Social Security taxes. In effect, the capital stock of the nation would have to be $17.5 trillion larger than it is right now. Alternatively, the payroll tax rate would have to rise by 4%.

By law, if Social Security were privatized, the institution holding an account would be liable to have available assets to insure disbursement to the beneficiary. When Congress rewrote the rules of accessing those funds, they effectively created a second set of standards which put the government above the law. So you are telling us, you are a proponent of the present Social Security organization and a legal double standard, which has created an institution who���s true value can't even buy a cup of coffee?

History shows that Democrats authorized the embezzlement of the Social Security Trust which is currently a $17.5 trillion unfunded liabilities. Compare that to the fact our 2009 Gross Domestic Product was only $14.2 trillion. History also shows the Community Reinvestment Act signed into law by Pres. Jimmy Carter, is the root causes of the current housing and mortgage crisis. Further loosening of mortgage loan restrictions under Pres. Bill Clinton and the public declaration of Barney Franks and Maxine Waters, assuring us Fannie and Freddie were strong and in great shape, are a few of the driving forces that propelled us into the crisis we are presently experiencing.

Either current laws and or currently the lack of moral and Political Ethics, has made the federal government incapable of responsible management, funding and securing of a successful and sustainable public benefit such as Social Security. The government should be required to follow the same rules and regulations as the private sector. If that were the case, we would not be in these dire economic straits.

It's amazing how fiscally responsible Republicans are (when they are out of power.) The country would be much better off if it were run by Bear, Stearns, British Petroleum, AIG, General Motors, etc. The private sector would do much better without Democrats to hold them back.
They would give us more nuclear power. It's really safe. And less polluting than oil. Unless���, but there are fail-safe controls to avoid disaster��� so a disastrous accident could never happen.
And getting rid of Social Security and Medicare would save enough to pay for a really high wall at the Mexican border.
And cutting taxes (especially for the very wealthy) would generate enough revenue to pay for the troops needed to control the hoards of unemployed who's benefits will have run out. And EVERYONE would have an assault rifle.
Just think of the Golden Age a Sarah Palin administration, for instance, would usher in.
It boggles the mind.