What I am saying is that if we stop taxing Social Security Benefits we NEED to replace that lost revenue. I would like to see an end to taxing Social Security benefits. If we end the Bush tax cuts to the top 10% we could use some of that money to end the tax on Social Security Benefits.

Where are you getting this?

The surplus in Social Security existed BEFORE Bush became president. The Bush Tax Cut has NOTHING to do with generating a Surplus in Social Security. Bush has used the Surplus from Social Security to cover PART of the Annual Budget Deficit he created by his Federal Income Tax cuts and increased general fund spending i.e. the Iraq war!

I will try to explain it one more time. Social Security money does not go into the budget. The General Fund takes care of two main things. Social Security and the Postal Service. Those are listed in the budget as Off Budget. This means that the money is there but is not supposed to be touched by anyone other than the programs they are held for unless the Congress authorizes it. If what you say is true then the Democrats would be screaming their heads off on how Mr. Bush is stealing ss funds to pay for the war and of course they would vote against any such action. To my memory it has only been done twice, 1966 and 1967. Does anyone remember hearing of this happening during the election period of 2004?

What Bush is doing is taking the Surplus from Social Security to partially fund the annual budget deficit. When the Surplus is used the Treasury issues IOU's to Social Security for the Surplus used to partially offset the budget deficit. When Social Security needs that money to pay benefits in the future, the Treasury will either be forced to sell more bonds to refund the IOU's or increased taxes to honor those IOU's.

Paladin77

They have been complaining about the fact that Congress failed to keep Social Security funds in a lock box. This is what is taking place. In 2005 Bush reported an Annual Deficit of $420 Billion. However the National Debt increased by $620 Billion. That was the $420 Bush acknowledged and the $200 Billion in IOU's that the Treasury issued to Social Security and Medicare for the Surplus those two funds experienced in 2005. ALL of the Trust Funds for both Social Security and Medicare are these IOU's issued by the Treasury. In fact there was a news clip earlier this year that showed Bush in Virginia looking at the rows and rows of vaults that contained the IOU’s issued by the Treasury which are the trust funds. The Social Security Trust fund is about 1.6 Trillion. I believe the Medicare Trust Fund is about a Trillion.



Special Issue Securities
Updated November 8, 2005
Trust funds and types of investments The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund comprise the Social Security trust funds. Both funds are managed by the Department of the Treasury. Since the beginning of the Social Security program, all securities held by the trust funds have been issued by the Federal Government. There are two general types of such securities:
Special issues—available only to the trust funds
Public issues—marketable Treasury bonds available to the public.
The trust funds now hold only special issues, but they have held public issues in the past.
Special issues:
types and properties There are two types of special issues: short-term certificates of indebtedness and long-term bonds.
The certificates of indebtedness are issued on a daily basis for the investment of receipts not required to meet current expenditures, and they mature on the next June 30 following the date of issue.
Special-issue bonds are normally acquired only when special issues of either type mature on June 30. The bonds have maturities ranging from one to fifteen years.
The above properties of special issue securities are summarized in the following table.
Type of special issue Investment
frequency Maturity
Certificates of indebtedness Daily Next June 30
Bonds June 30 1 to 15 years

Drmiler

You are correct other administrations have done this. However, Bush has, by far, added more of these IOU's then ANY OTHER PRESIDENT. What is more, his fiscal policy will NEVER end this process! We will never get to a balanced budget following the Bush policy!

They have been complaining about the fact that Congress failed to keep Social Security funds in a lock box.

This is a very good point! An excelent point! The only problem with your point is the term lock box was something that showed up in the 2000 elections. Nice of you to blame the current President for the failure of the last President. I shal repeat what I posted before and ask you explainantion.

The first baby boomer president traveled the country to warn that his generation's impending retirement, 76 million people [who think the world revolves around them] would bankrupt the generations to follow. 'It would be unconscionable if we failed to act,' President Clinton said at a forum in 1998 when he made fixing the nation's retirement program a top priority in his second term. Clinton's efforts then, in light of President Bush's now, induce an extraordinary sense of déjà vu. Clinton appointed a bipartisan commission which delivered in '97 three options to save the program. They included a now familiar list of possible benefit cuts from changing indexing formulas to changing the retirement age, and one of the options would have allowed workers to divert five percentage points of their payroll taxes to personal accounts, the first such proposal by a government commission.

Vice-president Gore I think came up with putting the money in a lockbox.

So if Mr. Bush is the reason for social security going broke why is it that Mr. Clinton was publicly trying to save social security in 1996 through 2000? You never answered the fact that social security was projected in 1995 to go broke in 2005.

That was the $420 Bush acknowledged and the $200 Billion in IOU's that the Treasury issued to Social Security and Medicare for the Surplus those two funds experienced in 2005. ALL of the Trust Funds for both Social Security and Medicare are these IOU's issued by the Treasury.

Yes, because Congress took the money in the 60's and never made any provision to pay it back until Mr. Bush came into office. Untouched the fund would have gone broke in 2005 as stated many times before. Seeing as President Clinton did nothing to save the fund it must be the next president that saved it so far as we are almost in 2007 one year past the projected year the fund would go broke.

What is more, his fiscal policy will NEVER end this process! We will never get to a balanced budget following the Bush policy!

This is the same thing they said about Mr. Reagan and his tax cuts that were paid off in ten years not the 150 years the Democrats said it would take.

The fact that Bush is responsible for MORE IOU'S then any other President is a FACT not an obsession.

It's an obsession when you ignore what was posted to you and still go and blame Bush.  For some reason col you refuse to acknowledge any failures by anybody else, especially democrats. 

Island Dog

I did not ignore what was posted. see the beginning of my answer below:

"You are correct other administrations have done this."

I am one that tells it like it is. You are one that lives in a state of denial.

One-sided is how you tell it col.

I sight Facts that you and the other Bushies do not want to acknowledge. That does not make the facts I sight any less true!

It's "cite" col.

We have debunked most of your facts col and you refuse to accept that.  Just look at your tax threads where people directly countered your rhetoric and you completely ignored it.  There is more to this country and world than Bush.  You need to open your eyes and see that.  Bush does not control your life the way you try to claim he does.

I bet your parents received their Social Security. What enabled them to get that money were people like me paying Social Security Taxes that went up just about every year so they could receive their retirement.

Don't you wish you understood the topic? You are supposed to pay into your own ss account. others are not supposed to pay your retirement you are. Don't you get it? The money has been pissed away so long ago that it is almost to the point that if it is not fixed in just a few years it can't be paid back without making a serious hardship on the nation. Why? Because your lovely Democrats blew the money 40 years ago and never even attempted to pay it back until the Republicans took power 12 years ago then it became important to fix SS. You did not care when you were working to ensure SS was funded why should you care now?

That is NOT how the system was designed.

You can't be serious! It was how it was designed which is why we have account numbers. Look at your card is says Social Security Account number. You are supposed to pay into it through out your life and then get it back when you retire with interest. If you die before it is paid back it goes into the pot to be shared with everyone else. If you out live what you paid in the government would continue to pay you from that pot. According to President Roosevelt after two years it was supposed to be transferred into private accounts protected by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government.

No wonder you don't understand what is happening today. That is the lecture I got when I applied for my SSN at age 12. Sure things have changed a bit over time but that was because the government could not keep its hands off our money.