The Budget

One way to balance it

The commission, appointed by President Obama, to come up with ways to balance the budget and lower the National Debt announced, this past week, parts of their recommenditions as to how it could be done. In my opinion, to much stress was placed upon what to do about the, so-called, entitlements which include Social Security and Medicare, never mind the fact that they are paid out of the Social Security Trust Fund which in turn is financed by the "FICA or payroll tax." At this time the Social Security Trust Fund has a surplus of several trillion dollars and is still paying its own way so that no money comes out of the National Treasury to pay Social Security checks or Medicare but Medicaid is partly financed by income tax money. By law, that Trust Fund money is not to be used for funding other programs or paying down the national debt.

Even though the money payed in through the payroll tax is invested in "Special Government Securities", which go into the lockbox, that money has already been spent in order to reduce our deficits but not counted as part of that debt. That, in turn, raises our real national debt several trillion dollars. The pols are not telling us the whole truth. Do you know, even one, who will admit that this is true or have facts to dispute it?

Yesterday I sent an e-mail to a number of differen people who hang around the news rooms in New York and Washington, outlining a proposal which, I believe, could both shore up the Social Security Trust Fund and drastically reduce our national debt but it would take a courageous bi-partisan effort to persuade the majority of voters that it would be in their best interest.

Most of the politicians and some news people on televison are trying to figure out how to balance the budget and reduce our debt and they seem to blame us seniors on Social Security and Medicare for the bulk of the problem. Our e-mail, in part, is below.

"My wife and I have a combined income from Social Security of almost $1500.00 each month after the $96.50 (each) deduction for Medicare. Out of that we pay about $500.00 for Medicare Supplemental Insurance and one drug card. The rest we can use to party all month. We also get about $300.00 a month in retirement benefits from our factory work which we use to pay other bills.

Our plan to cut the national debt and save Social Security and Medicare is to cut Social Security checks by 1 to 5 percent with the money saved to stay in the Social Security Trust Fund for the benefit of future generations "IF" all federal employees (should include state workers too) will (or can be forced to) take a pay cut of the same percentage which would go into the treasury to pay down the national debt, and not to be used for any other spending. No doubt, many of our politicans would try to hi-jack those funds to be used for their own agenda therefore laws would have to be passed designating their use.

Of course, we don't think anyone in New York or Washington will have the courage to push such a proposal but we can say that, at least, we tried. No, we are not members of the Tea Party. In fact we were tea party before tea party was cool."

As I sit here in my home I've been thinking / about a way of life I can't understand / it's so hard to stand up for what I believe in / but if I don't then I'm much less a man. Thanks for listening, stay tuned. - William