Political rant

[rabidsamfan]

It's not a social security crisis. It's a national debt crisis.

You see, for most of the decades since Social Security was created, more money was collected than was paid out.

That extra money -- paid by working people -- was put into THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND, which is a giant savings account.

For many years, the money in that giant savings account was left alone, because everyone knew that it was there to be paid back to the working people who had put money into that account once they reached retirement or if they were disabled in the meantime.

Then Reagan got into office. He wanted to cut taxes for rich people. He did, and created a deficit. The United States went from being the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in the world in just a few years. My mother lost every tax break she'd ever been able to use -- things like income averaging, which most of you have never heard of, but which eased the tax burden if you had a very good year because you sold a house or collected a lot of insurance in a lump or something.

In order to continue paying for things the government needed to pay for, Congress and Reagan looked for money to spend. And there was the Social Security Trust fund. They replaced the actual money with government bonds... you do know what a government bond is, don't you? A savings bond?

Right, a government bond is a PROMISE by the government to pay back a debt. And who is that debt owed to, boys and girls? That's right, the working people who put the money into the Social Security Trust Fund in the first place! Very good.

Now, after Reagan got out, the Deficit became a big bone of contention, and everyon pointed out that if we had that big deficit, we couldn't possibly manage to pay for current programs and still pay back the debts which the government had incurred. Not only to the Social Security Trust Fund, but also to the holders of other government bonds. The defecit became a big issue. Bush the first had to raise taxes to cut it down. Under Clinton we actually got rid of it. The debt problem went down to a manageable level, and the government had a potential surplus in the future that would allow them to pay for the necessary stuff and still pay back the debts -- in particular to the SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND.

Then W decided he wanted to give tax breaks to his rich friends. He phased them in very carefully by first giving a bunch of money to most taxpayers (which really did boost the economy -- a lot of people spending a little money does that, you know) and then adding more and more breaks for the folks who get most of their money from property and parents (you know, like Paris Hilton) and setting them to kick in after he was likely to be out of office.

And he started a couple of wars, too, although they only accelerated the crises.

Lookee here! We got us a deficit again! The government can't afford to pay for programs (especially not programs that help poor people) and still pay off its debts -- most of which are now held by CHINESE BANKS. So what do we do? Cut the input to Social Security even more sharply than it would fall normally because of fewer workers (whose jobs went to China...) and use that as an EXCUSE not to pay back the money that is owed to the SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND because the only way we could do that is by raising taxes on the rich. Oh, and by the way, in order to do this, we want to borrow more money from the Chinese in order to fund the transition.

It's called raiding the pension fund, children. And putting the country into hock to do it. Amd when the Chinese call in all the debts we've got about two months more as a so-called superpower if we're lucky.

Yes, America has had huge deficits before. But those government bonds were mostly owned by Americans and American businesses, not by foreign banks and multi-national corporations. If my tax dollar is going to pay a lot of debt service (and it already is, you know) I want it to be paid to Americans -- especially ordinary Americans who were forced to contribute to the system all their lives and did so in the conviction that the government would pay that bill. (And yes, I think that other country's governements should look our for their own citizens in precisely the same way. That's what governments are for!)

Grrrrr....