Social Security!

“right now people with incomes above 90k pay no ss-the one simple truly fair way to fix the system is to eliminate the income limit cutoff-”

““right now people with incomes above 90k pay no ss-the one simple truly fair way to fix the system is to eliminate the income limit cutoff-”

Proof?”

“I remember reading something about that. I think the number was higher than 90,000 though”

“Nigal, here you go

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/17/MNG1IBCSV01.DTL

Hints of higher tax cap for Social Security
Bush says he's open to raising cutoff above $90,000
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Washington -- President Bush has opened the way to boosting Social Security taxes on people who make more than $90,000 a year, while Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan gave a qualified endorsement Wednesday to the president's idea of adding private accounts to the retirement plan.

Bush's advisers have hinted in recent days that the president might be willing to have high-income taxpayers put more into the Social Security system, but Bush himself put that possibility into play in an interview published Wednesday in the New Haven, Conn., Register.

Wage earners now pay Social Security taxes on only their first $90,000 of income, but when asked directly about raising that cap, Bush refused to rule it out.

"The only thing I'm not opened-minded about is raising the payroll tax rate,'' the president said. "And all other issues are on the table."

Recent polls have shown support for raising the income cap. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released last week showed that more than two-thirds of those surveyed favored taxing all wages, not just the first $90,000.

Taxing a greater share of earnings would put new money into Social Security, helping to bring the system into long-term solvency and making it easier to finance the huge transition costs of moving to the personal savings accounts Bush favors.

The president received a boost from Greenspan, who urged a gradual approach to creating the new accounts and warned that the current system was "not working, and we have to change it."

But Greenspan said he was "still puzzling" over how financial markets might react to the trillions of dollars in transition financing that a move to private accounts would require. He set $1 trillion over 10 years as the upper limit on such borrowing, roughly in line with Bush's proposal.

"If you are going to move to private accounts, which I approve of, you have to do it in a cautious, gradual way," Greenspan told the Senate Banking Committee, where his rosy assessment of the economy was overshadowed by his responses to senators' questions about Social Security.

Greenspan's endorsement of private accounts is not new, but his comments arrive at a critical juncture in the struggle to shape public opinion that has assumed the trappings of an all-out political campaign.

Bush is traveling around the country to push his plan, stopping in New Hampshire Wednesday, while Democrats fight back each day from Capitol Hill, including a "pre-buttal" to Greenspan's testimony the day before and a conference call with Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz afterward. Stiglitz said that rates of return on private accounts were being oversold and that higher economic growth could help bail out the program.

Both sides are backed by think tanks, interest groups and multi-million- dollar public-relations operations that are conducting national advertising campaigns.

Given Greenspan's near iconic stature in the financial markets, committee Democrats were deferential, often struggling to make their points without seeming to contradict him.

Greenspan's 18-year term has spanned four presidents, a global financial crisis and a stock market boom and bust. In 1983, he led a bipartisan commission that averted a Social Security crisis by calling for raises in payroll taxes and the retirement age, producing a $1.5 trillion trust-fund surplus that has been spent by congresses in all but four years ever since.

While coming down squarely in favor of private accounts, Greenspan gave fodder to both sides -- acknowledging that private accounts themselves would not restore the system's solvency but insisting that they would create a way to pre-fund a portion of future Social Security benefits.

But Greenspan labored to make a point that politicians on both sides routinely ignore, which is that to prevent a drop in living standards when the 76 million Baby Boom generation retires starting in three years, it would be essential to increase national savings. That requires reducing consumption now, by individuals or the federal government.

"Our problem with respect to retirement has got nothing to do with finance," Greenspan said. "It's got to do with real assets, real physical resources and goods and services that people consume." The test, he said, is whether retirement systems such as Social Security create savings, "or, put another way, are they fully funded or not."

Social Security's pay-as-you-go system, in which payroll taxes from current workers pay for benefits for current retirees, worked remarkably well for decades, he said, so long as workers far outnumbered retirees.

But when there are just two workers to support each retiree, as will happen in coming decades, Greenspan said that would create "a very major problem for a pay-as-you-go system, and the reason essentially is by its nature ... pay-as-you-go creates no savings; it merely transfers from taxpayers in any particular period to beneficiaries."

A private-account model "has in it the seeds of developing full funding by its very nature," Greenspan said, which he said would create "forced savings."

But he said a big question was how financial markets would react to the transition borrowing necessary to pay current benefits if current workers began shifting a portion of their payroll taxes to their own accounts.

In theory, if the government borrows money only to turn around and put it in private savings accounts, there is no net change in national saving or borrowing. "This is one of the very rare cases in which you can increase the deficit but not decrease the national savings if you have the forced savings accounts," Greenspan said.

However, he cautioned, "It's one thing to say it as an economist. It's another thing to say how the markets are responding."

