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Senators and
Congressmen don't pay or receive Social Security - they
have something much better, and we pay for it!!
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years.
Our Senators and Congressmen do not pay into Social Security and, course, they do not collect from it. Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society.
They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. Many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan. In more recent years, no congress person has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan.
For all practical purposes their plan works like this When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die, except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments. For example, former Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives. This is calculated on an average life span for each.
Their cost for this excellent plan is $00.00.
Nada, zilch !
This 'little perk' they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds-our tax dollars at work!
From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into-every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer)--we can expect to get an average $1,000 per month after retirement.
Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000. monthly benefits for 68 years and one (l) month to equal Senator Bill Bradley's benefits!
Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.
And that change would be to jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us and then watch how fast they would fix it.
If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve. How many people can YOU send this to? Or will you just read this and ignore your rights, saying what good would it do? That's what most people will do.....NOTHING
And if the Senators and Congressmen have the same Social Security Benefits we have, I believe they can fix Medicare, plus provide a Drug Plan!!!!!
... circulating on the net - posted by
BruceM, 1/3/03
Top
The evening news will tell you that the Social Security
debate is only about politicians posturing for the next
election. That's a bunch of hooey. This debate is about:
(1) taking money from American workers by force (i.e.,
FICA taxes), (2) promising those workers the FICA money
will be returned in some form in the future (i.e., future
SS benefits), and (3) giving the workers' FICA money to
someone else because it's politically expedient (i.e.,
subsidies to your best contributors or to fund your
favorite pet projects). That's stealing under any
definition I know.
Bush said last week the Social Security fund should not
be tapped unless the nation was at war or in a recession (Tall.
Democrat 8/28)
 | Social Security won't go untouched
...Bush said last week the Social Security fund should
not be tapped unless the nation was at war or in a
recession. CBO analysts say the economy should
"narrowly" avoid a recession, but they project
growth next year at 2.6 percent, compared with a
3.2-percent growth forecast by the White House.
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| 'All-out war' in
Mideast?
Tanks enter village; leader killed
JERUSALEM - Israeli tanks rolled into a Palestinian village on the southern fringes of Jerusalem early today in an effort to halt persistent Palestinian gunfire on a nearby Israeli neighborhood. At
least one Palestinian was killed.
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| Pilotless plane missing in
It may have crashed or been shot down
WASHINGTON - A pilotless U.S. reconnaissance plane failed to return from a mission over southern Iraq on Monday. U.S. officials did not dispute Iraq's claim that it shot down the plane.
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Bush didn't win the election, and has no mandate to take the
radical step of privatizing Social Security. But Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill - who has FIDUCIARY responsibility for
the Social Security system - is militantly determined to
"get it done," as they say in Bushspeak. He has
teamed up with (probably even assembled) a group of Wall
Street firms that would make huge profits by putting the
nation's retirement fund at risk. If you like electricity
privatization, you'll LOVE what they do to Social Security.
Can you spell N-A-S-D-A-Q? It looks like Americans will have
to organize a boycott of the participating Wall Street
firms...
(Top)
What is the Cato Institute and why are they writing Bush's
social security privatization package?
The Cato Institute ... has supplied Congress with its 680-page
"Handbook for Congress." The plan? Eliminate the
Departments of Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, Interior,
Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Education;
"prohibit new entrants to the welfare rolls"; and
"end all federal early education and child care subsidies
and programs." It also calls for disbanding the IRS, the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts, the
Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Small Business
Administration, and some 200 other agencies and programs. Cato
opposes any limits on campaign contributions and wants America
to withdraw from the International Monetary Fund. ...
the NewRepublic
(Top)
Tax cut battle lost,
Democrats can't let up now
... Robert Kuttner, Boston Globe, 6/3/01
| IN LOSING $1.35 trillion of federal
revenue to George W. Bush's tax cut, the
Democrats lost an important battle, but maybe they haven't lost the
war.
The war, in this case, is a principled conflict between two contending
philosophies of governance and the good society. Should people fend
mostly
for themselves or should some needs be provided socially?
In this debate, conservatives want to shrink social spending. Since
the
Reagan era, the Republican grand design has been to starve government
for
resources. President Reagan accomplished that, big time, with his
massive tax
cut of 1981.That tax cut was responsible for more than a decade of
spending
cuts and escalating budget deficits, which increased the national debt
by
more than $3 trillion. The Democrats barely got those deficits under
control
and began to contemplate restoring some social spending when the
Republicans
came back in and cut taxes again.
Seemingly, Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut, most of it to the wealthy,
removes
money that might have been spent on social outlays that Democrats (and
many
independents and even Republicans) support: more reliable health
coverage,
better schools, comprehensive child care, and so on.
This philosophy of government, derided by Republicans as ''tax and
spend,''
is actually what made Democrats popular.The original version of that
line,
spoken by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal aide Harry Hopkins, was ''tax
and
tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.''It was spending programs like
Social
Security and Medicare, the GI Bill, and postwar programs for housing
and
education that made Democrats the majority party.
If Democrats have forgotten that, Republicans haven't. More than one
Republican strategist observed that if Democrats ever got to spend the
surplus on popular social needs, they would be the majority party
again.This
option is now, supposedly, moot.
But let's not forget that tax policy fluctuates between cuts and
increases.
Even Ronald Reagan's massive tax cut was barely in force when his own
budget
advisers realized it was excessive.There were no fewer than nine major
tax
increases enacted between 1982 and 1992, when the presidents were
named
Reagan and Bush. Most of these increases were sponsored by Democrats,
and
most of the impact hit the rich, not the middle class.According to US
Treasury statistics, for example, the 1982 tax act increased revenues
by $130
billion in its first four years. The 1984 Deficit Reduction Act
increased tax
collections by $72 billion in four years.
And this under Ronald Reagan!
Under Bush the elder, Democrat-led bills increased revenues by more
than a
hundred billion dollars more. If ordinary voters were upset, they
certainly
didn't show it. In 1992 they returned a Democrat to the White House.
And Bill
Clinton promptly raised taxes again (on the top 2 percent of
taxpayers) to
finally undo the damage of the first Reagan tax cut and turn the
deficit to
surplus.
So the stage is set for a repeat of these battles, assuming that the
Democrats can recover some nerve.George W. Bush has actually made it
easier
for Democrats by budgetary sleight of hand that backloaded the tax
cut.
To disguise the real impact on government revenues, the tax cut is
rigged so
most of it doesn't take effect until after 2005. In other words, if
the
Democrats take back the White House in 2004, they could rescind much
of the
tax cut on the upper brackets before it ever takes effect.
This would not increase anyone's current tax rates but merely expunge
a
future tax giveaway that never should have been enacted. And thanks to
budget
rules that Bush lacked the votes to waive, the entire tax cut expires
in 10
years, when the tax code must revert to its present form unless
Congress
extends the cuts.In the 2002 midterm elections and in the 2004
presidential
contest, the Democrats could starkly frame the national choices that
they so
pitifully failed to pose in 2001:
Do Americans want better health coverage or tax cuts for millionaires?
Do we want better schools or repeal of the estate tax on the top 2
percent of
Americans?
Throughout the tax debate, polls continued to show that desired social
spending is more popular than tax cuts. So the Democrats did not lose
the
country on this issue; they were simply outmaneuvered inside the
Beltway.
Properly designed and articulated, tax and spend remains sound
politics as
well as the necessary instrument of a decent society. Democrats
shouldn't run
from that. They should wear it as a badge of honor.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His
column appears
regularly in the Globe.
from Tallahassee NOW
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