There are bills in the house and the senate to raise the SS cap and Obama campaigned on this issue.

[dkf]

http://www.akbizmag.com/Alaska-Business-Monthly/February-2013/Begich-Reintroduces-Social-Security-Bill-Pleased-Companion-Bill-Dropped-In-House/


Protects our Seniors, Pushes for Common-Sense Fiscal Planning

As deficit-reduction talks continue, U.S. Sen. Mark Begich today reintroduced his bill to strengthen Social Security while making it clear that budget cuts should not undermine the promise this country has made to our workers and seniors.

Begich was also pleased that Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) introduced a companion bill in the House of Representatives. Together, their bills would extend the solvency of Social Security for approximately 75 years by requiring higher-income Americans to pay Social Security on their earnings all year long and just adjusting the formula for cost-of-living increases to better reflect the needs of our seniors and persons with disabilities.

“Our seniors deserve to have the certainty of knowing that the benefits they worked hard to earn will be there when they need them. And this bill isn’t just about protecting our seniors it is also about common-sense long-term fiscal planning,” said Sen. Begich.

“The current debate over our federal deficit should not be used as an excuse to cut benefits or privatize Social Security, which operates off its own independent revenue stream and does not contribute to the federal deficit,” said Congressman Deutch. “Social Security is fundamentally sound, and with modest adjustments, the system can continue protecting all Americans from destitution resulting from old age, an unexpected disability, or the death of a breadwinner.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/09/21/obama-social-security_n_1903773.html

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama revived a 2008 campaign promise on Friday, telling the crowd at an AARP forum that he would be open to raising the level of income on which Americans pay Social Security taxes.

---

So why the insistence that there is nothing wrong with SS? Why aren't they saying there is a problem and this is the solution?

[Angry Dragon]

1. It seems that this weekend you are obsessed with SS

Who the hell is saying that there is nothing wrong with SS??

[dkf]

2. All the people insisting it not be touched.

No cuts in benefits! But where are the Democratic solutions? Funny I don't hear any quotes on that...just silence.

[patrice]

3. I'm concerned, if a bunch of money was borrowed from the SS trust fund, can we pretend that

didn't happen?

[Angry Dragon]

5. Here is my take on SS

The republicans have corrupted the word Entitlements
The people that paid into SS ARE entitled to it
It is retirement insurance
The republicans lump it into federal spending and say it is about 22% of spending
SS adds nothing to the debt or deficit
You mentioned in another post how the payroll cut was paid for out of the budget
I asked you at that time to show me where the money came from and refused to
Not touching SS is not the same as making it more secure
CPI will not make SS better
Raising the cap would strengthen SS

It seems to me that you have embraced the republican lies that SS needs to cut back so the country can be saved because so much is spent on it .......... when the facts do not support this position
If all payments of SS was stopped today it would not change the debt one penny, in fact it would hurt the country, loss of jobs, spending would crash, people would die ......... that is what the republicans want

Now is the time to fix the debt and deficits not to cut spending
AND SS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT IS SPENT ON THE BUDGET

[patrice]

12. Agreed about CPI, even for someone who'd be willing to consider a slow down in the

cost of living increase in their benefits, in exchange for a credit elsewhere in their personal economy, e.g. extremely significant decreases in medical costs, CPI is still does not seem to help the over-all whole situation enough to make it worth it, especially since there appears to be a very good case for how Keystone XL will most assuredly increase gas prices (pay back for decades and decades of artificially subsidized fossil fuel prices in the U.S.) and thus the price of everything else, and also especially since we don't have authentic concrete controls over medical costs, so anything like that which could happen will be diffuse and at least a decade in coming.

[Angry Dragon]

14. I am still waiting for dkf to respond to any questions I have asked them over the last two days

CPI is an ugly idea and from what I have read is that Obama is for it

[Progressive dog]

28. If CPI includes medical costs then decreasing medical costs decreases CPI based payments

The way CPI works is keeping money constant vs the cost of things normally purchased. If you reduce CPI by arbitrarily substituting falsely equivalent but cheaper products (say cat food for steak) as chained CPI does, you can artificially lower CPI payments by requiring SS recipients to live as cheaply as possible. Then if you actually cut medical costs, you can pay them even less. You see, if the CPI accurately reflects the cost of health care, then reducing the cost of health care saves NOTHING for the Social Security recipient. So there is a one way transfer here, out of the pockets of SS recipients.

[patrice]

31. Thanks for this. nt

[AnnaLee]

36. Why chained CPI instead of CPI-E then?

The index that appropriately reflects variations in cost of health care is the experimental index CPI-E. So if you want an accurate float of COLA aligned with cost benefits of health care reform, you would use CPI-E. Based on this I am perplexed by chaining CPI as opposed to CPI-E. Which walnut shell is the pea under?

