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GOPer: Trump’s Startling Plan to Kill Social Security in Second Term

99percenter said:
https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/trump-plans-kill-social-security.html/?ref=YF&yptr=yahoo

Remember when he promised to protect the welfare state? Instead he is planning cuts to SS and medicare. You have to pay for those tax cuts somehow.
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He didn't promise to protect the welfare sate. He spoke of not doing anything about the growing crisis in Social Security. He is paying for his tax cuts the exact same way that older Americans paid for theirs, by getting the kids to pay the taxes they would not. FYI, you can cut Social Security to zero and it has zero impact on the nations debt or deficit.
 
joG said:
If phased out sensibly with a low guaranteed minimum income or negative income tax? Apriori it would improve the country’s circumstances and economic position.
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You realize that age and need are correlated? So what is your idea of a minimum, and who is going to pay for it. Is it you plan to change Social Security from a financed payment to a tax?
 
Moderate Right said:
Even Democrats acknowledge that both Social Security and Medicare are on a course to insolvency. Cuts need to be made.
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Really? Where. They largely say that SS needs to be made more generous and we need to tax the rich more I missed the part about where cuts need to be made.
 
reinoe said:
So according to one "anonymous lawmaker" he's going to obliterate S.S. What does it have to do with Trump? Fake News.
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Well... According to one left-wing blogging site an "anonymous lawmaker" says....
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Social Security, aka the Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance program, IS an insurance program.
Insurance actuaries keep their funds solvent by making actuarial adjustments all the time.

SS has an income cap which hasn't budged in a generation, $111,000.00.
Nudge it up to $200,000.00 and suddenly it's solvent once again, maybe till 2050 or even 2075.

But no, let's pretend it's an "entitlement", pretend it has something to do with the DEBT (it doesn't) and try scaring the crap out of people while misinforming
them. Same old Republican bull****, same old last ditch try to get their hands in the cookie jar one more time by giving that money to their criminal friends on Wall Street.
And Trump? You better believe that sucka will sign whatever SS killing measure PAUL RYAN puts on his desk, so let's not pretend this has nothing to do with Trump.

The tax bill is going to blow a monster hole in the deficit but deficits don't matter when Republicans are in office and in any case, they intend to gut your retirement money and Medicare to pay for it. I do not know a single person on Earth who thinks that's a great idea, except the few who think it helps them say "Yaaay Trump and screw the libtards!"
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FYI, the income cap moves every year - faster than inflation. You can eliminate the cap entirely today, and it is not solvent. So I wouldn't protest so much about misinforming anyone.
 
iguanaman said:
Or more revenue is needed. We made a contract with our citizens and it cannot be broken.
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I would read Thomas Jefferson. He said that this type of arrangement can and will be broken. You can't make an agreement with yourself that your children will take care of you in old age. You can, but you can expect it to be broken.
 
JoeTheEconomist said:
Really? Where. They largely say that SS needs to be made more generous and we need to tax the rich more I missed the part about where cuts need to be made.
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Apparently you have a reading comprehension problem, "Cuts need to be made" was a separate sentence, not connected to the first sentence. But, thank you anyway for acknowledging the left's ridiculous refusal to address the situation at all. In addition, technically speaking, you don't solve the problem by raising taxes on the rich because both SS and Medicare are supposedly separate funds that operate outside of the general fund. Can you please link Democrat's detailed specific proposals for addressing the upcoming insolvency of both SS and Medicare, other than the generalities you already posted, which don't specifically address SS and Medicare?
 
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polgara said:
Greetings, humbolt. :2wave:

Some of our Presidents - from both parties - have used money from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for programs they wanted that had nothing to do with Social Security! I believe LBJ was the first to raid the SS trust fund to pay for the Vietnam War! Sure, there are IOU's to account for the money taken, but that doesn't solve the problem of where the money is going to come from to pay SS in the future! That is the government's problem to fix, NOT the people who had SS taken from their paycheck - whether they agreed or not, the money was taken out! Period!

IMO, the government would be wise to look elsewhere for funds, if they don't want a big problem from millions of seniors, since they have known for years that millions of Boomers would one day be retiring, but they just kept kicking the can down the road rather than working to find a fair solution - and BTW, cutting payments isn't one of them! :roll:
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This is a complete myth. The mechanics of the Social Security Trust Fund haven't changed since 1939. You are talking about how the cashflows are reported which tells you how money was spent not changes the way it was spent.

The biggest challenge with SS is us, not the politicians. We aren't paying attention.
 
jonny5 said:
SS benefit is also based on what people pay in. If you were to raise the income cap, would you also raise the resulting benefit?

