That means that Social Security can’t add one penny to the deficit.

And, conversely, cutting Social Security won’t remove from penny from the deficit.

Can’t wait to send this link to the lazy NY Times reporters . . . I mean stenographers that dutifully print up whatever garbage the politicians say without facts or context.

I’ve been doing a little research on the IMF and the Rothschilds who pretty much own the planet since the Napoleonic Wars..

I ran across alot of info about the setting up of the Federal Reserve which, I think bears a strange resemblance to what’s going on with SS and the other “entitlements” AND the economic looting we’ve been watching in Shock.

It seems the Federal Reserve act was passed over the congressional Christmas break when there were few Congress members there and was signed into law by Wilson ONE HOUR after the Senate passed it.
I strongly suspect the the demise of Social Security will happen that way.

these are serious people: http://100777.com/node/303

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzLIz27GqWs&feature=related

The Oligarchs have hated SS from day 1 and have worked for these last 75 yrs. to destroy it. The Cat food commission is only their latest run on it. The Commission is just one more betrayal by Obama and the Dinocrats and clearly shows who really owns them body and soul. I’ve come to believe these last mos., since the agonizing experience of the so called Health Care reform last year that we need a strong Progressive-Labor Party in this country if were ever going to have any real influence ever again in DC. Being part of the DINOCRAT coalition has become an endlessly frustrating and increasingly futile experience for many of us. I’ve since dropped my party designation as a Dim after 40 yrs. and have become a Progressive Indie. I’ll do what I can to defeat both so called Corporatist parties. We need a third way now!!

Mail empty and uncleaned catfood containers to the bozos at the commission.

Take the vow to only vote for those who oppose any Social Security cap because there is no escaping this tax, doubled up on the employer. It’s an emergency, isn’t it ?

No problem funding it for all our children.

Whadda’ ya’ say we lower the Social Security age to 30 (why not bump the pay out to 2010 dollar$ while we are at it) as long as there’s this insistence on a “jobless recovery,” ~ 22% permanent unemployment and “investors” insisting on EDS’s coveted “best shoring” as “best practice.” Their heads will explode.

We should remove the cap so everyone pays the same flat tax. (I thought conservatives liked flat taxes?) This would allow us to decrease the rate of the payroll tax. Then it would be solvent FOREVER.

So, this is our shot. What is the other side doing? Focusing on the debt and “The children, the children won’t someone please thing about the children!” They are making an emmotional appeal not an intellectual appeal. They have created a video with cute kids.

When I went to Ustream to watch Dday on the Netroots Nation panel with Prof Warren I found this commercial playing. It’s a bunch of kids pledging to “Amercia’s debt.”

It’s produced by a group called DefeatTheDebt which is a front group for the Employment Policies Institute which was started by Berman & Co., a Washington, DC public affairs firm owned by Rick Berman, who lobbies for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries.

They have created front groups that are against the minimum wage increase, against unions and ACORN years before it was fashionable on the right. This site they started http://rottenacorn.org is from 2005 and doesn’t exist anymore.

If I had to guess I would think that Berman & Co got some of the Pete Peterson money to create these commercials and place them on line. They have a number of commercials this one was the one they played. Here is the text.

Children: I pledge allegiance to Americaʼs debt, and to the Chinese government that lends us money. And to the interest, for which we pay, compoundable, with higher taxes and lower pay until the day we die.

VO: American tax payers owe more than $500 million in interest payments every day to cover our governmentʼs debt, much of that debt is owe to foreign governments. Go to DefeatTheDebt.com.

Girl: Debt Stinks.

In the fact of massive unemployment the “no debt!” drumbeat continues.

Now I know that the defeat the debt people will find this comment. They will list it as an “accomplishment” that their campaign is being talked about “on the blogs”. I don’t want to ask them to think about what they are doing for a living, they are just “paying the mortgage” as the star of the movie “Thank you for smoking” said as he sold death to kids.

I can’t judge them. But these are the people we are up against.

I can’t judge them.

I can. They’re sleazy rat bastards.

jim white has late nite up

Is it a waste of breath for me to suggest that ‘on the flip’ is meaningless (if it has a meaning at all) when it simply follows the rest of the post? There is no ‘flip’ when it is all one screen. This is the second time I’ve seen this today. Maybe it is print-journo speak but meaningless here.

And I am 67 and about to retire and begin to collect SS. Get your hands off my Medicare!! /s

“It’s a ____ because we say so!” Fill in the blank with the words “war,” “crisis,” “austerity measures for thee not me,” yaty, yaty.

Billionaires for Social Insecurity’ Rally & Ask Americans to Donate Social Security Checks — “Feeling entitled to cut your entitlements (since 1936)”

3) Social Security should not be means-tested.

