Medicare and Social Security Funding at issue again
 

Now the government is updating its projections - if you can believe them - and the insolvency of Medicare and Social Security will arrive just a bit sooner than expected: starting in 2018 for disabled recipients of SS benefits, and 2036 for seniors.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...-u-s-says.html

Max Baucus and company suggest we should kick the can down the road - no need to take any action at this time, we can deal with it later. Its more important to secure and continue paying benefits for today's beneficiaries.

Paul Ryan and company say that this further underscores the need to fix or reconstitute these programs today to secure a level of benefits that are sustainable.

Who's right?

The answer (as always) lies somewhere in the middle. However, in American politics, there is no middle.:(

I have a hard time believing those numbers anyhow. They keep changing as if someone isn't making progress with their efforts, so a greater sense of urgency is needed. In otherwords--------Ryan met a lot of angry people on his town hall tour, so now it's going down sooner. Next thing we know it'll be going bankrupt at dinner time, so we MUST adopt his proposal at an emergency session.:rolleyes:

I agree with Finn.

Dave

It is simply time for the mainstream left to take to the streets.

Replace the stolen money from the fund and repeal retroactively the taxx cuts since Bush.

All US financial problems solved.

Now for good measure lets repeal the SS cap.

This stuff is real simple.

Youz are probably all waiting for me to say, it's all BS, it's all a shell game at this point anyway.

I live to serve :D

Pete

Funny how we were not allowed to stop the banker's bonuses because it was "a contractual obligation" but it is quite ok to break contracts with ordinary people.

Whell::

If you're honest about -- you'll find quotes from Pelosi and others on the left saying that Soc Sec and Medicare ARE INDEED "on the table". IMHO -- They are more accurately "on life support". So we get a rare opportunity to see both sides ADMIT to a crisis that they have created.

In fact, those future doomsday dates are total cowcrap because there is no Trust Fund. Social Security went negative ALREADY!. That's why it's on the way to the O.R. for emergency organ scavenging. Because the politicians can't steal from something that's operating at a loss. NOW-- they care. A large part of the Obama deficits are because the payroll tax surpluses of 300Bil/yr (in the 90's) have reversed to liabilities of -40Bil/yr.

NoOneReal:
Replace the money stolen from the FUND??? NOW you want accountability?
When SS was still producing a surplus (to be stolen) during the Bush years, he proposed using some of that surplus to DEFER future liabilities by letting younger people take a 10% personal interest in their accounts. Made too much sense.

Besides any good leftist will tell you that those SS/MC IOUs are backed with Treasury Bonds... Well maybe only leftists who use their VISA to pay their Mastercard.

Repeal the SS Cap??? Can't do that. This is UNIVERSAL retirement insurance. The SS fund was created for ALL Americans... That's why FDR is so dam revered. You start making SS into a welfare program and the American public will never fall for a promise of Universal ANYTHING anymore.. (((Wait -- that's a great Idea NoOneReal -- go repeal the cap, means test the hell of it and make the rich pay)))

When did you start believing anything Pelosi says?

Yes, Now, before and later.



BS repealing the cap does not make this a welfare program. That is a bogus assertion.

BTW y'all do realize that SS is required by law to put all its surplus funds into Tresuries, it is not a choice.

It never ceases to amuse me that here we claim to be the richest country in the world yet we can't look after our citizens like all the other industrialized nations can. It seems we would much rather enrich Big Pharma and the Health Insurance industries. Even if some children do go to bed hungry.

Something about a nail and hitting it square on the head?

Find a starving child in the USA, and I'll show you an abusive parent.

Pete

you will :confused:

Any starving kids in Canada? Australia? UK? France? Germany? Japan?

Not that I'm aware of.

If this is true, it is most likely due to the "Social Safety Nets" that extremists on the right love to denounce as "handouts"....................

Maybe they would rather we had more starving kids? More motivation for their "lazy" parents to go get a job? Hmmmm?:rolleyes:

Don't worry about it. It's only 6.7 million households (5.7% of US households) who suffer from "very low food security." No biggie (as I jam a donut down my yap).

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/...nger_facts.htm

I'd like a headcount - who's ever lived in those neighborhoods?

Most free meals (and there a LOT) are private charities.

Noone, yes, because that is the only way a child would starve here.

Pete

This should be a sticky.

The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C00229...sent/stats.htm

It seems that many American children die before they have a chance to starve.:(

Not because of lack of availability.

Pete

Indeed it is. Because of the lack of availability of quality prenatal care and nutrition.

First, my hand is up because I have lived in these neighborhoods. What do you want to know?

Second I actually agree with you that starvation is not a big problem in this country, nutrition for poor kids is however.

I don't think you mean abusive parents, I think you mean troubled parent.

bingo, nutrition is the problem

i just posted the same thing

Finn, it's been studied to death. Some soon to be parents just don't go and get it. I've even heard it discussed on black radio stations.

Noone, I knew you did :) Did you ever check availability of free meals in your area?

And when some parent doesn't feed their kids because they're cracked out, I call that abusive.

Pete

I never had personal need but knew people who did and food was available.
i would say that being poor absolutely makes it very challenging to eat healthy and nutritious.



you say tomato, I say tomato

Ah so.

Yeah, when I was really poor I'd end up eating a lot of fast food. And a local place sold pecan twirls for $.50 a pack, they made dinners occasionally.

Sometimes I didn't really feel good.

Even being pretty darned poor I only went to a free dinner once. It was not fancy but balanced, the way a school lunch would (should?) be.

But I felt like a mooch. Some of those folks looked pretty bad off.

Pete

pasta and butter

never went hungry ;)

Lol!

For us it was a lot of potatoes and generic mac & cheese (still 5 for buck back then). Often when butter was too dear, we'd have mac and cheese with margerine and water - yuck. Peanut butter was pretty common too... I hated ramen noodles.

I still like pecan twirls occasionally :)

What I liked best about the area, outside of doing whatever you wanted (and the super cheap rent!), was the kids. They generally didn't get treated very well by just about everyone, and we did. My car was never broken into, not even when unlocked.

Pete

No offense, but it's all a load of horse shit.

Social Security is just fine. Will be for a good long time, by any measure. And when it's not, no problem. Adjust the payroll tax accordingly and move on. Should we adjust some things now? Probably. People are living longer. Probably a good idea to raise the minimum age. But these ass holes sure go out of their way to make these sound like giant problems when in reality, they're not.

Wonder why they do that? Wouldn't be to get votes, would it?

Republicans hate Social Security. I just wish they had the balls to come out and say they just want to eliminate it. But they won't because they'd never get elected again. So they lie about how bad everything is so they can try to pass some "reform" measure that kills it slowly. It's like looking at a car that needs a tire patched and saying we need to junk it and start walking everywhre. Just stupid.

they don't hate it, they simply want all that cash in the private sector t increase unearned income for them

Horse feathers.

I heard Agent Orange moaning about how government borrowing was drying up the funds available for private industry. After I got a cloth and wiped off the picture tube, I said to my wife, "Drying up? Gee whatever happened to the 2 trillion industry was sitting on, have they invested it all in China?":rolleyes: