From the White House: Regarding President Obama and Social Security

[Tx4obama]

FACT SHEET: The President's Framework for Shared Prosperity and Shared Fiscal Responsibility

Excerpt

Policy Highlights. The policy highlights in the President’s framework build on the down-payment included in his FY 2012 Budget. They include:

SNIP

Social Security: The President does not believe that Social Security is in crisis nor is a driver of our near-term deficit problems. But, in the context of an aging population and a Social Security wage base that is declining as a share of overall earnings, Social Security faces long-term challenges that are better addressed sooner than later to ensure that the program remains for future generations the rock-solid benefit for older Americans that it has been for past generations. That is why the President supports bipartisan efforts to strengthen Social Security for the long haul. These efforts should be guided by several principles, including strengthening the program and not privatizing it, improving retirement security for the vulnerable while protecting people with disabilities and current beneficiaries, and not slashing benefits for future generations.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/04/13/fact-sheet-presidents-framework-shared-prosperity-and-shared-fiscal-resp

[Tripod]

1. Great post. k&r

[pacalo]

2. Other than stopping the government from using SS funds as a rainy-day account,

what ideas would they come up with to strengthen it? Pay the money back that they took from it? It's not part of the budget. It's funded by payroll deductions.

[sad sally]

3. If the President really believes that SS faces long-term challenges

why did he approve the Payroll Tax Holiday? Will this one-year stiumlus really end, or will the President have to extend it as a campaign bargaining chip and take another bite out of the Social Security solvency?

http://my.firedoglake.com/nancyaltman/2010/12/07/the-end-of-social-security/?du

Given that unwillingness to raise taxes by less than a nickel on every dollar earned over $1 million, I find it unfathomable that a more conservative Congress, in two years, in an election year, will increase the payroll tax by 2 percent on the very first dollar, and every other dollar up to the cap, earned by virtually every single worker in the country. Consequently, I think we have to assume that the payroll tax holiday will be extended beyond the two years the president is proposing and quite likely could become permanent.

That means that the federal government will have to continue to transfer $120 billion to the Social Security trust funds each and every year even as it has to transfer more and more interest payments as the trust funds continue to grow and as interest rates return to more normal levels. Unless Congress acts to restore Social Security to solvency, the Treasury bonds held in trust will have to be redeemed, again on top of that new $120 billion transfer from the general fund, starting fifteen years from now, assuming Congress even continues to make the $120 billion every year before that point. These dollars will be competing with dollars for defense, environmental protection, education, school lunches, Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, Pell grants for low income college students, and every other good and service financed by the federal government.

[Luminous Animal]

4. In other words, there will be cuts but no slashing.

[Hannah Bell]

5. still bullshit.