Well Congress is at it again with OUR Social Security
Nightmare on Social Security Street -- If you liked President Bush's private Social Security accounts, you'll love the sequel - top Republicans want to tap the system's surplus to finance individual accounts.
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_6965.shtml
SNIP
Q: How do Republican lawmakers' accounts differ from the president's?
A: Plans authored by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, with backing by House Republican leaders, would redirect surplus Social Security payroll taxes to individual accounts for workers 55 and younger once current benefits and administrative costs are paid. The amount diverted would be about 2.2 percent of wages, up to a cap.
Bush would let workers 55 and under divert up to 4 percent of pay from future payroll tax collections to the accounts.
Q: What Social Security surplus?
A: Yes, Social Security has built a huge surplus since it started collecting extra payroll taxes in 1984. But presidents and Congresses since then have borrowed those surpluses to mask the size of the federal deficit and other spending to the tune of $1.67 trillion so far.
This year alone Social Security will collect $163 billion more in payroll taxes than it is paying in benefits. Surplus tax collections will continue until 2017, when government actuaries predict benefit payouts will exceed tax collections.
Remember Bush's recent tour of the Social Security vault in West Virginia, where he pronounced, "There is no trust fund, just IOUs that I saw firsthand?" Well, those IOUs are interest-bearing Treasury securities backed by the U.S. government and are what DeMint, McCrery and their colleagues count on to create private Social Security accounts.
Since those funds are in US treasury bonds to call them IOUs is Bush at his normal ignorance speaking out .....well you know from what part. If T bonds don't still have the full faith and confidence of the/our government behind them then we are in even more trouble financially than we feared. I wonder what China thinks when it hears this, since they hold a very large part of our debt? Oh well they can always call their notes in and just take the country, so I guess that isn't much of a problem for them. We as SS recipients on the other hand had better take a good long look at this situation.
Imagine what 4% of your SS payments for a year would come to and then imagine how rich you will be at retirement time. 4% coming out, however, from every working person in the country can add up to a very large chunk of change. The goal of the BA and neocons in general has been to wipe out every thing that the American people gained through FDR and the New Deal, with this slight of hand game if it becomes law they will have made that dream into our night mare and their fondest day dream.
