Bush's Tax cuts equal the Social Security and Medicare shortfall combined.
That's right. Bush robed Americans of their future security to buy his election.
If not for Bush's tax cuts, there would be NO SOLVENCY ISSUE WITH SOCIAL SECURITY OR MEDICARE. Both would be solvent for the next 75 years.
Coincidence that the total cost of the Bush tax cuts is equal to the combined obligation of Medicare and Social Security. Not at all.
Bush said he found a surplus in the Budget. That wasn't a surplus. that was the Social Security Trust Fund and the Medicare funds.
Bush robed from the poor to give to the rich.
Now he wants the poor to pay for it, and refuses to have the Rich pay it back. He will cut the poor's future benefits and give more to the Rich in addition tax cuts.
Here is the proof http://www.cbpp.org/4-14-04tax-sum.htm
The Long-Term Costs
If the tax cuts the Administration wants to make permanent are made permanent, current relief from the swelling Alternative Minimum Tax is continued, as most observers expect it will be (the Administration supports continuation of AMT relief but has not yet put forward a specific AMT proposal), and the additional tax cuts the Administration has proposed are enacted, the future costs of these tax cuts will be extremely large.
Over the 10-year period from 2005 through 2014, the direct costs of the enacted and proposed tax cuts would total $2.8 trillion. The cost would equal 2.1 percent of the economy in 2014.
From 2005 through 2014, the increased interest payments on the debt that result from the tax cuts would amount to $1.1 trillion. The interest payments would grow steadily with each passing year and in 2014 would equal $218 billion — or 1.2 percent of the economy. This amount alone is as large a share of the economy as the government now spends on all programs and activities under the Departments of Education, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, and State combined.
Considering both the direct costs of the tax cuts and the associated increase in interest payments, the tax cuts would increase deficits by nearly $4 trillion between 2005 and 2014.
Over the next 75 years, the cost of these tax cuts — assuming they are made permanent — would be more than the combined shortfall in the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust funds.
In the absence of the tax cuts, the deficit picture over the coming decade would look very different. Without the tax cuts, the deficit would be under $100 billion in most years. With the tax cuts, the deficit is projected to grow to more than $675 billion by the end of the decade.[2] If the tax cuts are extended, revenues over this period will remain at quite low levels by recent historical standards. Over the next decade, average revenues as a share of GDP would be lower than the average levels of revenues in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Time will tell all the Truth.VT
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Cash for Christians in Georgia!
Cash for Christians in Georgia!
Ashley Smith did a brave thing. Her life was in danger and she saved her own life with level headed thinking. I commend that and all should.
However in today's Christian dominated based Bush Government the religious aspects of this incident has taken larger than life proportions.
Today Ashley received $70,000 from several police agencies, then was featured in a 15 minute 'this is your life' segment with heavy Christian emphasis.
Normally I would not give this a second thought. However I no longer feel nonchalant about fluff pieces of a certain ilk. Not since Bush has been in office and is heavy handedly pushing the Religious Right Christian Agenda in governing this country.
The reward to Ashley and the attention is reminiscent to Jessica Lynch the 'hero' in Iraq. Both deserved attention but not the hype. Hype you ask? yes Hype.
The following article is located at:http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/111/31.0.htmlWeblog: Is Ashley Smith's Hostage Story a Testimonial?More than a story of faith and hope, this hostage practiced the Sermon on the Mount.Compiled by Rob Moll posted 03/16/2005 02:15 p.m.
It was a "textbook case" of how to deal with a hostage-taker. Ashley Smith talked shooting suspect Brian Nichols into turning himself in. After several hours in her apartment, Nichols allowed Smith to leave, and she immediately called the police.
"To avoid this thing becoming even more crazy, it wasn't a question of who was right or wrong, but how do we get this thing taken care of, managed, so nobody else gets killed?" Robert Benjamin, a veteran conflict negotiator in Portland, Oregon told The Christian Science Monitor. "And her deft touch, unstudied as it was, was quite frankly a moment of brilliance."
Reading Smith's account of the story, it's clear that sharing her faith with Nichols did much to help them both get through the situation safely.
We went to my room. And I asked him if I could read.
He said, "What do you want to read?"
"Well, I have a book in my room." So I went and got it. I got my Bible. And I got a book called The Purpose-Driven Life.
