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Counting on Social Security?
By
Monty Rainey
February 21, 2003
Most
Americans already know that Social Security is in trouble.
Demographic shifts and an aging population have undermined the
unspoken foundation of the system, which is the practice of taxing
younger generations to pay benefits for current retirees. Younger
generations, however, simply aren’t big enough to pay for the
millions of baby boomers who will begin retiring in the next decade.
When Social Security began in the 1930s, many Americans never
reached age 65. Today, however, millions of
retirees live well into their eighties and nineties. These
realities mean the current system could collapse in as little as
twenty to thirty years.
Still,
the problem seems vague and faraway for most. Today’s
seniors hope the system will hold together for the remainder of their
lives, while younger working people hope government will somehow fix
things before they retire. Not surprisingly,
Congress doesn’t want to face the problem until it becomes an acute
crisis. It’s hard to sell voters on austerity
today to avoid a relatively distant problem. Politicians
usually operate on the opposite principle, by promising great things
now and leaving the bills for others to pay later.
This
means the greatest threat to your Social Security retirement funds is
Congress itself. Congress has never required that
Social Security tax dollars be kept separate from general revenues.
In fact, the Social Security “trust fund” is not a trust
fund at all. The dollars taken out of your paycheck
are not deposited into an account to be paid to you later.
On the contrary, they are spent immediately to pay current
benefits, and to fund completely unrelated federal programs.
Your Social Security administration “account” is nothing
more than an IOU, a hopeful promise that enough younger taxpayers will
be around to pay your benefits later.
This
unconscionable system allows Congress to raid Social Security revenues
for every conceivable pork spending project. Unless
we change the spending culture in Washington, your retirement dollars
will never be secure. At the very least, Congress
needs to pass legislation requiring that Social Security revenues be
spent only for payment of benefits.
Furthermore,
Congress needs to ensure that Social Security benefits are paid to
American citizens only. In December, the national
press reported on a deal looming between the administration and the
Mexican government that would allow Mexican citizens who worked in the
U.S.- even illegally- to qualify for Social Security benefits.
A so-called “totalization” system would permit Mexican
workers to add years worked in Mexico to those in the U.S. when
qualifying for benefits. Unless Congress acts, the
administration will begin using Social Security dollars to fund a
global welfare system!
This
outrageous proposal is projected to cost the already fragile Social
Security system more than one billion dollars annually just for
starters. Social Security was designed to provide
retirement income for American citizens who worked in the United
States. Paying benefits to noncitizens is an insult
to millions of Americans who pay into Social Security their entire
lives, pledge their loyalty to America as citizens, yet now face the
possibility of a bankrupt system when they retire.
All
American taxpayers should be very concerned about congressional
spending raids and global giveaways of Social Security dollars.
Unless real spending constraints are imposed now, the Social
Security dollars that millions of Americans rely on may vanish before
they retire.
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