That about sums up the “hair on fire” rhetoric coming out of the WH, Congress, and the Beltway. The “reason” benefits must be cut. Because nobody could have predicted that 78 million Boomers would begin to retire in 2012 and expected to receive SSI benefits.
Did somebody forget to total the number of Americans born between 1946 and 1964? Not exactly. Did somebody forget to calculate how many Boomers would live long enough to collect SSI? Not exactly. Were no financial actuaries around to figure out the shortfall between pay-go SSI taxes and the benefits that would be needed to cover Boomers? Hell, NO! And since 1983 American workers have been pre-paying that shortfall. Which has gotten us to where we are as David Cay Johnston explains:
Which federal program took in more than it spent last year, added $95 billion to its surplus and lifted 20 million Americans of all ages out of poverty?
Why, Social Security, of course, which ended 2011 with a $2.7 trillion surplus.
The bait-and-switch that Obama is trying foist on Americans is no less outrageous than what the banksters wanted to do to those with bank savings accounts in Cyprus. Only those banksters had to back off from stealing from those with small accounts and Obama’s stealing from the poor.
Anyone that doesn’t get that Social Security is solvent isn’t worth talking to.
So, where is that $2.7 trillion?
Not where it was supposed to be. Johnston explains that 1983 SSI deal:
…The extra tax was supposed to pay off the federal debt and then be invested in federal bonds. …
So, how much was the federal debt in 1983?
9/30/82: $1.142 trillion
9/30/83: $1.377 trillion
And the federal debt as of 4/5/2013 is $16.798 trillion. Now $2.7 trillion of that debt is owed to “boomer” Social Security beneficiaries. So, this country not only failed to pay off that 1983 $1 trillion plus federal debt but collected and spent the $2.7 trillion in additional SSI taxes AND “lost” several trillion more dollars. Not “lost” to those that saw it flow to them in tax cuts and military contracts.
Mr. Obama, “boomers” have been SSI savers/lenders and not borrowers/thieves. Common sense is recouping the money from the borrowers/thieves and not from the savers/lenders. “Boomer” bashing isn’t “common sense” even if you’ve been doing it since 1980. Not that “boomer” bashing began in 1980.