Good morning, everyone!

Mornin Phoenix Woman -

thank you for yet another fabu SS reality check

feel like I’ve virtually papered the interwebs with your Never Ending War piece – even normally reality based sites like HuffPo fell for the ‘current economic situation contributes to dire SS deterioration!’ b.s.

Morning PW. I just turned in my retirement letter, and thank heavens I will be getting a teachers’ pension. I feel horrible for people who were counting entirely on their 401Ks.

Bless you, cbl!

Morning all,
GWB did his darndest to to prove that the government doesn’t work by f#*king up all fed. agencies. Fortunately SS survived him and hopefully Obama will be able to resusitate many others.

And “G.W.B” wanted to privatize social security,It is unimaginable what the results of that decision would have been to the collapse of the so called saftey net,to the millions of people who rely on that program.Had it been enacted.

What makes me sad about the Social Security issue, among other issues, is that all the Rethuglicans are doing is picking up their playbook from where they laid it down before the elections. There’s nothing new in their proposals to steal the Social Security money and give it to the Rich by putting into the companies owned by the Rich. Does anyone REALLY want their Social Security money going to pay a half-billion dollar CEO bonus?

And with taxes, and with screams of “socialized medicine,” all their tactics are transparent, obvious, and bone-on-bone painful stupid.

But.

The Democratic Party does not seem to have ANY memory or foresight. Individuals within it do. The Bloggers do. But the Party itself, Reid, Pelosi, the DNC, seem to be caught as flat-footed and unresponsive today as if these stupid Rethuglican attacks had just been invented.

How moribund is Democratic leadership, and what can be done to replace it? All around it seems like one thing the Beltway Democrats lack is COURAGE. Courage to impeach a sitting dictator. Courage to kick out Lieberman. Courage to stuff Reid and Pelosi back into a corner and put someone with some vision and some tactical foresight in charge (if indeed any such person could be found). It’s like the worst sin in the Democratic Party is “Rocking the Boat At All.”

Democrats hold the Executive Branch, and Democrats actually HAVE the votes necessary to beat filibusters – by whipping Lieberman and Specter to within an inch of their committee assignments! By smacking the $^@ blue-dogs back into line! But instead these people rebel against Party leadership, and get away with it, and so feel free to rebel some more.

We need Democratic leadership. We need to replace Reid and Pelosi, we need to control the Blue Dogs and the Independents, we need to have the guts to send Congressional police to arrest Rove, and we need to have leadership with enough tactical foresight to anticipate that the Rethuglicans might, oh I dunno, recycle the same tired, stupid talking points that they used just a few months ago!

What does it take? How can this be made to happen? I am SO frustrated…

I thought it was “Birdie Num-Nums!”

Well said, Alba.

Pensions (Social Security), healthcare (Medicare), and as we are now seeing banking are all areas where the government does or could do a far better job than private enterprise, if greedy, shortsighted politicians let it.

This can’t be true! We all know (because the voices on TV tell us) that government is the problem and we need to let the market be freer to save ourselves!

If wishes were horses………

What is that old Will Rodgers line; ”I don’t belong to any organized political party, I’m a Democrat”

When you have a party of inclusion you cannot crack the whip too hard. There have been some notable exceptions in modern history such as L. Johnson but he had the southern Senators on his side until he pushed civil rights.

His quote was something along the line of: We’ve lost the South for a generation.

This is the political reality that, as Rachel calls them, the ConservaDems are Republican lite. It will take a couple of more election cycles to weed out the Blue dogs and elect more progressives.

We win at the ballot box, not by focusing on Dem leadership.

Democratic politicians don’t do what you are advocating because they don’t want to. As you point out, they have the votes to do what they want. So I would suggest they are doing exactly what they want to. Unfortunately for us, what they want is not a break with the Bush Administration but a continuation of it with a few modifications here and there but nothing major.

Escalate in Afghanistan
Drag out our leaving Iraq
Leave the banksters in control
Stick it to homeowners
Stick it credit cardholders
Transfer Guantanamo to Bagram
Keep military commissions
Use the state secrets argument
Continue domestic spying
Protect torturers

From where I’m sitting 90% of the Bush agenda still looks intact.

Thanks PW. I keep telling people that there is nothing wrong with SS. We just have to pay back the money to the fund entrusted to the government by the people from which the government borrowed. The integrity of the U.S. government is on the line here.

Oh noes, not my kitteh’s num nums! Can has Social Security nao?

When you have a party of inclusion you cannot crack the whip too hard.

This sounds like a great excuse not to do anything. I guess since it is kind of gray and rainy here you could say I am feeling inclusive today.

We win at the ballot box, not by focusing on Dem leadership.

I must respectfully disagree. We win at the ballot box by focusing on the leadership, as it is the leadership that sets the agenda, and without the implementation of an agenda that gives people something for which to vote, there will be no electoral victory.

Congratulations, Loo Hoo! How’re you going to spend your time?

Social Security is fixable and worth fixing.

However – in 2016 receipts from payroll taxes will be less that expenditures on benefits. The “trust fund” will be needed. And this trust fund is a big IOU. The money needed to pay benefits in 2016 has to come from somewhere, most likely from increased payroll tax receipts (lifting the income tax may be enough). To actually use the “trust funds” would require other tax revenues. This could happen via productivity increases or higher general taxes or a combination.

Remove the cap on F I C A and we’ll and be able to reduce the 6.2 cents per dollar we, the majority, pay towards SS………….
“Social Security (FICA) Tax for Employees
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced that the Social Security taxable wage base will increase to $106,800 (up from $102,000 in 2008). That means up to $4,800 more of an employee’s wages could be subject to the Social Security portion of the FICA tax for 2009. The FICA tax rate will hold steady at 7.65% for 2009. (The Social Security portion of the FICA rate is 6.2%; the Medicare portion is 1.45%.)

FICA tax is composed of two portions:

OASDI (Old Age, Survivors, Disability Insurance) or better known as the Social Security tax. The 2009 FICA taxable wages are capped at $106,800 (up from $102,000 in 2008). The maximum amount of Social Security taxes to be paid in 2009 will be $6,621.60 based upon this $106,800 cap.
Medicare (Hospital Insurance). Medicare tax applies to all FICA taxable wages. There is no cap for this tax. The 2009 Medicare tax is computed as 1.45% of all FICA taxable wages. For example, for FICA taxable earnings of $106,800, the Medicare tax would be $1,548.60.

Therefore, for the first $106,800 in FICA taxable earnings, employees will pay a combined tax amount of $8,170.20 ($6,621.60 + $1,548.60). All FICA taxable earnings in excess of $106,800 will continue to be taxed at the rate of 1.45% for Medicare.”