FDR Didn't Envision Social Security As It Is Now

[timpage]

Originally Posted by joe bloe

Unless you can sight where in the Constitution the federal government has the authority to provide a monthly stipend for old people, it is unconstitutional. The tenth amendment says that the federal government only has the authority to do those things that are specifically stated in the Constitution. Everything else is up to the states.

The federal government has grown far beyond the intentions of the founders largely by interpreting the interstate commerce clause more broadly than was intended. The socialist/Democrats are currently trying to get Obamacare through SCOTUS by hoping they will hold their noses one more time and allow socialized medicine based on the interstate commerce clause.

Even the people that designed and implemented Social Security under FDR knew it was unconstitutional (see attached link to CNS News).

Social Securty isn't humane or compassionate. If people were allowed to put the money taken from them against their will into a private pension fund they would be far better off. County government employees in Galveston, Matagorda and Brazoria county in Texas were allowed to opt out of Social Security back in 1981. They are retiring with twice the monthly income from their private pension fund than they would have gotten from Social Security. Social Security is a ripoff and it's going bankrupt.

http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda...eform-avik-roy

http://cnsnews.com/blog/terence-p-je...constitutional

Here is the legal authority for the constitutionality of Social Security. You cite Rush Limbaugh, National Review and CNSnewscom. I'll stick with the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/supreme1.html

http://www.ssa.gov/history/supreme2.html

http://www.ssa.gov/history/supreme3.html

In regard to the Alternate Plan used by the Texas counties you cite....you're comparing apples and oranges. The Alternate Plan is simply a savings account for employees of those counties. It's not designed to do what social security does and it's not intended to. It doesn't protect the old, the sick, the young or anybody that's not employed by the county or part of the nuclear family of the county. You clearly do not understand the purpose of the program. Read Cardozo's opinion in the first case. He explains it pretty well.

If you're interested, there is a GAO study comparing the two plans. Use your Google-foo if you want to really learn something....or, you can just continue to shoot your mouth off about things you clearly are not qualified to opine on.

[CJ7]

Originally Posted by WTF

Damn joe....you might wanna rethink this one.

Condi Rice too, Joe?

[WTF]

Originally Posted by CJ7

I bet FDR didnt see the government using the ss fund to finance their special interest bullshit.

Had he been able to do that, and lockbox the fund, this convo wouldnt be on the table.

Oh the money is there in the form of IOU's.

Most folks do not understand the way the government budget works. Had they, they would understand that SS has ran a huge surplus for decades, it will not go broke anytime soon.

The other huge government program (Defense) is the major program we have borrowed all the debt for.

The Defense Spending is actually why we need to raise taxes.

Our Tea Party folks seem not to understand this camel in the tent.

[CuteOldGuy]

The Supreme Court often gets it wrong. I still think SS is unconstitutional. And I don't even listen to Rush, read National Review (waste of time), or watch/read whatever the hell CNSnews is. I think it is unconstitutional because I read the Constitution and there is no authority in there. But the SCOTUS has become very adept at finding rights and constitutional validation where mere mortals have never thought to look. So, SCOTUS is wrong.

[timpage]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

The Supreme Court often gets it wrong. I still think SS is unconstitutional. And I don't even listen to Rush, read National Review (waste of time), or watch/read whatever the hell CNSnews is. I think it is unconstitutional because I read the Constitution and there is no authority in there. But the SCOTUS has become very adept at finding rights and constitutional validation where mere mortals have never thought to look. So, SCOTUS is wrong.

You didn't even read the opinions. Couldn't have in the 7 minutes between your post and mine. Didn't you say you were a lawyer? Don't words mean something? Are you serious when you say that there must be a literal statement in the Constitution that says "Social Security will be allowed for the people" in order for it to be constitutional? Have you forgotten everything you learned in law school regarding con law and theory? Sorry, it's just not that simple COG. And, you know it. Shame on you.

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by WTF

Oh the money is there in the form of IOU's.

Most folks do not understand the way the government budget works. Had they, they would understand that SS has ran a huge surplus for decades, it will not go broke anytime soon.

The other huge government program (Defense) is the major program we have borrowed all the debt for.

The Defense Spending is actually why we need to raise taxes.

Our Tea Party folks seem not to understand this camel in the tent.

So the money is there for Social Security because we have IOUs from the government. How is the government going to pay the IOU's? Where does it get the money to pay the IOU's?

I'll answer the question for you. The government is going to print it. Everyone is going to get their monthly check. The only problem is that they're going to get paid with a dollar that literally will not be worth the paper it's printed on.

We have put the yearly surplus from Social Security into the general revenue since the 60's in order to disguise the deficit. This started under LBJ when he cranked up the social welfare state, Medicaid, Medicare, and numerous welfare giveaways all part of his "war on poverty". There is no lock box. The baby boomers are starting to retire. Instead of paying into Social Security they're beginning to receive benefits. The only way to pay the benefits is from tax dollars. The government spent all the trillions of dollars the boomers paid in over decades; the money is gone.

The tax payers would have been better off giving their retirement contributions to Bernie Madoff for investment compared to the federal government; at least we can put him in jail.

[CuteOldGuy]

I've read those cases before, I don't need to re-read them to know they're wrong.

[CJ7]

farting under the covers is unconstitutional

[WTF]

Originally Posted by joe bloe

We have put the yearly surplus from Social Security into the general revenue since the 60's in order to disguise the deficit. This started under LBJ when he cranked up the social welfare state, Medicaid, Medicare, and numerous welfare giveaways all part of his "war on poverty".jail.

You are either a liar or as Bush, you actually believe that there were WMD's.

