Are the democrats really responsible for the Social Security to be used in ways other than as pensions?

[Candy J]

I received an email today that stated that most of the changes that have caused the downfall of the social security system were done by democra tic presidents.

[lucky_j_2003]

Johnson was the first to dip his hand into the Social Security coffer ,but all since has used it as a personal bank account

[Norm]

The largest amount of the growth in Federal Spending is the proliferation of social programs. This is the heart of the causes that the Democrats have supported since FDR. Both parties are to blame though. If a private company ran its pension program the way that congress has run social security the management of the company would be thrown in jail.

[sprcpt]

The past republican presidents have "borrowed" from social security many times to cover their deficit spending and it never got put back.

[Susie-Q]

I don't know. If there is no Social Security when I retire. Then they need to give us our money back that we all have payed in. So we can invest it.

[Otis F]

During the 40 years that the Democrat Party controlled the House of Representative, quite a few non-pension benefits were added to the S.S. program. Many of them occurred during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

The Republican Party has from time to time attempted to restore the actuarial soundness of the S.S. program. However, they have always been shouted down by the "heartless bastards" argument and have not ever found a way to get around that.

Our increasing life span is another problem. The S.S. program was designed when it was nearly certain that a good percentage of the contributors would die without collecting any (or very little) benefits. As we live longer, that assumption has vanished. And, the "survivor benefits" that are paid have exacerbated the problem.

I don't really blame the Democrat Party or the Republican Party. I blame them all equally. Leading means doing things that are sometimes unpopular. Instead, both parties treat the federal budget including the S.S. program as a way to buy our votes. What most of fail to notice is that they are using our money to try to buy our votes.

[Barbara M]

It's not the democrats who are responsible because Clinton had the United States were we didn't owe anything and were ahead. Now that Bush is in we are 9 billion in debt.

[ithinkiknow]

Uh huh. Neither party is on our side, hate to say it.

[Der Lange]

ANOTHER fiction spread by those who want to destroy Social Security by "privatizing" it. If anything, the greatest danger to Social Security is the Republican right and George W. Bush.

First of all, Social Security is not in collapse and the word "downfall" is entirely inaccurate. It is well over 30 years in the future before any basic differences in income and payments will reach a negative balance, and much longer after that before the Trust Fund would be in trouble.

The Social Security Trust Fund has been used to falsify reports of government debt for decades. As the first poster partially got right, a Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson, borrowed from the fund to finance his ill-founded "guns and butter" program for both war and expanded welfare programs (yet ANOTHER reason protests against the Vietnam War were RIGHT).

However, that generated a debt to Social Security owed by the Federal Government's general fund. It is still outstanding - something that critics of the program today attempt to conveniently ignore.

This practice was followed enthusiastically by Nixon. Ford also engaged in it but to a very minimal extent. Carter took practically nothing from the fund.

But the BIG boodler of all time, before George W. Bush, was Ronald Reagan. It was under his Administration that the smoke-and-mirrors game was perfected to mask the true condition of the country's finances, by counting the trust fund as part of the national bank account. This, of course, was a deception. On top of that, to fund his outrageous (until now, anyhow) defecit spending, Reagan also looted the fund. Part of the money ironically went to pay off seniors ruined by the scandalous savings and loan collapses that followed Reagan's deregulation of financial institutions and his lax enforcement of the remaining laws governing those institutions.

The elder Bush might have made more raids on the fund but fortunately lost his re-election bid.

Clinton was no angel in this matter either. A chunk of the "surplus" he claimed in his Administration really belonged to Social Security. But he did manage to make an attempt to deal with the looming "unfunded liability" resulting from government borrowing from the fund, ill-advised Social Security contributions tax cuts, and changing demographics.

Geroge W. Bush has simply been making a meal of that money, all the while crying crocodile tears over the "need to reform" Social Security. And he too is padding his reports on government finances by improperly counting money in the trust fund.

The City of New York decades ago was bankrupted by pension fund liabilities the city never even bothered to prepare to pay. The City of Los Angeles several years later came close to the same problem.

Private companies with big pension programs have turned out to be fakes, for the most part - either through mal-administration of the funds, or consequent to mergers and acquisitions, many major pension plans have become costly failures damaging the lives of the people who earned their right to pensions. It turns out that Regan pulled a cute trick with some of his measures encouraging mergers and acquisitions - pension funds after an acquisition were no longer protected from use. They were considered a disposable cash asset of the acquiring company. Well, THAT money sure wasn't allowed to sit around waiting for some useless retirees to get!

Whether private pension programs, or Social Security, the "reforms" needed are to protect the funds from the grasping greed of politicians and corproate executives. The LAST place Social Security funds should be spent is in the Wild West of the stock market.

If you worry about Social Security, exact a pledge from the person running for Congress in your district to begin a structured, steady program to repay all the "government loans" taken out of the Trust Fund and keep Social Security out of the hands of the public and private boodlers!

[danny c]

Hi, I have work with the Government and along with, They would take advantage of our money any way the can, espically with middle class and lower class Americans, They figure we won't see the changes. As of Social Security and number. It was never intended at the beginning. That the government will be touching our money. It started with John F. Kennedy, that monies in Socail Security to be used for other political means and for the foreigners to come into the Country, and we won't see anything or not much of it when we need it. During the Vietnam and Korean war. Some time in that time frame the Government decided to use the Socail Security number as an ID number. So they can ID the missing and dead lot quicker. If they were beyond reconignition. The SS# was not to be used in this fashion at all, at the beginning. The Government did this secretly over the years. Till a few people and Soldiers started complaining about it soon after the war ended. In my opinion, They should keep the SS# as a private number to each individual. And started a Government ID system nation wide. this would be your Drivers License number also. Only Bad thing about that Big Brother will know every thing about you. Good point about it, There wouldn't be so much of ID theft going on. Its not just the Democrats doing this Republicans were doing this also. It is to late to for them straighten mess out now. President Bush, started with a good idea. To put money into some kind of an account that will make you more money into the long run. But it needed to stay out of the Government Hands. So they can not dip into it.

Dan