Reaction to Deficit Commission report by 60 Plus Association Chairman Jim Martin
Social Security is not a debt creator. Commission Co-Chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles should look in the mirror as should certain other Commission members, specifically Senators Hugh Gregg (R-NH) and Kent Conrad (D-ND). They’ll see honest-to-God debt creators, themselves!
To solve the deficit problem they say they are striving to make Social Security solvent. Yet again? Seniors, a warning is in order. Put your hand over your wallet. You are ripe for fleecing once again. And former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY), who is known for his sense of humor, but his bizarre derision of seniors is running a little thin.
Simpson going after seniors to fix the deficit is like a great white shark offering a plan to lure tourists back to the beach. That’s the level of credibility Alan Simpson now has with the seniors he continues to belittle.
Turning to Gregg and Conrad, I thought there was a misprint when I read newspaper accounts quoting them as predicting the Commission plan will “put Social Security on solid financial footing for the next 75 years.” Either a misprint or some staffer clearly plagiarized the 1983 Greenspan Commission report that purported to “put Social Security on solid financial footing for the next 75 years.”
What a joke, and a cruel one at that. Year in and year out these folks, Democrats and Republicans alike, spend every dollar out of the Social Security Trust fund surpluses and now, as the well runs dry, they pledge to make the fund solvent?
I loved Conrad’s cute quote recently on TV when he proclaimed soberly that Social Security is now “cash negative.” I have news for the Senator. It was “cash positive” its first 74 years. In fact, so over-flowing in billions of dollars that Congress, prodded by that sleight of hand master, President Lyndon B. Johnson, started spending the surpluses to make themselves look more frugal by lowering the deficit. Instead of an estimated $13.8 trillion dollar deficit it would be more like a $17.8 trillion dollar deficit.
For the co-chairs to say these reductions would “go to salvage the Social Security system” is a joke. Seniors know the savings don’t go into the Social Security Trust Fund. Only more IOU’s. Of course the “full faith and credit” of the governmentt backs up these IOU’s. The faith is not so full anymore, because the ‘credit’ has been stretched to the bankruptcy point by borrowing to keep current checks from bouncing.
I recall the words of two Senators, the late Republican John Heinz from Pennsylvania and Fritz Hollings, Democrat from South Carolina, who called the annual “raid” on the Social Security Trust Fund “embezzlement,” that if businesses did this, they would be jailed. That’s why I call these Commission members “embezzlers.”
Simpson and company need to go back to the drawing board and look for real ways to cut the fat from our budget, without stealing yet again from America’s seniors who dutifully paid into the Social Security program all their lives. Seniors are tired of being political footballs, especially by one particular party, that maliciously scares seniors into the voting booth by falsely accusing the other party of trying to destroy the system. I predicted a senior citizen tsunami for over a year before the November 2nd elections and that tsunami came ashore with devastating results for one party. I predict similar results in 2012 if these false charges persist. The game is up. Seniors are tired of it and they ain’t taking it anymore!
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