Chris Christie to Propose Changes to Social Security, Medicare

Yeah, it's much easier to think that a bunch of drunks told the bartender that the guy down at the end of the bar is paying for this round of drinks. Then when the bartender goes to that guy to collect there's nobody there.

But that is not what really happened. In reality each one of the drunks already paid in advance for an "all you can drink" deal. So serve the drinks Uncle Sam! It doesn't make any difference about some nonexistent guy at the end of the bar. The deal is between the bartender (US Govt.) and the room full of drunks (SS retirees).

 

That's probably the best analogy of anything I've read in several years.

BTW, I notice that in the couple of weeks since Christie let his little SS brainfart fly, followed by a 2-cent contribution by the Jebster, there hasn't been any more of this confiscation talk from the GOP.

It doesn't mean squat! The very idea that any "contender" would be harping on this cut-Social Security crap after the trainwreck that "Crusader Rick" Santorum had with it in 2012 tells me that my former Republicans colleagues are just biding their time and sharpening their knives....

"Just because you paid all your life, what makes you think you have a right to demand anything back?!"

 

Great idea, now let's try that with Bernie Madoff.

 

Bernie Madoff should have been put into an industrial trash compactor, with a video made of it and put on YouTube. It would still get hundreds of thousands of hits every day! Next, they should have put everybody on the Federal Reserve Board into the same trash compactor with a similar video made of them, too. Which ones were the greater criminals? People like Madoff, or the criminals who "rescued" 99% of them...?

That's a large part of why I['m so pissed off at the Republicans right now! They look blithely away at the crimes of all those who rescued Wall Street and the conniving bastards who caused the Great Recession, but who are quick to advocate any confiscation possible of benefits that have been EARNED by working taxpaying citizens.

 

My question for you is: How could you be a Republican all your life and not realize that cutting S.S. or privatiziny it has been a major goal of the party for decades. Privatizing S.S. was George W big project starting his second term. The same time his pole numbers started heading south. All the current Republican hopefuls would push for cuts if elected. They just don't use those terms. They call it Entitlement Refom. MEANING we need to cut S.S. and medicare because we can't afford it, but at the saME TIME , lets double Defense spending so we can make War all over the world and make it a safe place for us to live. If you are for those things, you should vote repblican. As far as Cristie saying those things, Its what you must say to win a Republican Primary. Its what the republicans believe. Then once you get the nomination, youi got to backpeddle in order to win the general election. politics101 As for the guy who says you don't get back all you pay in S.S., What about the guy who croaks at 64, he gets a big zero. Guy who makes it to 95 comes out smelling like a rose. There will always be winners and loosers. Starting to ramble here, so....

 

What neither of you can grasp is the fact SS is failed Ponzi scheme. It is the worse retirement plan on earth. It is managed by politicians that do not have the rules the private sector does. It is quickly turning most Americans into serfs. The savings rate among Americans is pathetic. The Chinese save on average 30% of their incomes. It is a myth that Americans will not save and that they cannot get better investment results from investing in the market. The federal government owes you nothing. It is only made up of 535 representatives with a printing press. This does not give them the ability to payback trillions they plundered. The rich cannot pay it either. We are headed down a black hole and you guys are blindly diving in.

 

I agree with almost every single thing you've said. Instead of sputtering a bunch of rationalizations, I'll be candid and say that I never paid a hell of a lot of attention to Social Security until I approached real retirement age.

I remember, clearly, when "W" introduced the idea of "privatizing" Social Security investments as an option, and it was a bomb that blew up in the faces of the entire Republican Party. It seemed impossible after that that any Republican contender for nomination (with a cerebrum) would recommend making CUTS to Social Security, but that's exactly what "Crusader Rick" Santorum did in 2012 and it wrecked him! And that's why I was more surprised than ever when Christie AND the Jebster came out a couple of weeks ago with suggestions designed to undermine Social Security for people who are very much alive today!