The tax bill is not going to blow a monster hole in the deficit. The deficit is already 10 trillion over the next 10 years. With the tax bill that maybe goes to 11 trillion. How is that a monster hole?
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The marginal increase at the tax max is trivial. It is about $4/mo more for the last $100. That formula was designed around the idea of a maximum. So the government would have to consider rewriting the formula entirely. There are serious problems with raising the max, beyond what you are suggesting if you are interested.
 
99percenter said:
He might. It is hard to unseat a sitting president. Plus he pulled out an unexpected victory before. the dems are good at blowing surefire victories.
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He won because he was perceived to be an outsider, and he ran against Hillary Clinton easily the worst politician in modern history. Do you think he will have either in 2020?
 
humbolt said:
There's no doubt the government screwed the program up and neglected what we all saw coming. There isn't a whole lot of mystery about what could be done to make the program viable for future generations. There just isn't any political will to do it. What I've chiefly noticed is that anytime taking a look at making SS viable for the future is mentioned, the person mentioning it is pilloried, and we get political comment like this thread. It's not helpful.
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It is detrimental. The issue of SS is dominated by cliches and hyperbole. The typical person blames the 3rd rail of politics (ie older voters exercising the right to vote) for the stagnation. The problem is that no sensible politician wants to try to build consensus between people who are arguing about the dangers of the lock ness monster, and people who believe that if we just shake the money tree all will be well.
 
upsideguy said:
...or taxes raised......

Fixing social security is actually quite simple. Welfare fixes would start with a real national healthcare system. If people could afford preventative care, we would have much less stress at the other end. That was the whole foundation of the PPACA, which was already positively impacting medicare.
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Taxes have been raised 22 times. After which, the program sits on unfunded liability of nearly double the amount of revenue collected since inception. That means for every $1 that SS has collected, it has generated roughly $2 of promises that it doesn't expect to keep. So if we can fix the program simply with more taxes why haven't the previous 22 increases worked.
 
upsideguy said:
Don't be complaining about unfunded liabilities less than a week after an irresponsible piece of tax legislation that simply raised the unfunded liabilities.
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There is a difference between projected deficits and unfunded liabilities. The latter are promises made by the government in say SS or Medicare which will not be paid because of insufficient revenue. This legislation is apt to lower "unfunded liabilities" because it will force $25 billion in cuts to Medicare today moving them forward in time.
 
WCH said:
They didn't just suddenly appear. Thanks Roosevelt.
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An unfunded liability is a promise of benefits for which revenue isn't there. The benefits are cut. The problem of Social Security is not spending money. Not-spending money does not create debt. The problem of the debt (which is very different) is money that was spent in the past which we didn't have.

FDR foresaw the situation with SS, and that is why he opposed the pay as you go model we have today.
 
JoeTheEconomist said:
An unfunded liability is a promise of benefits for which revenue isn't there. The benefits are cut. The problem of Social Security is not spending money. Not-spending money does not create debt. The problem of the debt (which is very different) is money that was spent in the past which we didn't have.

FDR foresaw the situation with SS, and that is why he opposed the pay as you go model we have today.
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So what changed and who did it?
 
WCH said:
So what changed and who did it?
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I do not agree entirely with this piece but it is a starting foundation that I regularly point people to:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin.../gIQALChd4S_story.html?utm_term=.26217e6e8667

That is an independent source. Here is a piece that I wrote on Congressional Testimony of A.J. Altmeyer - the guy who headed Social Security. I wrote the piece because many people do not have the patience with Congressional testimony. It isn't that bad. My piece simply pulls out the key statements and explains what he is saying. He is talking about the variance between 1935 and 1944. That was sufficient to send the system completely out of balance. By 1950, Congress has waived most of the payroll taxes necessary to pay for the benefits, and decided to go on a spending spree. That is 6 years after Altmeyer warned them.

https://www.fedsmith.com/2014/12/02/predicting-social-securitys-financial-imbalance/
 
JoeTheEconomist said:
There is a difference between projected deficits and unfunded liabilities. The latter are promises made by the government in say SS or Medicare which will not be paid because of insufficient revenue. This legislation is apt to lower "unfunded liabilities" because it will force $25 billion in cuts to Medicare today moving them forward in time.
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Thank you. I do understand the difference. I just was making the point that recent tax legislation was not a step in fixing the situation, but in going the other way. I also get that FICA taxes were not affected in the legislation except that the government has used the receipts to fund the government, while simply running up the tab "due to social security" T

The "forcing" of cuts to Medicare was not effected by the legislation, but as you suggest will be a consequence of it... it nonetheless will be a separate action. As of today, the legislation acted to take money from the government which would have been used to fund its obligations. It now has more obligations "unfunded"
 
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