I turned it to the chapter that I was on that day. It was Chapter 33. And I started to read the first paragraph of it. After I read it, he said, "Stop, will you read it again?"
I said, "Yeah. I'll read it again."
So I read it again to him.
It mentioned something about what you thought your purpose in life was. What were you—what talents were you given? What gifts were you given to use?
And I asked him what he thought. And he said, "I think it was to talk to people and tell them about you."
As Nichols began to open up to Smith, she told him about her life. Smith's husband was murdered four years ago. "As a teen, she was arrested for shoplifting and was on probation for a year. Later came arrests for drunken driving, speeding, and battery," according to CBS News.
Two days before, Smith moved into the apartment where Nichols held her hostage. She works two jobs and recently completed a medical assistant course. Smith was returning from a store at 2:30 a.m. when Nichols held a gun to her back and forced her into the apartment. But by 9 that morning Smith convinced Nichols to allow her to pick up her daughter from AWANA, according to Baptist Press.
Smith said she wanted to gain his trust, and the two talked for several hours. She even made him pancakes for breakfast. "He said he thought that I was an angel sent from God," Smith said. "And that I was his sister and he was my brother in Christ. And that he was lost and God led him right to me to tell him that he had hurt a lot of people. And the families—the people—to let him know how they felt, because I had gone through it myself."
Smith even showed Nichols her husband's autopsy report. "That's what a lot of people will have to go through now, because of what you've done," she told him. "You need to turn yourself in. No one else needs to die, and you're going to die if you don't."
She helped Nichols believe in something beyond his immediate situation. "After I started to read to him, he saw—I guess he saw my faith and what I really believed in. And I told him I was a child of God and that I wanted to do God's will. I guess he began to want to."
Over breakfast, Smith said, "I just talked with him a little more … we pretty much talked about God … what his reason was, why he made it out of there.
I said, "Do you believe in miracles? Because if you don't believe in miracles—you are here for a reason. You're here in my apartment for some reason. You got out of that courthouse with police everywhere, and you don't think that's a miracle? You don't think you're supposed to be sitting here right in front of me listening to me tell you, you know, your reason here?"
I said, "You know, your miracle could be that you need to—you need to be caught for this. You need to go to prison and you need to share the Word of God with them, with all the prisoners there."
Smith has already been offered book and film deals. H.B. London, vice president for ministry outreach/pastoral ministry at Focus on the Family said, "Every Christian organization in the country will want to tell her story" as an example of "how God can sustain a person in a time when most people would have crumbled."
"This is, I would say, one of the more dramatic, if not the most dramatic [testimonials] I'm aware of," Vicki Cessna, spokeswoman for Zondervan told the Los Angeles Times. "Obviously the book has had far-reaching, life-changing influences for millions of people. We're just honored that this in any way helped facilitate a positive outcome for Ashley."
"She epitomizes the many Americans clinging to the edge of the middle class, working multiple jobs, making mistakes, finding loss and redemption, and enduring tragedy, all while looking for wisdom and comfort in self-help books and Scripture," writes The Christian Science Monitor. The paper continues:
Smith's more humanist reaction reminds some observers of Terry Waite, who negotiated the release of two Anglican priests from Libya, and of hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, who saved hundreds of lives through negotiation during the Rwandan genocide, in a story that inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda. In those cases, common men became forces to reckon with by virtue of their astute perceptions of human behavior. Authenticity and self-knowledge, not brute force, are key attributes to solving the stickiest standoffs, negotiators say.
"Our culture trains us to make an argument to overwhelm the other side, not to listen to what the other person is saying," says Mr. Benjamin in Portland. In contrast, "[Smith] practiced negotiation at its most noble, artful way."
So, before the SWAT team surrounded the apartment complex with guns, Smith had defused the situation with love. In fact, when Nichols left her, untied, with ready access to guns, and when Smith followed Nichols in her own car while he ditched his stolen truck, Smith declined to take the opportunity to free herself. Instead she hoped to convince Nichols to turn himself in without hurting anyone else. "For a country used to getting things done with overwhelming force, it was a humbling lesson in Peacemaking 101," writes the Monitor.
Her account makes a great illustration of how God works in our lives, and it ought to be told, as London suggests. Hopefully it doesn't become a clichéd Hollywood story of faith, courage, and hope, because it is a beautiful illustration of the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. … I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
As Dallas Willard says, Jesus was a pretty smart guy, huh?Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today.
www.ChristianityToday.comAOL Keyword and CompuServe GO: ChristianityToday.comCopyright © 1994–2002 Christianity Today International
Ashley Smith did a brave thing. Her life was in danger and she saved her own life with level headed thinking. I commend that and all should.
