Tag Archives: Harry Reid

News

Social Security running deficits now, will be bankrupt by 2037

Leave a comment
Last Republican budget was in 2006
Last Republican budget was in 2006

This is from CBS News. (H/T Robert Stacy McCain)

Excerpt:

Social Security’s finances are getting worse as the economy struggles to recover and millions of baby boomers stand at the brink of retirement.

New congressional projections show Social Security running deficits every year until its trust funds are eventually drained in about 2037.

This year alone, Social Security is projected to collect $45 billion less in payroll taxes than it pays out in retirement, disability and survivor benefits, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. That figure swells to $130 billion when a new one-year cut in payroll taxes is included, though Congress has promised to repay any lost revenue from the tax cut.

The massive retirement program has been feeling the effects of a struggling economy for several years. The program first went into deficit last year, but the CBO said at the time that Social Security would post surpluses for a few more years before permanently slipping into deficits in 2016.

The outlook, however, has grown bleaker as the nation struggles to recover from the worst economic crisis since Social Security was enacted during the Great Depression. In the short term, Social Security is suffering from a weak economy that has payroll taxes lagging and applications for benefits rising. In the long term, Social Security will be strained by the growing number of baby boomers retiring and applying for benefits.

The deficits add a sense of urgency to efforts to improve Social Security’s finances. For much of the past 30 years, Social Security has run big surpluses, which the government has borrowed to spend on other programs. Now that Social Security is running deficits, the federal government will have to find money elsewhere to help pay for retirement, disability and survivor benefits.

You may remember that George W. Bush tried to reform Social Security during his Presidency, but left-wing media and the Democrats cowed him into submission. Shut up, they explained. Just like they shut him up on his plan to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2003.

Here’s why nothing is going to be done to fix the problem. (H/T Hyscience)

It’s not going to be fixed until we vote out every last Democrat and replace them with grown-ups from the grown-up party.

News

Socialist European countries seizing individual retirement accounts

1 Comment

ECM sent me this terrifying story.

Excerpt:

People’s retirement savings are a convenient source of revenue for governments that don’t want to reduce spending or make privatizations. As most pension schemes in Europe are organised by the state, European ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for their own ends. In recent weeks I have noted five such attempts: Three situations concern private personal savings; two others refer to national funds.

The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of individual retirement savings.

The Bulgarian government has come up with a similar idea. $300m of private early retirement savings was supposed to be transferred to the state pension scheme. The government gave way after trade unions protested and finally only about 20% of the original plans were implemented.

The article describes 3 other countries that are grabbing more individual retirement contributions.

This is exactly where the Democrats would take us.

News

Democrats plan to block Republicans from banning earmarks

2 Comments

From Fox News: Republicans support a ban on earmarks.

Excerpt:

In a remarkable turnabout, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell shifted gears from fighting a two-year moratorium on earmarks to whole-heartedly embracing it. A long time member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and defender of pet project spending, McConnell said he simply could not ignore the will of the American people any longer and said it was time for him to “lead first by example.”

The leader repeated a criticism he has lodged in recent weeks against the ban, authored in the Senate by Tea Party favorite Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, that it was “small or even symbolic” action, but McConnell said Monday, “There is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as the symbol of the waste and out of control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight.”

“Right now we’ve got over 500 congressmen and senators who are in Washington who think it’s their job to bring home the bacon. And that takes your eye off the ball. I mean, we’re not working on important national issues when we’re trying to pave a local parking lot,” DeMint told Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace.

[…]The action by McConnell avoids a major split within his party, while not conceding much, and puts the leader squarely on the side of the powerful, grassroots Tea Party movement.

[…]”With Republicans in Congress now united, it’s now up to President,” McConnell chided in a Senate floor speech. “We have said we are willing to give up discretion. Now we’ll see how he handles spending decisions. And if the president ends up with total discretion over spending, we will see more clearly where his priorities lie.”

From Fox News: Democrats oppose a ban on earmarks.

Excerpt:

Jim Manley, spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., released a statement saying, “It is up to each Senator whether or not they will support Congressionally directed funding to their state. From delivering $100 million in military projects for Nevada to funding education and public transportation projects in the state, Sen. Reid makes no apologies for delivering for the people of Nevada. He will always fight to ensure the state’s needs are met.”

[…]Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a senior member of the spending panel indicated Monday he would not support the ban…

The House Republicans are, of course, strongly in favor of a ban on earmarks. They are a little more conservative than the Republicans in the Senate.

How strong are Democrats on ethical issues?

Meanwhile, Democrat Charlie Rangel was convicted on 11 counts of violating ethics rules. (The Other McCain via Neil Simpson’s latest round-up)

Excerpt:

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), once one of the most powerful members of the House, was convicted Tuesday on 11 counts of violating ethics rules and now faces punishment.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the adjudicatory subcommittee and the full House ethics committee, announced the decision late Tuesday morning following an abbreviated public trial and nearly six hours of deliberations.

But Rangel, 80, is certainly not expected to lose his job…. in the lame-duck session, Democrats still hold the majority.

[…]The adjudicatory panel, which operated as a jury of his peers, found that Rangel had used House stationery and staff to solicit money for a school of public policy in his name at the City College of New York. It also concluded that he solicited donors for the center with interests before the Ways and Means Committee. Members of Congress are allowed to solicit money for nonprofit entities — even those bearing their names — as long as they do not use congressional letterhead or office resources to do so.

The ethics panel split 4-4 on a charge that Rangel violated the gift ban because the plans for the center included an office and the archiving of his personal and professional papers.

The panel also found Rangel guilty of using an apartment in Harlem zoned for residential use as his campaign office, failing to report more than $600,000 on his financial disclosure report and failing to pay taxes on rental income from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.

Two counts charging him with improper use of the Congress’s free franked-mail privilege were combined into one.

It’s not hard to see which party is in favor of transparency and accountability, is it?