Don't misunderstand me. I've been a life-long Conservative (maybe that's a better description) and I despise Socialism or any other "ism" that robs one man and gives it to another as UNEARNED welfare! I despise Barack Obama, and because he has broken the law four times in just over the past four years, he should have already been impeached and removed.

That said, I'll never vote for another Republican at the national level again in my life if the party is going to stand with this faction that launches dirty, conniving confiscation efforts with their "foot-in-the-door" proposals like "means-testing". If I must vote for (vomit!) Hillary Clinton or someone even worse in order to keep my full EARNED Social Security benefit, then so be it. I'm not committing financial suicide for the Republican Party!

 

Blah, blah, blah. We were "headed down a black hole and you guys are blindly diving in" by summer of 2007 when the big-rich investment bankers and their clients, the stock market gamblers were bringing down The Great Recession on the country with all their schemes and manipulations. BUT, miraculously, they were "rescued"! They were saved from the consequences of their actions and all the rotten, dirty things they did by their paid stooges in government and the overlords in the Federal Reserve combine.

Well, the same (*)(*)(*)(*)ing stooge-government can "rescue" Social Security when it finally does have a funding problem by 2033. Until then, the government, including whatever is left of the Republican Party, needs to keep its stinking damned hands OFF of EARNED benefits for those who EARNED them. There was no "means-testing" when they took our money away and there should be no "means-testing" when it comes time to pay!

 

What you say may be true but it won't fail until somewhere after 2032 according to the best information we have now. The problem that will hit much sooner is the one about SS disability, and the answer to that is to get all the bums and freeloaders who don't deserve disability off the program. So if we have 17 years before SS really has a funding problem then why do the Republican bigwigs think we have to cut benefits now? That's a bunch of crap to grab at political low hanging fruit at the expense of people who can't work anymore. Besides it is true that a lot more of them will be dead 17 years from now and so the payout will be that much less.

 

They are already bankrupt. You are getting the Enron accounting statements. These programs are taking in less money than they are paying out. General fund income is being borrowed and passed to future generations to deal with. We as a country are committing generational theft.

Go look at the SS yearly reports. In 2011, eliminating general fund income and the interest(general fund) there was more than a 500 billion deficit. 2012 was more than 400 billion.

Look at the actual FICA payments and insurance payments, these are the only real income, the others are general fund income borrowed in deficits.

 

Maat, Social Security was begun by FDR by paying people already in retirement and who were about to retire -- not by getting the funding from the beneficiaries first! So, from the very beginning, Social Security and all these mandatory government programs have been funded by passing part of the cost to future generations. A large portion of a person's "contribution" was reserved specifically for his own retirement, which is why the benefit varies from one worker to the next -- based on what they EARNED, and what they were forced to "contribute".

The "burden" of previous generations was passed on to us Baby Boomers when we started going to work in the 1960's, and part of the "burden" of successive generations are passed on to those who will be born later. There is NOTHING new in any of this... it's the way the entire Social Security system was set up eighty years ago!

Still, you absolutely refuse to even respond at all to the stooge-government of both "W" Bush and Obama, and the Federal Reserve central bank, saving Wall Street in the Great Recession, but turning a blind eye toward whatever Social Security funding problems there are? You think anybody who works for a living is going to vote for some slimebag Republican who tries to peddle the grossly unfair nonsense of "means-testing" confiscation of part of a person's SS benefits?

Oh, it will pain me to have to vote for a Democrat in the next election. I have never done that even once in my entire life! But I will vote for even the most nauseating, miserably-socialist pile of (*)(*)(*)(*) they run for the presidency rather than keep solidarity with a political party who thinks nothing of stealing from me and stabbing me in the back! See how successful your and your bunch are in overcoming the votes of 80,000,000 Baby Boomers with your "children and the grandchildren" who haven't paid anything into these systems, and who can't even vote yet because they aren't born yet! Do you know what a election-day MASSACRE is...?