[dkf]

15. The payroll tax holiday was paid for by adding the cost to the federal budget.

Just as I said.

And the funds to run the federal budget came from selling bonds (debt!) and tax revenues.

That is the same way it is possible SS will have a direct impact on the deficit when the trust funds are depleted or if they do payroll tax holidays in the same manner.

If congress chooses to fund the full obligation regardless of the fact that there is no trust fund and payroll taxes aren't enough to cover social security checks it is conceivable they will simply add it to the federal budget in their annual budget.

Or they can cut SS check amounts 25%. You want everyone to be in suspense for all those years thinking its possible a fourth of their minimal subsistence funds are gone in a particular year and every year thereafter? Or if they fund it for the first year, if they will fund it in the second year or the third year or the fourth year? What if they cut the amount of the gap?

That is a lot of uncertainty.

[ljm2002]

16. Re: your header...

..."The payroll tax holiday was paid for by adding the cost to the federal budget".

That is exactly why many of us were against that payroll tax holiday to begin with.

Just out of curiosity, were you for, or against the payroll tax holiday when it was first proposed?

[dkf]

18. Honestly I didn't understand the mechanics back then.

It was probably a dangerous thing to do if it created resentment that we pay payroll taxes.

[ljm2002]

25. No, silly...

...it was a dangerous thing to do because it linked Social Security to the general fund for the first time in its history.

[dkf]

26. Which is the mechanics of it.

So it's a double whammy.

[Angry Dragon]

17. I wonder why you refuse to answer the questions put to you??

So if I have money in a savings account and decide to withdraw some of that money then it is looked at as a debt??

[dkf]

21. Depends if the angry dragon savings account holds savings or...

Ious.

If they hold ious then Angry Dragon needs to borrow to pay back the savings account.

Thus where you used to owe money to yourself you now owe money to someone else.

[Angry Dragon]

22. What a bunch of bull

It is my money and where I put it has no bearing

Show me how my money is an iou(SS held securities)
I lend you money... it is a debt to you ...... you pay some of it back ........ that part is no longer a debt

[Progressive dog]

27. What a bunch of malarkey

Why are monies owed the SS trust fund any different than monies owed banks, the wealthy, or foreign governments? So what you saying is that since I live in the USA, I should let government keep my money, but since we owe American banks and wealthy money, we have to pay it back?

[AnnaLee]

37. I think that is precisely what they want to confuse people into believing.

Beware the pick-pocket who comes with open arms and a smile.

[Progressive dog]

30. I for one would rather have 20 years of certainty in NO CAT FOOD

Instead of knowing I only have to eat a little more cat food each year and in 20 years the increase in my cat food consumption will be slightly less.
By that reasoning, the smart thing to do is cut the benefit 25% now and the uncertainty will just go away. Yup, let's do bad stuff now so we have no uncertainty about having to do it later.

[patrice]

9. Silence? = Those $110K-? incomes are too marginal to take the hit?

Which, if true, would be because of why???

They're carrying too much consumer credit?

That's small entrepreneurial capital, running their own payrolls??

That silence is pretty interesting; makes one wonder what kind of deals could be made for those, hack, choke, cough, "middle-class" incomes.

[patrice]

4. Why would raising the cap be a problem? Why not?

[Angry Dragon]

8. I never said that the cap should not be raised

I am for it

It seems to me that the poster has bought into the republican lies about SS being a large part of the budget problem

[patrice]

10. Well, I think all of us agree about that. Does raising the cap assume that it is part of the budget

problem? or would raising the cap be part of some other perspective on the issue? . . . though I'm not sure what that would be.

[Angry Dragon]

11. A large part of the problem is that republicans want to include anything about SS to be

part of the budget fix when SS has nothing to do with the budget
The two have to be seperated otherwise SS will end up with chained-CPI

[patrice]

20. True, SS doesn't have anything to do with the discretionary budget management end of it and it

would be bad to think of it that way, but SS is related to the output end of discretionary budget management, everything that happens there has an effect upon the value of what each person invests in SS.

[AnnaLee]

38. It is smart politics.

So Reagan "saved" Social Security back in the 80s. At least that is what he said at the signing, sort of, and that is what, repeated often, we all believe. The Republicans, even then, by and large wanted to destroy the New Deal. But they "saved" Social Security and look how the oldest voters are voting today. The idea is to erode support for the entitlements on someone else's watch. So, having failed to get support for privatization on their watch, they did not touch it. (Note they raised the % taxed on Clinton's watch.)

