So they did some projections and found that if they keep stealing from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for planes that the Defense Department doesn’t want at the current pace, it will be "exhausted" four years earlier than projected — in 2037.
In honor of this remarkable event where the government suddenly cares about paying for something with money it won’t have thirty years from now, because after all the security of old people is not as critical as the security of the banking system, Secretary Geithner releases a statement:
"Despite projections that Social Security can continue to pay full benefits for nearly 30 years, the sooner action is taken the more options for reform will be available and the fairer reforms will be to our children and grandchildren.
"To ensure that these critical programs are there for future generations, the President and his Administration are taking the following steps.
"First, we are intently focused on bringing the current economic and financial crisis to an end and getting on with recovery. The return of robust growth will help solve some–but by no means all–of the financial problems of Social Security and Medicare.
"Second, we are reforming the health care system to get costs under control and improve quality, which will strengthen the Medicare program and improve the long-term fiscal position of the U.S. government. Just yesterday, the President worked with major health care providers to secure a commitment to reduce costs of care by more than $2 trillion dollars. These voluntary efforts will complement the President’s efforts to enact comprehensive reform to assure quality and affordable health care for every American. The Administration is committed to working with Congress to find ways to control runaway growth in both public and private health care expenditures while ensuring that all Americans receive the high quality, affordable health care they deserve.
"Finally, after we have passed health care reform that puts our nation on a path to lower growth in health care costs and expanded affordable coverage, this President will work to build a bipartisan consensus to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security. The President explicitly rejects the notion that Social Security is an untouchable politically and instead believes there is opportunity for a new consensus on Social Security reform.
Translated: Anyone who bought that ten-dimensional chess crap about the administration having no plans to cut Social Security benefits: psyche!
Despite getting shitcanned from his lofty keynote speaker perch at the Fiscal Responsibility Summit, it appears Pete Peterson still has quite a bit of influence on Timmeh:
GEITHNER: Of course, we are all fiscal hawks now because of Pete Peterson. (Laughter.) There are no doves left on the fiscal side. (Laughter.)
Was it Peterson or Bob Rubin who passed that bit of wisdom on to Timmeh during lunch at the Four Seasons?
Anyway, the upshot is that little old ladies get to eat cat food because Republicans have hated the New Deal since before they were born, and Pete Peterson doesn’t want to pay his taxes.
And now let us commence another round of "kiss the hem of Peter Orszag’s gown."
(image h/t Yglesias)
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Is there anybody in the Obama administration who isn’t a republican at heart?
Thanks Jane.
If anyone can find the link to the AIG hearings in the Oversight committee, lemme know, having trouble.
F this! tell the punks to cut Military spending!
I want a poll do we Keep Social Security, Do we get National Healthcare or do we keep fighting 2 wars and never send NOT ONE SOLDER AFTER OSSAMA like we have been doing?
Here is a link
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.c….._money.php
In response to plutonicus @1: Ummm… two but they’re treated like the crazy old aunties.
There is a link on this page (doesn’t work on my Mac though)
Robert Reich has a post saying that there is no problem with SS
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsme…..ert_reich/
Geithner:
“…this President will work to build a bipartisan consensus to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security.”
Bipartisan with which party? The Greens? Forget the thugs, they don’t do bipartisan and they especially don’t do social security. To whom does “bipartisan” still sell?
Hey, is that the same Peter Orzsag who is Bob Rubin’s protege and Rubin’s pick to head up the Hamilton Project?
I guess we’ll have to get in line behind Obama to kiss his gown: Obama bown to the Hamilton Project every time he shafts us.
Sorry, but the widows will have to do without their mites because the fucking bankers need it more. What a sick fucking society!
The President explicitly rejects the notion that Social Security is an untouchable politically
We shall see about that in the next elections.
“Wouldn’t it be more pleasant if you just gave me my money, that you have in your pocket, instead of forcing me to take the pistol from my pocket, and point it at you, and rob you, making me a criminal?”
Jane, it’s becoming more clear every day that the bail-out is as much a cover-up as it is a path to recovery.
