@#20 ... By early summer the initiative was on life support, with congressional Democrats uniformly opposed and Republicans in disarray.After Hurricane Katrina inundated what remained of the President's support, congressional leaders quietly pulled the plug. By October, even the President had to acknowledge that his effort had failed. ...
Why the 2005 Social Security Initiative Failed, and What it Means for the Future (2007)
www.brookings.edu
... Following his successful 2004 reelection campaign, President George W. Bush designated fundamental Social Security reform as his top domestic priority. This was anything but an impulsive decision. As early as his 1978 congressional race, he had suggested that the Social Security System could not be sustained unless individuals were allowed to invest the payroll tax themselves. Overriding the doubts of some political advisors, he raised the issue while announcing his first presidential race, declaring that "We should trust Americans by giving them the option of investing part of their Social Security contributions in private accounts."
Toward the end of a first term dominated by international terrorism, President Bush renewed this call in his 2004 State of the Union address: "Younger workers should have the opportunity to build a nest egg by saving part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account. We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people." He mentioned the issue repeatedly during the 2004 campaign and was able to argue that his reelection represented a mandate to move forward on what he called personal accounts (and his adversaries called partial privatization). ...
Having invested so much political capital in this issue, President Bush embarked on the first of what proved to be a long series of tours crammed with events at which he pitched his plan to the people. ...
By early summer the initiative was on life support, with congressional Democrats uniformly opposed and Republicans in disarray.After Hurricane Katrina inundated what remained of the President's support, congressional leaders quietly pulled the plug. By October, even the President had to acknowledge that his effort had failed....
[emphasis mine]
- to raise taxes.
On those like myself who can afford it, not on avg Americans.
What is happening now is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy class in our history.
www.wbur.org
And our original Soc Sec system, which idea originated earlier in Germany, has been the model for successful pension systems around the world until relatively recently.
www.cipp.org.uk
Of course, Northern European Social Democracies offer the best pension systems these days... and what they don't do is invest in volatile corporate markets and bitcoin.
"Social Security is on a path to privatization, experts warn, led by Elon Musk's DOGE'"
www.marketwatch.com
Which is what this whole fiasco is about: further undermining SS and making it unworkable so it can be replaced by a big corporation... prolly SpaceX lol.
Musk Bitcoin Security Systems, perhaps.
All this while SS spends less than 1 percent of it's budget on Admin... Corporate avg is over 20 percent.
Not a single dollar of the SS trust fund was stolen by politicians.
Wrong.
www.fedsmith.com
A New Law
Reagan's scare tactics worked. Congress passed the Social Security Amendments of 1983, which included a hefty increase in the payroll tax rate.
The tax increase was designed to generate large Social Security surpluses for the next 30 years. The public was led to believe that the surplus money would be saved and invested in marketable U.S. Treasury Bonds, which could later be resold to raise cash with which to pay benefits to the boomers. But that didn't happen.
Spending the Trust Funds
The money was all deposited directly into the general fund and used for non-Social Security purposes. Reagan spent every dime of the surplus Social Security revenue, which came in during his presidency, on general government operations. His successor, George H.W. Bush, used the surplus money as a giant slush fund, and both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush looted and spent all of the Social Security surplus revenue that flowed in during their presidencies.
So we can't blame the whole problem on Reagan. Reagan was the one who figured out a way to use Social Security money as general revenue, and his successors just followed his example.
The $2.7 trillion, which is alleged to be in the trust fund, was all spent for wars, tax cuts for the rich, and other government programs. If the money is repaid at some point in the future, we could say is was just "borrowed." But no arrangements have been made to repay the money, and nobody in government is suggesting that the money should be repaid. So, if it is never repaid, the money will definitely have been stolen.
This would not be such a serious problem if Social Security was still running annual surpluses. But Social Security ran it last annual surplus in 2009, and began running permanent annual deficits in 2010. The cost of paying full Social Security benefits for 2010 exceeded Social Security's total tax revenue by $49 billion.
So how did the government pay full Social Security benefits in 2010? They borrowed $49 billion from China, or one of our other creditors.