However in today's Christian dominated based Bush Government the religious aspects of this incident has taken larger than life proportions.
Today Ashley received $70,000 from several police agencies, then was featured in a 15 minute 'this is your life' segment with heavy Christian emphasis.
Normally I would not give this a second thought. However I no longer feel nonchalant about fluff pieces of a certain ilk. Not since Bush has been in office and is heavy handedly pushing the Religious Right Christian Agenda in governing this country.
The reward to Ashley and the attention is reminiscent to Jessica Lynch the 'hero' in Iraq. Both deserved attention but not the hype. Hype you ask? yes Hype.
The following article is located at:http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/111/31.0.htmlWeblog: Is Ashley Smith's Hostage Story a Testimonial?More than a story of faith and hope, this hostage practiced the Sermon on the Mount.Compiled by Rob Moll posted 03/16/2005 02:15 p.m.
It was a "textbook case" of how to deal with a hostage-taker. Ashley Smith talked shooting suspect Brian Nichols into turning himself in. After several hours in her apartment, Nichols allowed Smith to leave, and she immediately called the police.
"To avoid this thing becoming even more crazy, it wasn't a question of who was right or wrong, but how do we get this thing taken care of, managed, so nobody else gets killed?" Robert Benjamin, a veteran conflict negotiator in Portland, Oregon told The Christian Science Monitor. "And her deft touch, unstudied as it was, was quite frankly a moment of brilliance."
Reading Smith's account of the story, it's clear that sharing her faith with Nichols did much to help them both get through the situation safely.
We went to my room. And I asked him if I could read.
He said, "What do you want to read?"
"Well, I have a book in my room." So I went and got it. I got my Bible. And I got a book called The Purpose-Driven Life.
I turned it to the chapter that I was on that day. It was Chapter 33. And I started to read the first paragraph of it. After I read it, he said, "Stop, will you read it again?"
I said, "Yeah. I'll read it again."
So I read it again to him.
It mentioned something about what you thought your purpose in life was. What were you—what talents were you given? What gifts were you given to use?
And I asked him what he thought. And he said, "I think it was to talk to people and tell them about you."
As Nichols began to open up to Smith, she told him about her life. Smith's husband was murdered four years ago. "As a teen, she was arrested for shoplifting and was on probation for a year. Later came arrests for drunken driving, speeding, and battery," according to CBS News.
Two days before, Smith moved into the apartment where Nichols held her hostage. She works two jobs and recently completed a medical assistant course. Smith was returning from a store at 2:30 a.m. when Nichols held a gun to her back and forced her into the apartment. But by 9 that morning Smith convinced Nichols to allow her to pick up her daughter from AWANA, according to Baptist Press.
Smith said she wanted to gain his trust, and the two talked for several hours. She even made him pancakes for breakfast. "He said he thought that I was an angel sent from God," Smith said. "And that I was his sister and he was my brother in Christ. And that he was lost and God led him right to me to tell him that he had hurt a lot of people. And the families—the people—to let him know how they felt, because I had gone through it myself."
Smith even showed Nichols her husband's autopsy report. "That's what a lot of people will have to go through now, because of what you've done," she told him. "You need to turn yourself in. No one else needs to die, and you're going to die if you don't."
She helped Nichols believe in something beyond his immediate situation. "After I started to read to him, he saw—I guess he saw my faith and what I really believed in. And I told him I was a child of God and that I wanted to do God's will. I guess he began to want to."
Over breakfast, Smith said, "I just talked with him a little more … we pretty much talked about God … what his reason was, why he made it out of there.
I said, "Do you believe in miracles? Because if you don't believe in miracles—you are here for a reason. You're here in my apartment for some reason. You got out of that courthouse with police everywhere, and you don't think that's a miracle? You don't think you're supposed to be sitting here right in front of me listening to me tell you, you know, your reason here?"
I said, "You know, your miracle could be that you need to—you need to be caught for this. You need to go to prison and you need to share the Word of God with them, with all the prisoners there."
