Obama with help from congress is doing what a republican could never get away with. Cutting through the crap we can call it an out and out attack on Social Security. Congress has completed their part of the task which continues the cut in the taxes that pay for Social Security calling it “a very good deal for Americans.” As originally conceived Social Security paid for itself and was solvent for at least the next 25 years if not a good deal longer. Now money to pay for Social Security must come from elsewhere.
Link from the NYT
Under the agreement reached by House and Senate negotiators, the current reduction in the employee’s share of the Social Security payroll tax — to 4.2 percent of wages, from 6.2 percent — would be continued to the end of the year. Revenue lost to the Social Security trust fund would be fully replaced with money from the general fund of the Treasury.
For a worker with annual earnings of $50,000, the payroll tax holiday would increase take-home pay by $1,000 over the course of the year.
It needs to be said that a person earning 50,000 bucks a year is hardly hurting. I never made that much money. And if money was needed to pay for fat cat doctors who accept Medicare patients and for extending unemployment benefits why not just take that from the general fund of the treasury rather than Social Security? The answer is obvious. This is a set up to start dismantling a much needed program that benefits the poor, the sick, and the elderly. Since Social Security worked despite the lies from politicians and the news media in order to destroy it they must first make it insolvent. Cutting taxes for it is the most direct route to this goal. Once Social Security is insolvent then it can be attacked, dismantled, and finally destroyed. Politicians, the news media, and Libertarians love to call Social Security an “entitlement” as if it is some kind of gift to shiftless ne’r do-wells, bums who feel they deserve a free handout and what-not from the government but since it is paid for by the people who eventually use it Social Security is in no way an entitlement, it’s a trust fund. Big difference.
What began as a “temporary” measure is now well on its way to being permanent. If you worked you have paid into the Social Security trust fund. Now Obama and his criminal cohorts in congress are stealing it from you. First they stole your money to bail out the banksters that created the housing bubble and created “Free Trade” that shipped your job to China, and now they want to make sure you will have nothing left by destroying what you have already paid for insuring your “golden years” will be filled with misery as you scrape to get by even as your health fails. These carrion eating vultures want to make sure you have nothing left, not one thin dime or scrap of food in your cupboard while they give everything to their money men backers, the top one percent, the real parasites. People should be up in arms over this issue but the lies coming from Obama and congress as well as the news media will make sure that the masses will remain subdued meekly accepting the scraps tossed to them from the rich man’s table.