From the perspective of the banksters, it would be nice if it led to some sort of economic recovery, but what the plan must absolutely do, is destroy the evidence of pervasive, ongoing criminal activity on the part of the finacial sector.
If you ask me, the banksters know they’ve been riding the tiger, it’s succeed, at any cost, or go to jail.
The new Obama slogan: spare change you can believe in?
Link doesn’t work
NPR had a piece this morning on the plight of Medicare and SS. David Wessel (WSJ) and Steve Inskeep discussed the options, and nowhere was a mention that removing the $90,000 cap on earnings would ELIMINATE the funding gap.
In another piece that I just caught the end of, apparently someone arguing for single payer to be at the table for the discussions on health care was forcibly removed. Baucus seems to favor “talking to anyone” in PRIVATE.
GRRR. Got my blood pressure up before I ever left for work…
anybody see Naomi Klein on Maddow?
http://www.naomiklein.org/vide…..addow-show
Worth watching
All the slicksters really need to do to “screw granny” (Enronese for getting rid of SS) is delink the cost of living increases to inflation and let that be decided by “wise men in charge of the economy”. They have already done a lot of that by the way they fiddle with inflation numbers.
But in the last days of Reaganomicstan and Wingnuttia, they may just need to talk about it and do nothing.
As a 63 yo leading wave boomer, the Soylent Green scenarios might end up being true.
“Eating them is better than paying them to live.” Rush Limbaugh’s new slogan.
The absolutely telling word in Geithner’s rant against SS is his use of the term “bipartisan consensus”.
Consider what that implies at this late date. It is said in the full knowledge of how unconstructive the Republicans have been, and how incapable of compromise. Obama can hardly claim if they insist on cutting SS severely that he uttered his promise in any real expectation that they would be on board with some more moderate change. He knows already how harsh any change they might propose would be.
If they are going to get on board with any modification to SS — and here Obama is essentially promising that he will see to it that they do — it will have to be one destructive to the ideals progressives hold dear.
I’ve seen progressives claim that all Obama wants to do is raise the SS cap. Nothing, of course, could be more anathema to Republicans; it is simply inconceivable they would accept such a change, all of which would be only to the bad from their point of view. It would be regarded as the worst sort of act of bad faith. I can’t see why Obama would go out of his way to use the term “bipartisan consensus” only to make the accusation of bad faith unquestionably apt.
Since Treasury manages the two Social Security Trust Funds, the obligations held are subject to the whims of such passing ephemera as former employees of Goldman Sachs, a primary dealer in said obligations.
I notice that Social Security reform comes after recovery and medical reform. I think it’s safe, at least for a while.
obama and his crew are just doing enough to keep the country from falling apart economically. He isn’t really doing anything about the promises that got him elected. Social Security as “entitlement?” We paid our taxes for that. Those who earn past the cap are still entitled to it. Let them participate fully. As has been pointed out by many (Krugman, for instance) even if there would be nothing left in the “trust fund” (what a joke), the payments would still fund the payments at about 75% of what they would be with full funding. There are so many things that could be done, but obama, from friedman’s University of Chicago, has shown himself to be owned by the bankers. All of this credit card stuff is as much distraction as anything. obama has done nothing to help those losing their homes!
Marcy’s liveblog is up
Liveblog: Senate Judiciary Hearing on Torture
Geithner should go. I am getting heartily disgusted and disappointed with Obama. He is going to lose his political capital on this issue.
Geithner isn’t doing other than what Obama wants him to do. I think it’s time to admit that until progressives become a much more effective voting bloc, big money rules no matter who the president is.
Apparently, “only” 2 billion from Social Security tax receipts is currently going into the general fund due to the current depression. Time to cut 2 billion from the payroll tax and raise taxes on the billionaires!
Obama is a real disappointment, the “Manchurian Candidate” of the banksters. We will never have real change until we reform the way our elections are handled. We need instant run-off voting – otherwise 3rd parties will continue to be nothing more than spoilers.
