What part of "Congress spent the SS trust fund money" don't you understand ?

This is like trying to discuss economics with my cat.

As I mentioned earlier…..King calls accounting mechanisms within the government a crime….but transparently illegal and savage acts of torture acceptable, necessary and unworthy of prosecution.

Rev says, "The government borrowed the trust fund monies and will have to pay it back as needed"

And how does the government pay back that money it "borrowed" (with 'borrowed' meaning 'spent') ????

Answer – The taxpayers pay it. Again. After they already paid for it the first time.

If you think this is basic accounting, you need to go back to school.

But given your version of basic accounting, let's do a SS style deal right here between you and I. I'll borrow $1,000 from you. Then I will spend it. Following that, you can give me another $1,000 to replenish my funds. Then I will pay you back the $1,000 and we'll consider ourselves even. Works for me, and that's a fair deal according to you, because that exactly how SS works.

The crime doesn't come when we decide who repays SS. The crime happened when the money was spent in the first place.

frank is quite correct about this stuff. The SS trust fund is made up of borrowed money…just like the national debt is being handled by borrowing money. Is the national debt a scam, too? Should China be worried? Moreover, should all those pension and retirement funds carrying T-bills be worried?

The government borrowed the trust fund monies and will have to pay it back as needed. Don't blow a gasket over basic accounting.

How about we cut our defense spending by 50%…thus saving 2 1/2 trillion over 10 years? How about that? Additionally, is it okay for the government to borrow money….relying on those Chinese…..to pay huge deficits caused by bloated defense budgets? Or would that be a crime, like you say borrowing for SS is?

It's also a great argument against nationalized health care. Why would we hand all that health care money over to known criminals like the U.S. Congress ?

I'm not wild about the idea of an across-the-board reduction in the federal exemption amount, but I really feel that *something* has to be done to start digging us out of this hole we've gotten ourselves into. $10 or more wouldn't be very noticeable for the majority of us (especially those who live in states like CA or NY). And, no, it's not fair. It actually sucks, but if the money ALL is funneled directly into the SS program, we might be able to cover ourselves.

It's because of the fraudulent nature of SS that we have to keep raising the SS tax, cut benefits, etc. It isn't at all the fault of the SS recipients who faithfully paid into the system their entire lives. I'd be against eliminating any of those honest people from the SS rolls. It wouldn't be fair, and it wouldn't be what was promised to them by our government.

The woman is an amazing idiot. If she was any more transparent, you'd be able to see through her.

angryconserv,
The imbalance between those paying into SS and those receiving benefits was addressed in 1982 by doubling SS tax rates and raising the cap. That imbalance was caused by the post WWII baby boom. After the baby boom, the birth rate stabilized, so this imbalance will begin to dissipate as the boomers die off. By 2037, when the surplus caused by the 1982 changes is gone, so will most of the boomers, and the imbalance between payers and receivers will begin to return to disappear.

Prior to the 1982 changes, SS would in some years take in more than it paid out and in others spent more than it received. In 1968, LBJ began the accounting fiction that counted the surpluses against budget deficits. The amounts were relatively small and it was hardly noticed. With the 1982 changes came huge surpluses which were put into t-bills, the safest investment (at least at the time). But for accounting purposes, the surpluses masked the true deficits being run at the time. So for all practical purposes, excess SS taxes subsidized the tax cuts by Reagan and Bush and allowed Clinton to claim a budget surplus. But there is not difference between the IOUs held by foreign governments and IOUs to SS. If SS goes under it will be because the entire federal government goes under.

In 6 years, we'll have to start selling of those T-bills… like cashing in your savings account to make ends meat. That's 100% good?

You're a moron (oops)… if the trust fund as $10 left in it on December 31, 2036, is it still 100% good?

"Oh snap Rev, we've been spending more than we bring in for the last 20 years, and now we're down to 50 cents in our checking account!"

"We still got 50 cents? Aw yeah baby, it's 100% good."

And this piece of…writing…is what I've come to expect from the AP….

"The trust funds — which exist in paper form in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W.Va. — are bonds that are backed by the government's "full faith and credit" but not by any actual assets. That money has been spent over the years to fund other parts of government. To redeem the trust fund bonds, the government would have to borrow in public debt markets or raise taxes."

That's straight out of a Bush early 2005 blustery talk. Everyone who understands anything…understands that the trust fund is really future T-bills that we'll sell to raise money. King thinks that this well-known fact is a worse crime than, say, torture.

Even in the midst of a generational recession, the trust fund is 100% good until 2037…umm…that would be decades away.

Why American far righters seek to slowly eliminate SS is beyond my comprehension. SS is not in crisis, and a cap raise will take care of any shortfall decades away.

Medicare IS a problem. But Medicare can't be fixed until medical costs come down. The quickest way to cut 25% of all medical costs is to take out the profit motive. Single payer is the best solution, pragmatically.

So what Reid and Pelosi said was actually correct and Obama is smart enough to know that he must include SS in with Medicare in order to woo the SS hating Republicans to the table. So, factor that in.

With all of Obama's starry-eyed big spending, I don't expect that things will get any better in the next four years, BUT maybe we'll learn our lesson about how not to do things before he loses the next election. I'm as compassionate as the next person, but bankrupting our country to help some of its citizens is irresponsible. Long before G.W.B., our Congress made the decision to tap social security funds for other purposes, and our country has never paid itself back. We haven't even tried, we just keep taking. I am as responsible for this as anyone. I have known since writing a paper on the subject in college what was going on. I knew that the social security taxes I was paying probably wasn't going to be there for me to collect, but I never worried about it, just kept plugging money into my 401K.

Even without the excess spending of the past few months, social security was/is an issue that needs to be addressed. I'm not saying to be rid of it. There are too many people currently dependant on it to do that. But maybe our country can do the unfair thing and only make certain seniors eligible. My husband's grandmother, for example, is a SS recipient who doesn't really need all that much money. She does need the Medicare, but she has no rent, no bills, and money in savings. (She lives with one of her daughters.) Maybe people like her could bge eliminated from the SS rolls? Maybe reduce the standard federal exemption per person on income tax by $10. $10 isn't going to hurt anyone too badly, but with a population of 304 million, that would be $3.04 billion a year. But there I go, talking about taxing people fairly. You know the liberals can't stand the thought of a fair tax!