Smith has already been offered book and film deals. H.B. London, vice president for ministry outreach/pastoral ministry at Focus on the Family said, "Every Christian organization in the country will want to tell her story" as an example of "how God can sustain a person in a time when most people would have crumbled."
"This is, I would say, one of the more dramatic, if not the most dramatic [testimonials] I'm aware of," Vicki Cessna, spokeswoman for Zondervan told the Los Angeles Times. "Obviously the book has had far-reaching, life-changing influences for millions of people. We're just honored that this in any way helped facilitate a positive outcome for Ashley."
"She epitomizes the many Americans clinging to the edge of the middle class, working multiple jobs, making mistakes, finding loss and redemption, and enduring tragedy, all while looking for wisdom and comfort in self-help books and Scripture," writes The Christian Science Monitor. The paper continues:
Smith's more humanist reaction reminds some observers of Terry Waite, who negotiated the release of two Anglican priests from Libya, and of hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, who saved hundreds of lives through negotiation during the Rwandan genocide, in a story that inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda. In those cases, common men became forces to reckon with by virtue of their astute perceptions of human behavior. Authenticity and self-knowledge, not brute force, are key attributes to solving the stickiest standoffs, negotiators say.
"Our culture trains us to make an argument to overwhelm the other side, not to listen to what the other person is saying," says Mr. Benjamin in Portland. In contrast, "[Smith] practiced negotiation at its most noble, artful way."
So, before the SWAT team surrounded the apartment complex with guns, Smith had defused the situation with love. In fact, when Nichols left her, untied, with ready access to guns, and when Smith followed Nichols in her own car while he ditched his stolen truck, Smith declined to take the opportunity to free herself. Instead she hoped to convince Nichols to turn himself in without hurting anyone else. "For a country used to getting things done with overwhelming force, it was a humbling lesson in Peacemaking 101," writes the Monitor.
Her account makes a great illustration of how God works in our lives, and it ought to be told, as London suggests. Hopefully it doesn't become a clichéd Hollywood story of faith, courage, and hope, because it is a beautiful illustration of the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. … I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
As Dallas Willard says, Jesus was a pretty smart guy, huh?Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today.
www.ChristianityToday.comAOL Keyword and CompuServe GO: ChristianityToday.comCopyright © 1994–2002 Christianity Today International
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
The US Government will go Bankrupt, NOT Social Security.. Here is the Solution!
The US Government will go Bankrupt, NOT Social Security
Here is the Solution
Sean Lewis
February 3 2005
The US Government will go bankrupt, not Social Security. There I said it, but someone had to.
Bush is hiding the fact that his fiscal economic plan of tax cuts, tax refunds, deficit spending and pre-emptive war agenda has put the US on the verge of Bankruptcy.
The Social Security Trust Fund has a surplus of 1.8 Trillion Dollars invested in US Government Bonds earning interest. Social Security will not be issuing funds greater than it is taking in until 2018 or later. At that point Social Security should be able to begin to Redeem the 1.8 Trillion PLUS in US Government Bonds.
Does this sound insolvent to any one?
So what is the REAL issue?
The emperor has no clothes.
Bush has hidden the severity of the National Deficit and the National Debt by cooking the Government Books.
Bush has taken the Social Security Receipts we all pay every day in our paychecks and has replaced them with US Government IOU's. Understand, in and of itself there is nothing wrong with this. However, Bush has used this funds to hide the true depth of the Budget Deficit. When Bush calculates his Budget, he erroneously includes the Social Security Receipts. The Budget Surplus Bush inherited, which bought Bush the election when he promised to give it back to Americans; were the Social Security Receipts. In essence the tax cuts, and refund checks were financed by Social Security Receipts. Bush raided Social Security and gave the money disproportionately to the richest Americans, Buying the Election. In Doing this Bush Bankrupted Social Security doing a reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. Bush replaced these funds with the US Government IOU's.
Those IOU's are representation of cash available to pay the Baby Boomers once they start retiring. When do they start retiring? In 3 years beginning 2008. The Baby Boomers will start cashing in those US Treasury Bonds or IOUs. Problem is, there is no money to pay back the IOUs.
You see the Treasury is running in the Red, we do not have the money to finance all of the Expenses of the US Government NOW! How will Bush find the funds to start paying off the Baby Boomers IOUs? By issuing more IOUs to someone else!
