Now Under Attack: Social Security
Let's see...bigger budget deficits, less money going into the Social Security trust fund that benefits average Americans, higher payroll taxes on workers, decreased benefits to current retirees. And, of course, a huge windfall for Wall Street. Yes, Bush's priorities become even more obvious.
Social Security Schemes
Center for American Progress
November 29, 2004
Conservatives and their Wall St. investment backers opposed the creation of Social Security in 1935 and they've been trying to take over it ever since. Seventy years later, the fruit of these efforts can be clearly seen in the Bush administration's current attempts to privatize Social Security. Conservatives have created an elaborate budgetary shell game to hide the true costs of privatization: a $2 trillion hole that will be financed by saddling younger generations with more debt, increased payroll taxes, and decreased benefits to current retirees.
+ There is no Social Security financing crisis. There is a dirty little secret in Washington that the Bush administration doesn't want you to know about: Social Security is in pretty good shape. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, without any changes at all, the Social Security program can pay all benefits through at least 2052.
+ President Bush's tax cuts for the richest 1 percent of earners could more than compensate for any Social Security shortfalls over the next 75 years. Over the next 75 years, the total shortfall for Social Security amounts to just 0.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Meanwhile, over that same period, President Bush's tax cuts just for the top one percent of earners (a group of people whose average income exceeds $1 million) will cost 0.6 percent of GDP. All of Bush's tax cuts will cost 2 percent of GDP over the next 75 years – or five times the projected 75-year Social Security shortfall. The current system could be made solvent for the indefinite future with adjustments in the tax code far more modest than those approved by Ronald Reagan in 1983 to protect Social Security.
+ Investment bankers are the only ones guaranteed to come out ahead under the administration's privatization scheme. Any potential increases in yields from private accounts will almost certainly be wiped out by the rising debt burden heaped on the young from the financing of the transition to a system of individual accounts, which could cost as much as $2 trillion in the first ten years. In the meantime, payroll taxes will have to increase and benefits will have to be cut in order to shift the money into the private sector. And regardless of whether these private accounts perform well or poorly over time, investment banking firms will reap billions of dollars in new fees and service charges as could insurance companies.
Talking Points wallet card
NY Times article
Social Security Schemes
Center for American Progress
November 29, 2004
Conservatives and their Wall St. investment backers opposed the creation of Social Security in 1935 and they've been trying to take over it ever since. Seventy years later, the fruit of these efforts can be clearly seen in the Bush administration's current attempts to privatize Social Security. Conservatives have created an elaborate budgetary shell game to hide the true costs of privatization: a $2 trillion hole that will be financed by saddling younger generations with more debt, increased payroll taxes, and decreased benefits to current retirees.
+ There is no Social Security financing crisis. There is a dirty little secret in Washington that the Bush administration doesn't want you to know about: Social Security is in pretty good shape. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, without any changes at all, the Social Security program can pay all benefits through at least 2052.
+ President Bush's tax cuts for the richest 1 percent of earners could more than compensate for any Social Security shortfalls over the next 75 years. Over the next 75 years, the total shortfall for Social Security amounts to just 0.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Meanwhile, over that same period, President Bush's tax cuts just for the top one percent of earners (a group of people whose average income exceeds $1 million) will cost 0.6 percent of GDP. All of Bush's tax cuts will cost 2 percent of GDP over the next 75 years – or five times the projected 75-year Social Security shortfall. The current system could be made solvent for the indefinite future with adjustments in the tax code far more modest than those approved by Ronald Reagan in 1983 to protect Social Security.
+ Investment bankers are the only ones guaranteed to come out ahead under the administration's privatization scheme. Any potential increases in yields from private accounts will almost certainly be wiped out by the rising debt burden heaped on the young from the financing of the transition to a system of individual accounts, which could cost as much as $2 trillion in the first ten years. In the meantime, payroll taxes will have to increase and benefits will have to be cut in order to shift the money into the private sector. And regardless of whether these private accounts perform well or poorly over time, investment banking firms will reap billions of dollars in new fees and service charges as could insurance companies.
Talking Points wallet card
NY Times article
posted by Pete at 10:17 AM
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