4) Congress should act in the coming few years to close Social Security’s funding gap by requiring those who are most able to afford it to pay somewhat more.

5) Social Security’s retirement age, already scheduled to increase from 65 to 67, should not be raised further

This is the same veal pen that betrayed us over healthcare. Look how come they can’t just say take the caps off FICA, heck they can’t even mention the wealthy. It all gets watered down to those “most able to afford it to pay somewhat more.” (my bold) Not more, just somewhat more. Jeez, could they be any more limp? And let’s face it if the caps were taken off FICA then means testing to remove the rich from the recipient pool makes sense. And no push back on raising the retirement age to 67. Listen with our unemployment problems we need to incentivize people to retire and open up jobs to those entering in and moving up the career ladders.

The Myth #3 rebuttal partly addresses the FICA caps but it really should be in the principles, not there. The reply to Myth #4 is wrong. SS does not hold Treasuries. It holds special debt instruments and it is these which are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government, an increasingly dicey concept nowadays with Obama and his cat food commission trying to renege on them. Myth #5 is not exactly true either. Social Security is not part of the budgeting process but those debt instruments stand for the surpluses taken from the SS system and applied to the government’s overall deficits. Since this money is “off-budget”, the figure we use for the federal deficit (which includes this money) is called the off-budget deficit. So long as SS was running surpluses this was a win for politicians no matter whose party was in power. It made everyone’s deficits look smaller. No one in government or the media ever referred to the on-budget or total federal deficit which was always larger. However, when SS surpluses end now or in a few years, that is outflows exceed inflows, SS will need to start repatriating those special debt instruments the government parked with them. That will mean that money has to come out of general revenues, and then for the first time the off-budget deficit will be larger than the on-budget one. So yes, that will affect government deficits. It will either have to cut other parts of the budget, raise taxes, or run larger deficits.

being nice, being NOT direct, being NOT blunt – is f’king stupid.

these people are scum AND need to be confronted as such.

rmm.

It really upsets me when some dems support the idea that SS needs to be reformed: raise retirement age, etc…Most suggestions put the future at risk. Steny Hoyer, Majority Leader in the House talked about supporting the increased retirement age. The more pols and others suggest that SS needs reform, they guilt the elderly. Those already retired will not be impacted. So, it is okay to limit other’s in order to save the country. The backers of SS reform, are trying to sell it as a patriotic duty for the elderly to make this decision.

I applaud the efforts of this coalition. Unfortunately, as we see demonstrated daily, the facts are no longer the basis for the actions or inactions of our government. What motivates our lawmakers and the Obama administration are the bribes campaign contributions provided by corporate entities and ultra-wealthy individuals.

The oligarchs are intent upon gutting or eliminating Social Security altogether, and no amount of truth is going to change their plans. Only the rejection of corporatist schemes by a President and Congress with backbones and some semblance of integrity could stop this onslaght. Too bad we don’t have any people like that representing us in Washington.

Obama and Congress will destroy Social Security in exchange for money and political favors. The falsehoods they use to justify their actions are merely to confuse and distract the general populace until it is too late to stop them. Get ready to kiss your SS goodbye.

I am not ready to do that, nor will I be.

I think an online pledge not to vote for any son of a bitch who votes in favor of the Catfood Recommendations is a hell of a good idea.

Hugh – you keep saying these things – but you remain incorrect in fact and IMO

You say “If the caps were taken off FICA then means testing to remove the rich from the recipient pool makes sense.” WHY

The SS budget savings are minimal but the GOP political gain is hugh from making Social Security a welfare plan via meams testing – the 2.00% of payroll savings if means testing and no cap drops to 1.75% if just no cap and full earned benefits are paid to the rich (the progressive nature of the benefit formula, where average wage dollars above a high level get a benefit increase in the monthly benefit that is much less than the new funds paid by the rich could buy outside the system takes care of any progressive liberal need to not over benefit the rich – indeed it is the reason that that a wage cap removal is such a benefit to the system). If SS is ever re-classed from social insurance to welfare, you can be certain that the next “welfare reform” will be an easy to pass drastic cut in the benefits.

While I agree that retirement has the positive of opening up jobs to those entering in and moving up the career ladders, there is a question of the intent – and ability – of our society to pay a longer than the 1935 amount of retirement years. Indeed the “What’s more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly—since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half.” is an important point but is a bit of a con because it starts at 1972, and not 1935. Using 1935 you have a reason for 68, not 69, as the new “normal retirement age”. We do live longer and ultimately the system can not afford to pick up the full increase in payout that the increased lifespan represents. But the wage cap removal is a must, and giving a retirement age of 68 or 69 to get it passed is a reasonable deal, in my opinion. The lower income shorter lifespan tells us that once we get a national health plan, Social Security will be hit with a larger increase in average lifespan as the lower income begin to approach a wealthier person’s life span.

