[float=right][IMG=198x297]http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk143/nfsagan/B...
Scott Brown whose never been one to hold back an opinion has been silent on whether to cut Social Security benefits.
Social Security is an earned benefit. If you pay into Social Security through payroll taxes, (which you do during your entire working career,) you receive a guaranteed benefit during retirement.
Social Security was created after the Great Depression because of the effect that failure of capitalism had on middle class savings and retirement assets. Then, as now, the financial crisis had a significant effect on middle class and low income families ability to pay for things like college education for their children and their own retirements.
Working families did not create the current financial crisis. And yet at precisely the time Social Security should be strengthened, conservatives want to cut program benefits by raising the retirement age and changing the cost of living adjustment so that recipients' buying power is constant, not declining.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is fighting back with ads against politicians who want these cuts:
[center][/center]
[center][size=9]alt to video[/size][/center]
While working families did not create this financial crisis, they have already been asked to underwrite the bank bailouts as well as the bailout of General Motors to help fix the financial crisis. They did at the cost of about $25 billion for Wall Street bailout and $13 Billion for GM. We did our part, $38 Billion for private industry and their shareholders. Now!? you want social security beneficiaries to accept a smaller earned benefit? Social Security checks do not provide for a comfortable retirement. It provides for a subsistence level retirement. It is disgusting the GOP is targeting this program whether for current seniors, future seniors or our kids, after all the American people spent on bail outs for Wall Street and GM.
Working families did not create this financial crisis. So why do politicians think that working families should have to accept cuts of earned benefits of Social Security?
In 1983, Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill increased the payroll tax to collect enough revenue to finance the retirement costs of a generation of baby boomers. If you've worked since 1983, you've been helping to build the $2.5 Trillion reserve in Social Security to finance baby boomer Social Security benefits.
Politicians and pundits may argue about Social Security, but most don't understand what working life is really like. We need to change that.
Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!
Ad:
Comments
Social Security has no real surplus
By Merle
Tue, 02/01/2011 - 12:00am
The Social Security surplus has all been spent, so some changes have to be made to avoid bankrupting the country. I believe their are proposals to change that have minimum affect on those about to retire, but we have to live in the reality that the program has to changed.
The Social Security trust
By anon
Sun, 02/06/2011 - 12:30pm
The Social Security trust fund loaned it to the US government.
You're not saying that the full faith and credit of the US government is a bad risk are you, or suggesting the US government is going to or should default on its bonds?
Who should pay for their financial crisis?
By Anonymous
Sun, 02/06/2011 - 12:27pm
Wall Street banksters and mortgage company fraud, Bush's war of choice financed by borrowing not taxes, ten years of the biggest tax cuts in history, and the Great Recession of 2007-2011, which was a failure of capitalism, has put the US Treasury under severe pressure. Who should pay for their financial crisis?
Economic growth can repair the damage and fill the hole we call the national debt created by Reagan ($700B to $3T) , Bush and Obama (in an era tax receipts fell as fast as the economy during the Great Recession of 2007-2011 which Obama inherited from Bush and which we still endure.)
We earn Social Security benefits by paying into social security throughout our working lives. Every working American pays 6.2% of EVERY paycheck into social security. People who argue the Social Security benefits should be cut are saying that American workers should sacrifice their EARNED BENEFITS because of a federal budget crisis.
The financial crisis was not caused by social security recipients so why should anyone expect them to pay for it?
Claiming Social Security will bankrupt the country is a lie.
In 1984, Reagan and O'Neil increased Social Security payroll tax and raised the retirement age in order to increase the surplus for baby boomer retirements.
Now Social Security has a $2.6 trillion surplus. It can pay 100% benefit through 2037 and 70% of earned benefits beyond that without making any changes at all. The kind of change required to enable Social Security to pay 100% of earned benefit from 2037 onward is not an undue burden. I say we make that change and do not changes that cause undue burden on the poorest people in our society (who have earnedthis benefit by paying in.)
The Great Depression gave rise to this much-needed self-financed poverty-fighting social safety net because capitalism failed. Capitalism failed during the Great Recession of 2007-2001 too. Why then do so many conservatives think now is the time to end or privatize this critical program?