Social Security Disability » Social Security Disability Policy Analysis
Social Security
In his State of the Union Speech, our president said entitlements, including social security, disability and Medicare need to be fixed because the fund is depleted.
According to the May 2007 report of the United States Treasury Office of Economic Policy, Social Security and Disability funds available at the end of 2006 were Seven Hundred Forty-Five Billion Dollars. This is far from being depleted as the president warned of. All the dire predictions we hear are because of Hospitalization costs are rising exponentially. It is not Social Security or Disability that is in trouble, as the president alluded to, but medical costs.
All numbers quoted are directly from government reports, see below.
One hundred sixty-two million people contributed to the entitlement fund in 2006, not one hundred twelve million as the president said. Perhaps he erroneously deducted the 50 million that are receiving benefits. Thirty-four million are retirees who paid into the fund, seven million are minor dependents of people that died, nine million are people on disability who had also contributed to the fund.
Our president said that Social Security should be privatized. This means every recipient entitled to receiving Social Security, or Social Security Disability, will have to give part of their payment to a broker to invest for them. This is a win win situation for Wall street and the stock market, but a Lose Lose situation for Social Security recipients as the majority of them live from social security check to social security check. If it is privatized, at least 10 percent of everyone's check will go toward 'administration fees' of the company receiving the money to invest. Then deduct the broker's fee also.
People receiving Social Security do not need a 'middle man' to handle their money and charge a fee for doing so.
Payments into the Social Security, or the Entitlement Fund, are not to be co-mingled with taxes collected. These payments are put into a special 'fund'. Therefore, the government should not be able to use this money for anything else. A few years ago, the government started taking money out of the Entitlement Fund and giving IOU's.
Over the next ten years Social Security and Disability fund assets are expected to double - after 2017 the treasury will start to pay back what the government 'borrowed' from the entitlement fund - this should keep the fund solvent for about twenty-three years or through the year 2041. My calculator does not have enough places on it to figure out what 23 times 745 billion dollars come to, but apparently that is how much the government raided the entitlement fund for. A quick guess would be almost 20 trillion dollars.
The warning of the entitlement fund being depleted, and the suggestion of privatizing reminds me of a public service commercial on television. It reminds me of - 'we are the good telemarketers and senior citizens have had their identity long enough'. Now replace 'identity' with social security checks.
athena_louise
Source: www.articlecity.com