If you're going to cut back social security, then cut back the salaries and benefits of federal employees (including the President and both houses of Congress), cut back the pensions of federal employees, cut back welfare, cut back medicaid, and cut back ALL gov't grants and subsidies.
Do a line-by-line audit of the budget, and discontinue all non-essential programs.
Form a REAL federal task force to crack down on medicare/medicaid fraud and phony disability claims. Put some teeth into the law, and throw the kitchen sink at these criminals.
Freeze all foreign aid except in cases of catastrophe.
And while we're at it, throw out the tax code and start over.
You do all that, and I'll take care of Mom and Dad. What a deal!
From SorosPo: other cuts include:
- Roll discretionary spending back to FY2010 levels for FY2012, requires 1% cut in discretionary budget authority every year from FY2013 though 2015;
- Fully offset the cost of the "Doc Fix" by asking doctors and other health providers, lawyers, and individuals to take responsibility for slowing health care cost growth;
- Reduce farm subsidies by3 billion per year by reducing direct payments and other subsidies;
- Achieve100 billion in Illustrative Defense Cuts;
- Index retirement age for Social security to increases in longevity. "This option is projected to increase the age by one month every two years after it reaches 67 under current law, meaning the normal retirement age would reach 68 in about 2050 and 69 in about 2075." There will be a "hardship exemption" for those unable to work beyond 62;
- Give retirees the choice of collecting half their benefits early and the other half at a later age to minimize impact of actuarial reduction and support phased retirement options;
- Reduce corporate tax rate to 26% and permanently extend the research credit;
- Gradually increase gas tax to fund transportation spending.
- Reduce Congressional & White House budgets by 15 percent;
- Freeze federal salaries, bonuses, and other compensation at non-defense agencies for three hears;
- Cap the number of federal political appointments at 2,000;
- Eliminate the Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools;
- Eliminate all earmarks.;
- Reduce unnecessary printing costs;
- Reduce funding to the Smithsonian and the National Park Service and allow the programs to offset the reduction through fees;
- Cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Billions for Goldman Sachs, the shaft for the American working man? I don't think so....
ReplyDeletelady red - great post.
ReplyDeleteThe dang thing about HuffPaint is that some of the stuff is actually pretty good.
I'd asked earlier about your perception of the willingness of people to accept austerity cuts. This is definitely responsive.
I'd only caution that several items on the list just aren't on the scale of what needs to be done. SS is a ponzi scheme in the _trillions_ and like all ponzi schemes it _will_ end, and badly... the only amelioration is that the generation(s) that realize they are holding the bag plan accordingly.
That said, there is an element of fairness - if people get their checks cut and have to pay to listen to Nina Totenburg rant, it won't go over so well. Etc.
My generation (early "gen X" - I don't identify as "boomer" and never did) took as conventional wisdom that social security was a lie, and that we'd not see a dime of the increased FICA taxes that Reagan had hiked. I started work the year FICA was raised and my salary conveniently tracked the cutoff for many years afterward - so I paid very close to the max (as a percent of income).
I planned accordingly.
Today's twenty somethings should realize what I did twenty five years ago - SS is a scam, they will see nothing. They should plan - and vote accordingly.
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Trillions in savings, which project thirty years into the future, are always notional fantasy - in any economic system - capitalist, marxist, fiat currency, gold standard, you name it - doesn't matter.
What those trillions buy is essentially dependent on the economy in thirty years.
Even if the wealth is stored in gold, what that gold will buy depends on the economy decades hence. If the economy is bartering rice and beans and cow dung to cook with, well, all the gold in the world will not buy you health care or a flat screen TV.
The only way to secure any kind of retirement for today's young people is to lay the groundwork for the economy to heal. Federal insolvency and currency destruction does not aid that process.
Heck lewy, I knew at age 13 (when I got my first paycheck) that I'd never see a dime of social security. I've planned accordingly, seeing the lie for what it was.
