The following was written by Jerre Kneip, The Free Press, P.O. Box 2303, Kerrville, Texas 78029 in its publication of September 14, 2007:

1.     Since the mid-1980s, Social Security has been running big surpluses.  More money is being collected in payroll taxes each year than is being paid out in benefits.  This surplus revenue is used by the federal government to fund other programs.

2.     In turn, the U.S. Treasury gives the Social Security Trust Fund special-issue, non-negotiable bonds.  These are NOT the same kinds of bonds held by banks, foreign governments, and the public.  They are stored in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

3.     In Fiscal Year 2007 alone, $186 billion will be borrowed from Social Security and spent on other federal programs.

4.     At the end of July 2007, the federal government owed the Social Security Trust Fund (old age and disability) a total of more than $2.174 trillion – and this amount keeps going up every month.

5.     Raiding the Trust Fund also distorts the annual federal budget by improperly counting as income the money that is borrowed from Social Security through the use of an accounting trick called the “unified budget.”  For instance, in Fiscal Year 2006, the federal deficit was $248 billion, but that does not include the $185 billion that was borrowed from Social Security.  The actual deficit was $433 billion.

6.     The crisis begins in 2017 when the amount collected in payroll taxes will NOT be enough to pay full Social Security benefits.  Instead of real assets on which to draw, the Trust Fund will contain only meaningless IOUs from the government to itself.

7.     If the raid of Social Security continues unabated until 2017, by then the amount owed the Trust Fund will be between $3.984 trillion and $5.172 trillion, depending on the economy (in current dollars).

8.     No one has any idea how this money can be repaid.  There will have to be some onerous combination of tax hikes, reductions in Social Security benefits, cuts in other federal programs, and increases in the public debt.

9.     Several important bills have been introduced to make sure that Social Security surpluses are saved, not spent, including:

A.    The Social Security Preservation Act, HR 219, by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) and nine co-sponsors, to require the Trust Fund to contain real assets, such as certificates of deposit in FDIC-insured institutions.

B.    The Savings for Seniors Act, HR 581, by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and twelve co-sponsors, to place surpluses in a Social Security Surplus Protection Account that would be invested by a Social Security Investment Commission.

The Social Security Trust Fund should not be used as a slush fund!

Comments:

The government has given out Social Security benefits to illegals, “refugees,” and who knows who else, despite the fact that they put little or nothing into the Fund by working in the U.S.   Why should Congress and Obama be allowed to “borrow” from Social Security to support ISIS and bring Muslims to America?  Why should Obama be allowed to pull $2.6 billion from money allocated to veterans and then reallocate $4.5 billion, together with Social Security money, to “Syrian” migrants?  (See also “U.S. State Dept. Halloween News Dump: $100M More Announced for Syrian ‘Rebels’ After $500M Recently Spent to Train only 4 – 5 Militants,” 10/31/15, fourwinds10.com).  Professor Dr. Donald Huddle of Rice University calculated that $24.8 billion was paid in Social Security to legal and illegal immigrants in 1997.  Over Thanksgiving (2015), Obama signed the NDAA of 2016 to give $800 million to armed extremists (those affiliated with ISIS) in Syria and Ukraine.

Social Security and Medicare are not “entitlements” or “Federal benefits.”  Working Americans paid for them from their wages, and their employers paid into them for their employees too.  Americans have paid 15% of their gross income into Social Security, so if they have earned about $30,000 per year during their working lives, they have paid about $180,000 into it.   Many Americans die before being able to collect all that they have paid in, so there is no good reason why Social Security should be running out of money, even though 70percent of what the Social Security Administration receives from employers and workers is consumed by administrative costs.

The Free Press continues: 

Ron Paul reported in his article, “Totalization is a Bad Idea” (Texas Straight Talk, Jan. 8, 2007, www.house.gov/paul):

1.     Through a Freedom of Information Act Request, a private group recently obtained a copy of a 2004 agreement between the United States and Mexico that will allow hundreds of thousands of noncitizens to receive Social Security benefits.

2.     Ultimately the bill for Mexicans working legally in the U.S. could reach one billion dollars by 2050, when the estimated Mexican beneficiaries could reach 300,000.  Worse still, an estimated five million Mexicans working illegally in the United States could be eligible for the program.  [Adult immigrants are allowed to bring in their parents who will be eligible for Social Security even though they never paid into it.]  According to press reports, a provision in the Social Security Act allows illegal immigrants to receive Social Security benefits if the United States and another country have a totalization agreement.

3.     There are obvious reasons to oppose a Social Security totalization agreement with Mexico.  First, our Social Security system already faces trillions of dollars in future shortages as the Baby Boom generation retires and fewer young workers pay into the system.  Adding hundreds of thousands of noncitizens to the Social Security rolls can only hasten the day of reckoning.

4.     Social Security never was intended to serve as an individual foreign aid program for noncitizens abroad.

5.     Totalization agreements allow noncitizens to qualify for Social Security benefits by working in the U.S. as little as 18 months.  This is grossly unfair to Americans who must work more quarters even to qualify for benefits . . .

Comments:

Meanwhile, Congress not only bails out the banks that are “too big to fail,” i.e. too big to be held accountable, but years ago Congress voted for itself automatic cost-of-living increases in their salaries each year.  If that isn’t bad enough, the House of Representatives plans to cut back its number of days in session in 2016 to 111 days.  Naturally, their salaries will remain the same, and they will still have virtually unlimited travel budgets (see “Time To Ground Congress,” 11/13/15, fourwinds10.com).  It looks like they feel they should be rewarded for doing such a good job.  While their net worth continues to increase, half of Americans live below the poverty line (see “US ‘Fifty Wealthiest Lawmakers’ List: A Congress of the Rich, by the Rich, and for the Rich,” 8/27/12, fourwinds10.com).  Meanwhile, people on Social Security are given very minimal increases (less than Congress) and in 2016 will not get a cost-of-living increase at all.  However, Congress always seems to be able to find money to finance wars, illegal aliens, and “refugees.”  They’ve even financed ISIS (aka Al Qaeda) while pretending we are fighting against it, making the whole war on terror a sham.   Trillions of dollars and millions of lives have been lost as a result.  Note that Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries aren’t volunteering to take any of the Muslim “refugees,” even though they are their own people (Israel was one of the creators of ISIS), and it doesn’t appear that the Jewish-controlled U.N. is forcing them to take their fair share either.

While the banks want American taxpayers to bail them out of all their gambling debts and losses, the banks don’t intend to bail out America from its national debt.   Note that the bankers are behind the push for war since that makes them more money, and Congress goes along with this.  They could care less that America is falling apart and cannot afford to go to war (see “21 Facts About America’s Decaying Infrastructure That Will Blow Your Mind,” 9/21/12, fourwinds10.com).  Congress condones all of this, and while we pay them to represent us, they represent their own pocket books and the bankers instead. They seem uninterested in preserving the sovereignty and integrity of the United States of America.  Many Americans would call this treason.

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