As to “SS does not hold Treasuries” that is totally wrong – the law actually refers to the holdings as Treasuries and Government bonds. They are indeed written up as a bond with special provisions – they can only be sold back to Treasury and not on the open market – but that can be changed by Congress in a heartbeat – and interest rate is “market place based” – and as you note these debt instruments are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government – which is not a “dicey concept” unless China and Japan are OK with US soverign debt default.

Finally you say that “Social Security is not part of the budgeting process” – but the final product of the “budgeting process” is the “unified budget” which presents the governments “deficit” and which is calculated including Social Security income and benefit payments and expenses (granted it is a con-job as to the growth in the national debt since all outstanding bonds – including those held in the Social Security Trust Fund – are part of that debt, so bonds issued to the SS Trust Fund each year increase the national debt just like bonds issued to China. The reduction in reported “deficit” is of interest only to those that try to see how big a demand on private – not trust fund – capital markets is to be anticipated).

Indeed your comment “..and that includes the income and outgo of Social Security but those debt instruments stand for the surpluses taken from the SS system and applied to the government’s overall deficits. Since this money is “off-budget”, the figure we use for the federal deficit (which includes this money) is called the off-budget deficit. So long as SS was running surpluses this was a win for politicians no matter whose party was in power. It made everyone’s deficits look smaller. No one in government or the media ever referred to the on-budget or total federal deficit which was always larger. However, when SS surpluses end now or in a few years, that is outflows exceed inflows, SS will need to start repatriating those special debt instruments the government parked with them. That will mean that money has to come out of general revenues, and then for the first time the off-budget deficit will be larger than the on-budget one.” is spot on. But your final point “So yes, that will affect government deficits. It will either have to cut other parts of the budget, raise taxes, or run larger deficits” is better said as all bonds are claims on future tax revenue and the rich may have a tax increase to meet the claims of the bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund that funded their Bush tax cut for the rich. Indeed your “cut other parts of the budget” can be read as cut welfare for corporations in the military and agriculture budgets – indeed cut Defense spending, and your “raise taxes” can be read as a tax increase on the rich so as to repay the bonds that funded their Bush tax cut, and finally, your “run larger deficits” can be read as replace the portion of the national debt now held by Social Security with more bonds held by China – if China will buy them.

The fact that a con job “unified” accounting “deficit” becomes larger as Social Security bonds are redeemed is not a worry and was anticipated in Gore’s “lockbox” wording – that wording simply meant running surpluses that reduced the national debt so there was “room” for more debt to be sold to China. It is hard to see an economic reason that the con-job deficit increase is a worry – unless you plan to fail at all three options – you will not cut military, will not raise taxes on the rich, and can not get China to buy more US bonds.

Well at least someone’s doing something. Hope they get up into Oilbummer’s face about his right wing takeover of Soc Sec.

I applaud MoveOn for starting to move on this, but they still can’t play it straight. If you go to share the “Myth Busters” list on Facebook, the first sentence reads “Conservatives want to cut Social Security”. Who created the Catfood Commission? Who is in charge of the White House and Congress? Obama and the Democrats. This would not be on the table were it not for them.

And once again, Josh Marshall, remember the big effort of your site to raise awareness of what they were trying to do to SS under Bush? You and your site sit silent over this and it will show you to be a truly despicable figure.

Mail empty and uncleaned catfood containers to the bozos at the commission.

Memo from my cats (and dog): Mail your containers to the White House, which created the commission.

I wonder how they’ll spin THIS in terms of “it’s OK to cut the deficit on the backs of the poor and getting poorer now”?
U.S. stock futures extend drop after GDP report

What an incredible mishmash. If the rich are means tested out of a program they don’t need, then suddenly that program becomes “welfare”. How does that happen exactly? Does it involve sticking pins in a voodoo doll or is it more like the Eucharist?

Then you repeat a variant on the too few workers to support retirees. That has been debunked here endlessly but still has had no effect on you apparently. See Myth#2 for the brief form of this argument.

I would direct you to the SS site and read what they have to say about whether or not they hold Treasuries. Here’s a clue. They don’t.

I described in my comment how SS funds have been considered as in the budget for some purposes but not for others. And your argument makes no sense. An appeal to a unified budget means nothing. Those funds aren’t held with SS. They are spent by the government just as every other revenue stream is. If SS truly weren’t part of the budget, then any surpluses it had would be held by it. Again on and off budget is not my, but the government’s terminology, for all this. If SS really were completely outside the budget, then this terminology would not even be necessary.