Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Social SCREW-curity



Keep looking over your shoulder America, the screwings will continue until morale improves. Here is some great news on how the Federal Government has been stealing from you for years.

From Fox News- WASHINGTON -- The financial health of the government's two biggest benefit programs may have slipped over the past year, reflecting the deep recession that has already bitten into other areas of the budget.
The trustees for Social Security and Medicare are scheduled to provide their annual report on the finances of both programs on Tuesday. In advance of the release, many private analysts said they expected both programs could run out of cash sooner than last predicted.
A year ago, the trustees projected that the Social Security trust fund would start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2017 and that the trust fund would be depleted in 2041.


I wish they would stop using the term “trustees” to describe this bunch of malcontents. Trust is the last thing we should have in the folks running (ruining?) Social Security.


For the Medicare trust fund, which pays for hospital care, the situation was more urgent. It was projected to start paying more in benefits than it collects in taxes within a year, and the trustees forecast that it would be depleted by 2019.


Wow, great news. I hope I don’t get sick in 10 years. Wait, I have a job and I pay for insurance, I don’t need Medicare! Why is everyone surprised by this? Creating a program to pay for medical expenses for people who don’t work and funding it by taxing those who do, who came up with this? Well, the answer should be obvious…LBJ. You remember him, Vietnam, The Great Society, civil rights. LBJ?
Come one, you remember.


OK, he killed Kennedy. Yea! That guy!


The Great Society was another New Deal style program designed to compensate for liberal guilt over the class disparity in America. Another spoonful of Socialism, candy coated social engineering designed to make us all feel good again. BTW, FDR was the A$$ who saddled us with Social Security. I hope they are dancing in Hell with Hitler and Stalin. Well, I guess FDR is probably not dancing.


But many analysts said the worst recession in decades will produce a bleaker forecast for both Social Security and Medicare in the new trustees' report. The downturn has resulted in a loss of 5.7 million payroll jobs since it began in December 2007 and an unemployment rate that hit a 25-year high of 8.9 percent in April.
Fewer people working means less being paid into the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare.


I think we have found the weakness in the plan here. Apparently no one ever considered, when designing these something-for-nothing plans, that the golden goose (the American taxpayer) would ever stop laying. Our incredulous belief in our own supremacy and money making ability has hoisted us on our own petard. Crap.


The Congressional Budget Office recently projected that Social Security will collect just $3 billion more in 2010 than it will pay out in benefits. A year ago, the CBO had projected that Social Security would have a much higher $86 billion cash surplus for the 2010 budget year, which begins Oct. 1. The difference in the two estimates is the result of the recession.
While the smaller surplus will not have any impact on Social Security benefit payments, the government will need to borrow more at a time when the federal deficit is already exploding because of the recession and the billions of dollars being spent to prop up a shaky banking system.


Exactly. We won’t pay less to those currently collecting, we will just screw everyone who is paying in right now. No retirement for you!


For years, the Social Security trust fund has taken in more than it spent on benefits, resulting in a cushion of billions of dollars that the government could spend on other programs while giving the trust fund an IOU.


Except for one thing…This is not the government’s money to play with. This is my money. This is your money. We pay it in so when we retire it will be available. This may come as a surprise if you have not been paying attention for the last 3 decades, but the program is going bankrupt. If you are working now, your money is going to pay for everyone collecting Social Security RIGHT NOW! Uncle Sugar is not saving that money for you. Nope, he has his hand in your pocket, stealing from you. There, I said it. The Federal Government is stealing from us! There is nothing left. Federally mandate robbery has been used for years to support a program that is a complete failure. If I had the option to invest the amount that the government has been stealing from me since I was 17, I could have a nice retirement nest egg set up by now (even considering the current economic downturn).


Even with the big drop in the Social Security surplus, Medicare's condition is more precarious, reflecting the pressures from soaring health care costs as well as the drop in tax collections. For that reason, President Barack Obama is expected to focus on Medicare before he addresses Social Security.
Obama on Monday praised a pledge by the health care industry to achieve $2 trillion in savings on health care costs over the next decade, but it was unclear how much help those pledges would be in achieving Obama's goal of extending coverage to some 50 million uninsured Americans. The administration is pushing Congress to pass legislation in this area this year, preferring to tackle health care before Social Security.
The trustees report is still expected to set off a heated debate over the government's two large benefit programs, with critics saying it will highlight the failure of the Obama administration to take on the most serious problems in the budget -- soaring entitlement spending, before the retirement of 78 million baby boomers makes the problems even worse.
The administration on Monday revised its deficit forecasts upward to project an imbalance this year of $1.84 trillion, four times last year's record deficit, and said the deficits will remain above $500 billion every year over the next decade.


Dear Uncle Sam,
Please stop stealing from me to pay for failed entitlement programs.
Sincerely,
RipperBravo6