I wonder if Obama allows Social Security benefit reductions on his watch:
1) Who will be blamed historically in the minds of voters.
2) Will it be the end of the Democratic party's ability to compete for power for a decade?
3) Will the Republican's use it in the next election to defeat Democratic candidates in key districts where their support among seniors appears to have eroded a bit? (e.g. swing states like Florida and Ohio)

or what? I cannot guess but I don't see why it is worth the risk as an early offer.

[leveymg]

6. Lift the SS earnings cap altogether. Will solve several problems simultaneously.

SS/Medicare/Medicaid will be fully funded and the Treasury can continue borrowing from the Trust Fund without solvency concerns. No need to raise any other taxes or cut exemptions or benefits.

[brentspeak]

7. When he was campaigning, Obama pandered that he wanted to raise the cap

That was then, this is now.

Today, he's talking only about cutting benefits via a CPI switch.

[riqster]

13. "Today"? "Only"? Not so.

As Paul Simon reminded us,

"Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest "


If you're going to trash talk the Prexy, try to make your statements at least somewhat credible.

[brentspeak]

23. Ok, then link us to where Obama has said otherwise.

Put up, or shut up.

[riqster]

32. Done.

Three minutes with Google.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/seniors-and-social-security

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/obama-medicare-social-security-changes-only-on-my-terms-86502.html

He isn't ONLY talking friggin' CPI shit.

[brentspeak]

33. That's it?

Not a word in either link concerning raising or eliminating the cap.

Thanks for wasting both our time.

[riqster]

35. You said that all Obama was talking about was chained CPI

I proved otherwise. Please refer again to the Paul Simon lyric. Enjoy your time hating the Prexy.

[L0oniX]

19. I'm sure the rich will pass the bills. PHFFFFFFFFTT (sound of large long fart in the key of F major)

[patrice]

24. Tell me that raising the cap doesn't have anything to do with incomes that, while you and I would

consider them rich, relative to that whole money construct that makes those kinds of incomes possible, they are marginal. That's probably a relatively large demographic and there are political consequences there, related to those jobs especially. I wonder what dollar-amount increase in their payroll tax raising the cap would be. Remember the screaming about sunsetting the Bush Tax Cuts? What was the annual effect in the low-end of those upper-middle brackets of ending that tax cut? something less than $300.?? - one good shopping trip? - a weekend of pro-ball somewhere? I mention it only in comparison to what we'd hear from that LARGE group at the low-end of those upper brackets if the payroll tax cap were raised or eliminated.

During the run-up to the budget struggle that lead to the sequester, the Progressive Caucus suggested raising the bottom of the upper income tax brackets, which start at under $300K, right?, kind of low relative to where the top of those incomes is, huh? So? raise or remove the payroll tax cap and raise the bottom of the top income tax brackets??? So they're increasing their investments in the long-term stability of the system that makes their incomes possible and getting some more short-term income for it, at least some of which could become entrepreneurial capital.

????

None of which addresses increasing medical costs and increasing gas prices which affect everything that this money is supposed to make possible.

[L0oniX]

29. Congress and senate will not care as long as they get campaign fundng from Exxon, United, ect...

So those that make their income from stocks investments with have to pay a little more SS ...while they enjoy the 14.9% fed rate. Am I suppose to care? Would there be any real threat to jobs here? They are not creating jobs here anyway IMO. Any jobs that might be created for American citizens are mostly service jobs which are subsidized by tax breaks for the corporations and food stamps for their workers ...example Wallmart. The tech jobs here mostly go to "more and better educated" persons from overseas or in other words subsidies to other countries work force. Why should it matter to the common little person and voter what problems the overly spent rich people have? I understand after you allocate your income for 300k that additional expenditures may cause some hardship but that pales in comparison to the plight of the 15-20k a year worker. It's not the fault of the poor that people who make more money spend more and end up in a jam when things go south. Where do they spend that higher income and on what? Bigger home ...better boat ...golf club ...yacht club ...5 star restaurants ...fancy cars ...college for the kids ...health insurance ...all of which the poor could never hope to attain. The Heritage Foundation propaganda is free market capitalism and that is really only for them and not people who make 15-20k a year. I find no excuse for anyone making 10 times as much to complain about their financial problems for any reason ...except maybe health problems which can and does bankrupt just about everyone except the extreme rich. You have to be rich enough to pay for lawyers to get bad faith insurance to pay up on a legit claim anyway. Certainly IMO having the cap limit did not and will not assist job creation. I am tired of the anti American pro unrestricted free market capitalistic Reagan lies ...and the stupid people who believe them.

[bluestate10]

34. The Cap should be eliminated. That is the only fair solution. nt