The money from your pay check for Social Security goes directly into the Social Security Trust Fund. The deficit has nothing to do with Social Security. Deficit Hawks lie when they state that Social Security has to be addressed in order to reduce the deficit.
Here's a simple analogy to demonstrate the truth about Social Security:
Mr. and Mrs. American earn $50,000 a year. Their expenses are $60,000 a year. They have a deficit problem so they need to scale back their expenses and/or increase their income.
Their daughter makes $3,000 a year babysitting.
What Mr. and Mrs. America can't do is include the babysitting income their daughter makes as part of their income to offset their deficit because their daughter's income (Social Security) goes directly into the pocket (Social Security Trust Fund) of their daughter because Mr. and Mrs. America made a deal (SS Act), with their daughter that her income is hers.
In the words of FDR which, remarkably, describe the plight of older workers today:
In 1933 Francis Townsend proposed a scheme whereby the Federal government would provide every person over 60 a $200 monthly pension. Townsend claimed that his Old Age Revolving Pension Plan could be financed by a Federal tax on commercial transactions. The plan obtained a great deal of public support and by 1935 his Townsend Club had over 5 million members.
In 1935 Townsend handed in to President Franklin D. Roosevelt a petition supporting the Old Age Revolving Pension Plan that had been signed by over 20 million people. In response to the petition, Congress passed the Social Security Act.
It established Old Age and Survivors' Insurance that provided for compulsory savings for wage earners so that benefits may be paid to them on retirement at 65. To finance the scheme, both the employer and employee had to pay a 3% payroll tax. The provisions of the act also encouraged states to deal with social problems. It did this by offering substantial financial help the states provide unemployment benefits, old-age pensions, aid to the disabled, maternity care, public health work and vocational rehabilitation.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk...
Under the Act, Congress appropriated some funds for the program, but the rest of the money came from a payroll tax. Money was taken out of an employee's paycheck to help pay for Social Security, which in 1937 was about 2% of each paycheck. Older Americans, and later dependents and the disabled were given the money. Initially 60% of the workforce was covered by Social Security (by 1995, 95% of the workforce was covered). Ernest Ackerman was the first person to receive Social Security; he retired one day after the program began. For that one day the government withheld $.05 of his paycheck but later he got back a lump-sum payment of $.17. During the first few years of Social Security, eligible Americans received, on average, $58.06.
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/...
We can't let politicians and billionaires snooker the population.
The attack on Social Security began the minute FDR signed it into law by those who, quite frankly, loathe Social Democracy that provides social safety nets.
I hope this one issue can galvanize members of both sides of the aisle who still have a semblance of compassion and a sense of social responsibility.
Children can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps unless their parents can afford to buy them boots.
Many elderly can't pull up their diapers let alone boots, if they even own any.
Veterans with no feet or legs have no place to put boots.
Even healthy over 65 people need some help as most can't even earn a living wage due to the newly unbridled agism in the job market.
Social security is the social safety net we all contribute to when we spent 40 years of our life working to support ourselves. That's why the Social Security Trust fund isn't broke.
Enjoy the panel discussion.
And, one more time, DEFICIT HAWKS LIE AND LIE
Here is where the deficit came from. Since 1980, Republican Administrations have created the deficit. How dare Republicans demand that Social Security contributes to the deficit. It's a blatant lie. And that any Democrats allow this lie and help spread this lie is both appalling and frightening. What if Peter G Peterson, a billionaire, wins? What if we lose all of our social safety nets?
HERE IS WHERE YOUR TAXES GO, not what you pay for Social Security and Medicare from your paychecks. SS and Medicare go from your check directly into the SS and Medicare Trust Funds. SS and Medicare DO NOT affect the deficit:
These are the people that don't want the Bush Tax Cuts to expire. They don't need a Social Security monthly check. They don't care about you and your children. This also explains why most Americans can't get ahead financially:
As the charts demonstrate, we don't have a just a spending problem, we have a revenue stream problem caused mostly by unfunded tax cuts. Subsidies to huge corporations is another problem but another discussion for another day.
The deficit problem is a revenue stream problem because millions don't pay the same rate of taxes they did in the past.
Another deception that must be address is the lie that Medicare spending will be cut. Another discussion, however, the deficit discussion to reduce Social Security usually is coupled with a discussion of Medicare cuts. And, of course, the facts are twisted in order to scare the elderly. Cuts to subsidiaries to extremely profitable insurance companies is the issue, not cuts to Medicare/health care.
What is going to be cut is the subsidy to the insurers providing supplemental health insurance to retired citizens.
"We spend $15 billion a year on subsidies to insurance companies," Obama said at a debate on Oct. 15, 2008. "It doesn’t — under the Medicare plan — it doesn’t help seniors get any better. It’s not improving our health care system. It’s just a giveaway."
We examined his claim that the program cost an extra $15 billion during the campaign and gave it a True on our Truth-O-Meter. Read our previous reporting for more details on how the plan works and what people say about its utility.
http://www.politifact.com/...
CBO’s preliminary estimate is that enacting the proposed changes would reduce federal spending by $117 billion over the 2010-2019 period. (A reduction in gross Medicare spending of $132 billion would be offset, in part, by a $15 billion reduction in Part B premium receipts.) Nationwide, the average value of the extra benefits not covered by Medicare (that is, rebates plus additional payments) would be about $67 per member per month in 2019. That average would be about $48 in areas with bids currently above FFS costs and $79 in areas with bids below FFS costs. CBO estimates that enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans in 2019 would be 4.8 million lower than we project under current law, with most of those reductions (2.7 million) occurring in areas where bids currently are above FFS costs.
http://www.cbo.gov/...
Keep hammering away at the facts, not the PR BS being spread by politicians, billionaires who make scare movies, and the media.
Keep them honest, LOL.