ReplyDeleteI think most people in my generation (baby boomer! Ack! Run for the hills!) have long been aware that SS will be trimmed to a paltry bread crust or collapse altogether. We're fair game. Hey, whatever it takes, we'll carry the water.
However, today's retirees had faith that the system would be solvent for them, and many didn't plan to live on their own savings. We owe it to these seniors to make good on the promises that were made to them. Take my slice of the pie, I don't care. But leave the 70+ crowd alone, you know?
There's LOTS of other places we can cut today while simultaneously slicing and dicing social security benefits for boomers and beyond.
Jourdan, yeah. And did you notice that they're talking about axing the home mortgage interest deduction? Out of all the loopholes they could close, out of all the special interest deductions they could nix, they chose the ONE deduction that most working Americans can actually qualify for.
ReplyDeleteIt stinks.
I'm all for scrapping the mortgage interest deductions IF they throw all the rest of the deductions overboard too, but they're not.
lady red - re: "today's retirees"... there's two sides to that... I'll just present "the other side" unmodulated (while acknowledging it's not the whole story).
ReplyDeleteTwenty years ago we had another financial crisis (the S&L scandals) and a nasty set of budget projections... a missed opportunity.
Why'd we miss it?
Today's 70ish retiree was then a 50 something who joined AARP and agitated to make sure - damn sure - that the Ponzi went on - that changes to Social Security were the "third rail" of American politics - do not touch.
Absolutely poisoned the well and made sure the problem would not get addressed in their generation - even though they should have known what they were passing on.
So no, not innocent, complicit.
But - now, actually elderly, and without other options. So no - I wouldn't cut benefits for them.
(Much).
I don't know how you let them off with nothing while telling the twenty somethings to continue to pay for them, while they themselves will see less and less (if not nothing). The young will have to fund two retirements - SS and their own.
We've already been funding two retirements. You and I have done it all of our lives. By foregoing the pittance we would receive at age 65, our grandkids will have a chance to fund ONE retirement; their own.
ReplyDeleteThe plain truth is that one generation will have to take one for the team. May as well be the boomers.
I don't have the heart to take a pound of flesh from the old folks.
lady red and lewy - the "old folks" are going to have it taken from them anyway, Social Security cuts or not.
ReplyDeleteWe simply cannot afford as a nation to pay for the care they require in ever increasing numbers in nursing homes. We just can't.
It's horrible to say - because that will leave so many out in the cold (literally). But it's also a part of the flip side of medical success. To use my MIL as an example: she can't care for herself (incontinence, dementia, inability to walk, partial paralysis from multiple strokes), but although our family cares for our own elderly at home, the way the legal system is currently set up makes it impossible for us to care for my MIL. And there is no one else, as AFG is an only child and she divorced her husband.
The issue with elderly is definitely one of cost. But it is also one of legalities. Our battle with my MIL's issues stretched over TWELVE YEARS and cost us tens of thousands of dollars we could have saved for our own retirement. But we didn't, because the way the legal system is set up we were damned if we did and damned if we didn't as far as her care went.
They can cut social security and medicare all they want - but unless the legal system changes and the social structure changes, the system will still be paying for the elderly who have outlived their own bodies. Because the alternative is abandoning them to ice floes, and we won't reach that point unless we become a third world country.
To be blunt and rude about it.
AFW, the truth is often blunt and rude. A bad situation is about to get exponentially worse as boomers begin to retire. If we can't find a way to inoculate people against Alzheimer's, we're sitting on a financial/health care disaster. There's not enough money in all the world to care for millions of elderly dementia patients.
ReplyDeleteBut won't the new government healthcare plan pay for it all??????
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting what you say about the generations; my dad retired at 70, and he was banking on Social Security. But I never had any illusions of getting anything (even if I hadn't moved out of country in early adulthood).
ReplyDeleteI'll have to keep an eye on this; it could really cause problems for my mom and dad, especially if they start making major cuts in Medicare. My mom is currently waiting several months to get an MRI until her Medicare kicks in; it's just way out of her price range, even with the insurance she currently has (which is outrageously expensive).