GOP Schemes to Steal Social Security Exposed

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The GOP hopes that you have forgotten the shot fired recently across the bow. Elite George Bush partisans teamed up with Wall Street insiders, called "my base" by George Bush, to "fix" the only government scheme that isn't broken --Social Security.

As the Iraq war continues to steal headlines, the GOP, to be sure, is still at work on evil schemes to break Social Security so that they can fix both it and you --for good!

The GOP would have you believe that if Social Security is not broken now it's about to be, the year 2018 to be precise! As Bush told reporters: "(Social Security) can't sustain that which has been promised to the workers. Many times, legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them. I believe that crisis is."

What the GOP will not tell you is that Social Security is the only Federal Program that "turns a profit", that is, the cash flow is positive, taking in more than it pays out, just as intended. If the Trust Fund is broke, it is the GOP regimes of Reagan and Bush Sr that broke it. Those regimes are notable for having run up higher debts and deficits than any Democratic regime since World War II. If SS were not solvent, Republican regimes could not raid the mythical "social security trust fund" to pay its current obligations.

A Crisis in 2018? Privatizers claim that as soon as Social Security needs to use some of the interest the trust is earning, the treasury just won't be able to come up with the money. Oddly, the Treasury has borrowed billions for every other reason; why not to pay back the Social Security it owes us?

But the clincher is this. Private accounts would divert between 1/3 and 1/2 of Social Security's payroll-tax income, normally used to pay retirees, and put into private accounts. This would stop the money now flowing into the trust so some interest would need to be withdrawn the first year this started, and more would be needed each year.

--Is There a Social Security Crisis?

Bush taylors his message to his audience. Those over 55 need not worry, he says. It's only those expecting to retire in 2018 who will find nothing in the fund for them. That's because Bush will have spent it murdering people in Iraq --a heinous war crime for which he should be tried for capital war crimes and high treason. If SS should go broke, it will be because George W. Bush would have both his war of aggression and his tax cut benefit only America's dwindling elite.

Interest earnings on trust fund assets alone will be sufficient to cover the annual difference between cost and tax revenue
until 2025. The dollar level of the Trust Funds is projected to be drawn down
beginning in 2025 until assets are exhausted in 2037. I

--THE 2010 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE FEDERAL OLD-AGE AND SURVIVORS INSURANCE AND FEDERAL DISABILITY INSURANCE TRUST FUNDS

Franklin Roosevelt Signs Social Security

Contrary to what Social Security opponents will tell you, Social Security actually turns a profit, or, as Paul Krugman puts it: "Right now the revenues from the payroll tax exceed the amount paid out in benefits." The Social Security program is a success and the positive cash flow proves that it is operating just as its architects intended. Social Security, in fact, may be the government's only success story.

Because it is a rousing success, the revenues are coveted by what Bush himself calls his "base", a tiny elite, less than five percent of the populace, who own almost 90 percent or more of the nation's total wealth. These folk will not admit to you or to themselves that the danger is not the imminent demise of SS, it is, rather, the ultimate bankruptcy of the United States itself.

America is in a very grievous and trepid situation. Any number of isolated incidents could touch off a financial firestorm that burns our house to the ground. When a company goes bankrupt, it is seldom advertised in advance.

Its customers, shareholders and debtors are invariably in a state of shock when the bankruptcy occurs, even though hind site shows that there were ample evidences of impending bankruptcy.

So it is with America: There is evidence everywhere of what is happening to us, but there are few eyes to see it nor ears to hear it.

--The August Review, America Plundered by the Global Elite

America's elite, of course, have an escape hatch --offshore accounts and investments never taken into account by the partisans of trickle down theory. America's elite will have played a key role in America's demise. They've already swarmed to pick over the carcass.

He actually wants to do the opposite. If he manages to privatize Social Security, he'll try to privatize Medicare next. He'll try to strip away guaranteed health care and turn it into some kind of system of individual health accounts. The right says that what we need is more choice, more competition. But every piece of evidence suggests that health care is an area in which privatization actually raises costs. If they succeed at dismantling both Social Security and Medicare, then you're pretty much back, on domestic policy, to the days of Warren Harding -- which is exactly where they want to go.

--Paul Krugman, Rolling Stone

Thus, in a very short article, we can only sketch the vaguest outline of a vast conspiracy that has changed little in several hundred years. Modern GOP tactics were written about in Utopia by a man who is now called a Saint. Please tell Sir Thomas More that conspiracies do not exist!

The rich men not only by private fraud, but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the poor some part of their daily living. So whereas it seemed before unjust to recompense with unkindness their pains that have been beneficial to the public weal, now they have to this their wrong and unjust dealing given the name of justice, yea, and that by force of law. Therefore when I consider and weigh in my mind all these commonwealths, which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.

--Sir Thomas More, Utopia

Additional resources

• America Plundered by the Global Elite
• The French Revolution and the Socialist Tradition:
  Early French Communists
• Utopia: Or the Happy Republic, a Philosophical Romance
• Who Owns You?

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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