If the bond markets react to the borrowing as new debt, that could drive up interest rates, Greenspan warned.

"So all in all, I'm glad that if we're going to move in that direction, we're going to move slowly and test the waters, because think it's a good thing to do over the longer run," Greenspan said. "And eventually, because the pay-as-you-go system in my judgment is going to be very difficult to manage, we are going to need an alternative."

Greenspan said the way to create accounts without any borrowing would be by raising taxes or reducing benefits. Bush has ruled out payroll tax increases but has suggested major reductions in benefit growth. Greenspan said the main idea suggested by Bush's Social Security Commission in 2001 - indexing future benefits to prices instead of wages, which rise faster than prices -- would wipe out nearly all the program's roughly $10 trillion liability.

Changing indexing is "one of the most effective ways to come to grips with closing the ... gap between expected revenues and expected benefits," Greenspan said.

He acknowledged, however, that doing so would sharply reduce promised benefits for younger workers -- an argument Democrats frequently make against Bush's plan.

Any system, including the current one, will require a "huge transition cost" to get to full funding, Greenspan warned: "Any scheme cannot get around the fact that there is a huge hole in the system, and we have no choice but to try to fill it."

Greenspan also echoed Bush's arguments that private accounts were "highly desirable" because they would help low- and middle-income workers build wealth, and he predicted they would become "extraordinarily popular."

Democrats downplayed Greenspan's comments, saying the actual borrowing in Bush's proposal -- which the administration calculates at $754 billion over the first 10 years -- would actually be closer to $1.4 trillion when the three-year phase-in was complete, exceeding Greenspan's $1 trillion cut off.

"As I listened to Chairman Greenspan, there was nothing new about his support for private accounts," said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., who is coordinating House Democratic opposition to Bush's plan.”

“HEADLINE:

Whiny Democrats scare country into accepting watered down SS patch. The Democrats today succeeded in again convincing the sheep-like among us that the sky is falling…


GATORS are in the College World Series Championship game!!! Who needs Social Security?”

“My cookies were deleted so I missed all fuego discussions over the last month and a half. Funny that I didn't miss them, huh?

Anyway, arclite, you prove once more that you don't know what you are talking about (refer to our discussion in May about all the other things you proved you don't know). Its the Republicans that are claiming the sky is falling. SS is not broken. A minor fix is all that is needed. Taxing income above $90K would be one easy fix that would be fair and would fix the small problem.

For everyone else: looks like the SS legislation is getting pushed to the back burner officially. GOOD.

http://robots.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/07/14/social.security.ap/index.html”

“From the WaPo:

Grover Norquist, a leading GOP strategist, said he can envision no circumstance in which Bush could secure any overhaul of the Social Security program, including creating personal accounts. "The Democrats cannot be bribed, cajoled or threatened into voting for Social Security reform -- it can't happen," he said.



I guess the converse is also true - Republicans CAN be bribed, cajoled or threatened into voting for Social Security reform.

THANK YOU GROVER!”

“I thought you left?”

“I thought you right?”

“We will get reform when the program goes BROKE.”

“XL!

You are forgetting that the Clinton surpluses are now gone.

Oh, that's right. We have to wait until every single last Democrat is gone from Congress before the MASSIVE, PERMANENT REPUBLICAN MAJORITY will do anything about out-of-control spending.”

“Sell Tejas. The proceeds would pay benefits for a week.”

“Actually RL if you have EVER read my opinion of the RepublicCrat Party in Power there IS NO DIFFERENCE. They are mostly in there for one thing..to stay there.

I would like to see it where each congressman has to list the percentage of money they recieve from what PAC. Who the PAC is and what they represent. Then I would make it required they recuse themselves from any vote that would benefit or damage the PAC supporters. (LOL)...or a 50% tax on all PAC donations over $2000.

You know Bush collected more money from donations less than $2000 than the SKERRY clan did from their BIG donors.....”

“You started with a non-partisan, "I hate both parties" load of crap and then ended with a boilerplate slam on Kerry and defense of Bush.

Are you just a Republican when it is politically expedient? Or do you actually believe in the philosophy?

Oh, that's right. They aren't Republicans anymore. They're "Common-sense Conservatives." Yeah. That's it.

Stand for something, dude.”

“Benefits may go to Mexican workers
Agreement might give some access to Social Security

By LARRY WHEELER
and MIKE MADDEN
Gannett News Service


WASHINGTON —A pending agreement with Mexico would make some Mexican workers and their families eligible for Social Security benefits.

Critics of the plan, including conservative bloggers and their allies in Congress, warn that millions of illegal Mexican immigrants will soon be pulling down fat Social Security checks. That has prompted a spate of bills on Capitol Hill intended to prevent such a scenario.

http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070203/NEWS02/702030341/1358”

“Their ability to vote in our elections has nothing to do with it?”