Think of it this way. You are a bank and depositors make monthly deposits for safe keeping. The bank however is not making enough money to pay it's bills, so it dips into the deposits and 'borrows' money with unsecured IOUs saying it will pay back the loans with interest once things turn around. Buts things do not turn around, they only get worse. To not pay the bills would bring ruin to the bank, so the bank 'borrows' even more money from the depositors! Now a vicious cycle has begun. Outwardly all is well, however one day the depositors begin to no longer make deposits, but begin to withdraw their funds with interest! Now the Bank faces not only a short fall to pay existing Bills because fewer funds are coming in, but also the amount going out has increased. The only way to make ends meet is to issue additional unsecured IOUs to individuals outside the Bank. As more people retire the greater the escalating unsecured IOUs grow. This is the house of cards Bush has built.
How has this happened?
Bush has not vetoed one single spending bill.
Bush has given tax cuts in a time history has shown taxes should be raised. We are at war, and in every instance of war in the past Presidents understood the importance of keeping the War Chest full to finance the Troops.
Believe it or not the Countries financing the American War on terrorism are the Chinese, the French, The Germans, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and many other countries that voted against the invasion of Iraq. How? They are buying the US Government Bonds that Bush is issuing to pay for the Deficit that Social Security is now financing.
Talk about hat in hand!
Bush needs to change Social Security because under the guise of reform Bush can 'borrow' funds to hide the impending financial incompetence of this Administration. If Bush does not 'reform' Social Security BEFORE 2008 the US citizens will see the Republican incompetence NAKED in it's raw ugly epochal squandering. Bush had everything a President could ask for, A strong economy, A strong low unemployment rate, strong GDP growth, A hard won Surplus. With this Bush could have paid BACK Social Security and the unfunded liability of Medicare, yet another 2008 issue that had a dirty sloppy overpriced band aide applied. Instead Bush has placed this the US on the slippery slope to financial ruin.
Bush needs to fix the real problem, The National Deficit and The National Debt. Bush needs to allow the ill advised tax cuts to sunset. If Bush does not deal with the real issue, Republicans being fiscally irresponsible, not only will Bush and the Republican Party go down in flames but so will the US dollar, the US standard of living, the US economy and the US.
OK now how do we solve this?
Social Security needs to be tweaked, but it is not broken.
For Social Security to continue paying out benefits all that needs to be done is this.
Increase the SS payroll deduction by 1/2 to 1%.
Increase the annual SS payroll deduction cutoff to $120,000.
Means test payout's to retirees.
Gradually increase the retirement age to 70.
Allow new workers entering the labor market to have the OPTION of having additional funds taken out of their payroll checks to be applied to the Private Accounts.
Investments in the Private Accounts are limited to these options:
Money Market
US Treasuries
INDU index fund
SPY index fund
QQQQ index fund
Gold/Silver/Platinum
All or any option in combination will keep SS solvent for decades to come. As it stands SS will continue for decades without and changes.
Time will tell all the Truth.VT
Virtual TruthSean LewisVirtualTruth@aol.comFounder Open Debate ForumOpenDebateForum@groups.aol.com
We are Americans first. Not black or white, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. We are Americans first. Until this fact is understood we will be a nation divided and ineffective. We need to forget our differences and stop blaming each other for the errors of the past. We need to be non partisan about the future of this country. Our greatest enemy is from within. We have turned upon each other. . We need to change our old way of business as usual and be united for the common good. Which is, we are all Americans first.
Here is the Solution
Sean Lewis
February 3 2005
The US Government will go bankrupt, not Social Security. There I said it, but someone had to.
Bush is hiding the fact that his fiscal economic plan of tax cuts, tax refunds, deficit spending and pre-emptive war agenda has put the US on the verge of Bankruptcy.
The Social Security Trust Fund has a surplus of 1.8 Trillion Dollars invested in US Government Bonds earning interest. Social Security will not be issuing funds greater than it is taking in until 2018 or later. At that point Social Security should be able to begin to Redeem the 1.8 Trillion PLUS in US Government Bonds.
Does this sound insolvent to any one?
So what is the REAL issue?
The emperor has no clothes.
Bush has hidden the severity of the National Deficit and the National Debt by cooking the Government Books.
