Pamela's Sharebook 

• Center for Economic and Policy Research Numerous politicians and commentators have claimed that the prospect of higher Social Security taxes in the future will threaten the living standards of our children and grandchildren. A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which was co-authored by Dean Baker and David Rosnick shows that rising health care costs pose a much larger threat to living standards than any potential tax increases for supporting Social Security
• The Truth about the Trust Fund-- Destroying Social Security to Destroy the Two Party System What do you do when you want to screw only the working people of your nation with the largest tax increase in history and hand those trillions of dollars to your wealthy campaign contributors yet not have anybody realize you've done it? If you're Ronald Reagan, you call in Alan Greenspan.
• Social Security to Start Cashing IOUs - CBS News For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits - billions more each year.
  
  Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes - nearly $29 billion more.
  
  Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs - in the form of Treasury bonds - which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices.
• Recession Puts a Major Strain On Social Security Trust Fund - washingtonpost.com The Treasury Department has for decades borrowed money from the Social Security trust fund to finance government operations. If it is no longer able to do so, it could be forced to borrow an additional $700 billion over the next decade from China, Japan and other investors. And at some point, perhaps as early as 2017, according to the CBO, the Treasury would have to start repaying the billions it has borrowed from the trust fund over the past 25 years, driving the nation further into debt or forcing Congress to raise taxes.
• About the Social Security trust fund - NYTimes.com What we really have is a looming crisis in the General Fund. Social Security, with its own dedicated tax, has been run responsibly; the rest of the government has not. So why are we talking about a Social Security crisis?
• Barbara J. Easterling: Keeping Social Security's Promise Wait a minute ... we have put billions in payroll taxes into the Social Security Trust Fund. Social Security is not responsible for the national budget deficit and the American public knows it.
• Reckonings - Bashing the Boomers - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com Meanwhile, Mr. Bush has made it clear that he intends to raid the funds that were supposed to support the baby boomers in their retirement. Social Security and Medicare were expected to accumulate almost $3 trillion in reserves over the next decade, reserves that were supposed to be there for the baby boomers. But Mr. Bush proposes to divert about $1 trillion -- a real trillion, not a Bush trillion -- into other uses. There will be elaborate sophistry about how money diverted into individual Social Security accounts is still ''in the system,'' about how Medicare surpluses used to finance prescription drug benefits are still part of Medicare, but the fact is that in each case the money isn't available for its intended use.
  
  Without those reserves Medicare will be in trouble early in the next decade, Social Security a bit later. But the pressure to cut benefits will begin years before.
• Social Security needs Uncle Sam's IOUs - Politics - msnbc.com The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
• Social Security History FAQs Internet Myths II MYTHS AND MISINFORMATION ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY- Part 2
  Myths and misstatements of fact frequently circulate on the Internet, in email and on websites, and are repeated in endless loops of misinformation. One common set of such misinformation involves a series of questions about the history of the Social Security system.

Imported from external blog