I found this at “Open Left” Twenty one years ago they conspired to divide the soon to be retired and the retired against the young by proposing to cut future benefits. They conspired to create the illusion of ‘insolvency’ by using the most dire numbers in their financial projections. Naomi was right and Jane is right to be alarmed and furious.
http://www.openleft.com/diary/…..l-security
What is the “social security trust fund” aka lock box?
It is a debt by us (US Government) to us. It isn’t a pile of cash, it’s the equivalent of bonds that will have to be paid by taxpayers (or rolled into new debt).
The proposal I’ve seen from Orszag says increase benefits for low end beneficiaries. Lower benefits for high end beneficiaries.
I ran the numbers a few times for a 48 year old retiring at age 68 in 2029.
A $14,000 a year worker would get $760/month (it went up since February and is now $849)
A $100,000 a year worker would get $2460 (now $2569)
Lowering the benefit at the high end to keep grannie from having to eat cat food is progressive policy.
Eliminating the income cap on FICA tax is also progressive. Both are part of “the solution”.
Back to the “lock box” – it is projected that lock box funds will be needed to pay current benefits in the next decade. That means higher general tax revenues will be needed. Talking about how to raise those revenues is appropriate, and we need to raise that money in a way that keeps grannie from eating catfood.
Might as well read;
Obama isn’t doing other than what Geithner’s bosses want him to do. I think it’s time to admit that until progressives become a much more effective voting bloc, big money rules no matter who the president is.
Or maybe we could once again try being a country of laws instead of a country of men.
Geithner’s bosses. America’s bosses. Dug in deep, since Reagan. No intention of allowing any silly return to being a country of laws. Who will stop them? And how?
So, despite the pessisimism here at the Lake, why couldn’t it be that the quote from ‘Timmeh’ means that the Prez will push raising the $90,000 cap?
That is doable politically, considering the clout that AARP has. It would keep more retired folks out of poverty, and would ultimately help the economy through stabilization.
The political capital is there now to do this, as a majority of the electorate would support it, and the righties would look really bad opposing it (Not that that stops them, but every scale that falls from that dead fish carcass of a political party is an advancement for the rest of us).
Oh, and transparency requires me to state that I am collecting SS.
Ah the dishonesty doesn’t quit. As for Obama, I’m reading his book “Dreams from my Father”. The man can write and his heart seems to be in the right place, but he’s no dope. He knows big oil, big banks have hit men on their payrolls or they know where to get them. He’s got to walk a fine line, but you walk that fine line long enough and before you know it you’re on the other side. As for social security, nothing wrong with it if they’d stop pouring FICA taxes into Iraq and other lost causes. FICA taxes permitted the reduction of income taxes on the wealthy. It’s a rip off pure and simple. The question is what, if anything, should we try to do about it. Everyone is annoyed but no one seems willing to push back.
You see what I see.
The Republicans and the corporations have been after SS since it’s inception, now it looks like they have finally succeeded in accomplishing their goal. They have lowered the wages in this country to about sixty percent of what they should be, thus business pays less into the SS fund,the employee pays less into the fund, they are outsourcing all the decent paying jobs therefore we will become a nation of $7.00 an hour part time employees and the SS fund will indeed go broke much faster than predicted. Thank you Obama, I am sure all the auto workers and manufacturing workers and the textile workers will appreciate their tax dollars being sent overseas to build new plants in China and elsewhere. So much for the politics of change.
Not a pretty sight, is it? Not a picture of law or democracy or government by the people.
The cap is at $100,000+, not $90,000.
It should be removed altogether, and possibly add a medicare tax on ALL income, not just wage income, plus a surtax on was income above some threshold.
Jane:
It’s becoming increasingly clear that that Obama Administration is fast becoming the “Bait and Switch” Administration. Barely out of his first hundred days, he is revealing himself to be less a leader than a bad democratic copy of the one before him. He has almost abandoned the liberal community that elected him, is in total denial about the Bush-Cheney crime spree and has given our social security money to the banks. The latest: he’s left the White House counsel nominee swinging in the wind. A prediction: before long, a draft-Hillary movement is going to start. Remember this.
Marc
If you think Hillary is the answer You’d better ask yourself, what’s the question.