Bush has taken the Social Security Receipts we all pay every day in our paychecks and has replaced them with US Government IOU's. Understand, in and of itself there is nothing wrong with this. However, Bush has used this funds to hide the true depth of the Budget Deficit. When Bush calculates his Budget, he erroneously includes the Social Security Receipts. The Budget Surplus Bush inherited, which bought Bush the election when he promised to give it back to Americans; were the Social Security Receipts. In essence the tax cuts, and refund checks were financed by Social Security Receipts. Bush raided Social Security and gave the money disproportionately to the richest Americans, Buying the Election. In Doing this Bush Bankrupted Social Security doing a reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. Bush replaced these funds with the US Government IOU's.
Those IOU's are representation of cash available to pay the Baby Boomers once they start retiring. When do they start retiring? In 3 years beginning 2008. The Baby Boomers will start cashing in those US Treasury Bonds or IOUs. Problem is, there is no money to pay back the IOUs.
You see the Treasury is running in the Red, we do not have the money to finance all of the Expenses of the US Government NOW! How will Bush find the funds to start paying off the Baby Boomers IOUs? By issuing more IOUs to someone else!
Think of it this way. You are a bank and depositors make monthly deposits for safe keeping. The bank however is not making enough money to pay it's bills, so it dips into the deposits and 'borrows' money with unsecured IOUs saying it will pay back the loans with interest once things turn around. Buts things do not turn around, they only get worse. To not pay the bills would bring ruin to the bank, so the bank 'borrows' even more money from the depositors! Now a vicious cycle has begun. Outwardly all is well, however one day the depositors begin to no longer make deposits, but begin to withdraw their funds with interest! Now the Bank faces not only a short fall to pay existing Bills because fewer funds are coming in, but also the amount going out has increased. The only way to make ends meet is to issue additional unsecured IOUs to individuals outside the Bank. As more people retire the greater the escalating unsecured IOUs grow. This is the house of cards Bush has built.
How has this happened?
Bush has not vetoed one single spending bill.
Bush has given tax cuts in a time history has shown taxes should be raised. We are at war, and in every instance of war in the past Presidents understood the importance of keeping the War Chest full to finance the Troops.
Believe it or not the Countries financing the American War on terrorism are the Chinese, the French, The Germans, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and many other countries that voted against the invasion of Iraq. How? They are buying the US Government Bonds that Bush is issuing to pay for the Deficit that Social Security is now financing.
Talk about hat in hand!
Bush needs to change Social Security because under the guise of reform Bush can 'borrow' funds to hide the impending financial incompetence of this Administration. If Bush does not 'reform' Social Security BEFORE 2008 the US citizens will see the Republican incompetence NAKED in it's raw ugly epochal squandering. Bush had everything a President could ask for, A strong economy, A strong low unemployment rate, strong GDP growth, A hard won Surplus. With this Bush could have paid BACK Social Security and the unfunded liability of Medicare, yet another 2008 issue that had a dirty sloppy overpriced band aide applied. Instead Bush has placed this the US on the slippery slope to financial ruin.
Bush needs to fix the real problem, The National Deficit and The National Debt. Bush needs to allow the ill advised tax cuts to sunset. If Bush does not deal with the real issue, Republicans being fiscally irresponsible, not only will Bush and the Republican Party go down in flames but so will the US dollar, the US standard of living, the US economy and the US.
OK now how do we solve this?
Social Security needs to be tweaked, but it is not broken.
For Social Security to continue paying out benefits all that needs to be done is this.
Increase the SS payroll deduction by 1/2 to 1%.
Increase the annual SS payroll deduction cutoff to $120,000.
Means test payout's to retirees.
Gradually increase the retirement age to 70.
Allow new workers entering the labor market to have the OPTION of having additional funds taken out of their payroll checks to be applied to the Private Accounts.
Investments in the Private Accounts are limited to these options:
Money Market
US Treasuries
INDU index fund
SPY index fund
QQQQ index fund
Gold/Silver/Platinum
All or any option in combination will keep SS solvent for decades to come. As it stands SS will continue for decades without and changes.
Time will tell all the Truth.VT
Virtual TruthSean LewisVirtualTruth@aol.comFounder Open Debate ForumOpenDebateForum@groups.aol.com
We are Americans first. Not black or white, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. We are Americans first. Until this fact is understood we will be a nation divided and ineffective. We need to forget our differences and stop blaming each other for the errors of the past. We need to be non partisan about the future of this country. Our greatest enemy is from within. We have turned upon each other. . We need to change our old way of business as usual and be united for the common good. Which is, we are all Americans first.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)