In which case you are just wrong.

That tax accounting trick was done to hide the cost of the Vietnam War.

Read your history and then get back with me.

Start here:

http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller

Federal Funds vs. Unified Budget. WRL uses "federal funds" rather than the "unified budget" figures that the government prefers. Federal funds exclude trust fund money (e.g., social security), which is raised separately (e.g., the FICA and Medicare deductions in paychecks) and is specifically ear-marked for particular programs. By combining trust funds with federal funds, the percentage of spending on the military appears smaller, a deceptive practice first used by the government in the late 1960s as the Vietnam War became more and more unpopular.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Social_...ty#cite_note-6

President Lyndon Johnson raids the Social Security Trust Fund to wage the Vietnam War President Johnson created the 'unified budget' in the late 1960s to disguise the real cost of the Vietnam War.[6][7] President Johnson did not want to ask for income tax increases to pay for several ambitious government programs of that era (the Vietnam War, the Great Society War on Poverty, the NASA Space Race). Putting surpluses from Social Security overwithholding “on budget” (adding them to the general operating budget of the United States Government) so the overwithholding could be used to pay for other government programs would make the federal budget appear balanced. The resulting debt to Trust Funds would be presented “off budget.”
In 1967 President Johnson appointed a Commission on Federal Budget Concepts which in its October 1967 report proposed a unified budget to do this. Johnson submitted the first unified budget to a Democratic Congress for Fiscal Year 1969 scheduled to begin on July 1, 1968. Thus was born the practice of using Social Security Trust Fund surpluses – or "Intra-governmental Holdings of Debt" to hide the size of the overall federal deficit.

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by WTF

You are either a liar or as Bush, you actually believe that there were WMD's.

In which case you are just wrong.

That tax accounting trick was done to hide the cost of the Vietnam War.

Read your history and then get back with me.

Start here:

http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller

Federal Funds vs. Unified Budget. WRL uses "federal funds" rather than the "unified budget" figures that the government prefers. Federal funds exclude trust fund money (e.g., social security), which is raised separately (e.g., the FICA and Medicare deductions in paychecks) and is specifically ear-marked for particular programs. By combining trust funds with federal funds, the percentage of spending on the military appears smaller, a deceptive practice first used by the government in the late 1960s as the Vietnam War became more and more unpopular.

Federal spending increased during the 60's because of dramatic increases in social welfare spending and also because of spending on the Vietnam War. Both were factors. The difference is that the government is REQUIRED to spend money on national defence because that's what the Constitution REQUIRES.

Spending money on social welfare programs by the federal government is PROHIBITED by the Constitution because the Constitution does not give the federal government the specific authority to do so.

Regardless of whether you blame national defence spending or entitlement spending. The federal government (both parties) began looting the Social Security yearly surplus in the 60's and did it for decades. Now the day of reckoning is at hand; millions of boomers are retiring and we've got nothing but a warehouse full of IOUs to pay them with.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by CJ7

farting under the covers is unconstitutional

Yes the SC ruled aganist George Washington on that one

[WTF]

Originally Posted by joe bloe

Federal spending increased during the 60's because of dramatic increases in social welfare spending and also because of spending on the Vietnam War. Both were factors. The difference is that the government is REQUIRED to spend money on national defence because that's what the Constitution REQUIRES.

Spending money on social welfare programs by the federal government is PROHIBITED by the Constitution because the Constitution does not give the federal government the specific authority to do so.

Regardless of whether you blame national defence spending or entitlement spending. The federal government (both parties) began looting the Social Security yearly surplus in the 60's and did it for decades. Now the day of reckoning is at hand; millions retiring and we've got nothing but a warehouse full of IOUs to pay them with.

Do you understand that the increase on spending was taxed and paid for in regards to SS?

The huge thing we did not pay for was the unpopular Vietnam War. Nothing has changed much. Bush cut taxes and started two wars.

Yet folks on the right think that SS is the problem.

Don't you understand? SS surplus was a stealth way to fund the war. So folks that allowed that to happen are now not going to have retirement benifits. Serves them right but the problem is.....those bastards fully funded SS until 2037. They want you and me and our children to pay off their war by raising taxes on us.

Reagan did much the same thing. He increased the surplus to SS and then increased military spending.

Been say that for years!

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by WTF

Do you understand that the increase on spending was taxed and paid for in regards to SS?

The huge thing we did not pay for was the unpopular Vietnam War. Nothing has changed much. Bush cut taxes and started two wars.

Yet folks on the right think that SS is the problem.

I think we're at an impasse here. If you think that Social Security is in good shape because it has trillions of dollars in IOU's from the feds. I don't think I'm going to be able to talk you out of it.

By the way the Vietnam War cost 686 billion dollars, that's adusted for inflation in today's dollars. That's less than Obama pissed away on his so called stimulus bill. I'm not sure what the total cost of the social welfare programs created under LBJ was during the same time period as the Vietnam War. The problem with social welfare programs is that they never go away and they constantly keep growing. I think that cutting back on defence spending will be relatively easy compared to trying to reduce social welfare spending.

[Doove]

Originally Posted by timpage

Are you serious when you say that there must be a literal statement in the Constitution that says "Social Security will be allowed for the people" in order for it to be constitutional?

Yes, he is.

When someone's only (or main) argument against something is to say that it's unconstitutional - based solely on their interpretation of the constitution (as opposed to the Supreme Court's interpretation) - rather than argue against it strictly on the merits, then their argument holds about as much weight with me as someone whose only argument is "because the bible says so".

Frankly, when it comes down to being humane or being true to the constitution, i'll come down on the side of being humane every time.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by joe bloe

I think we're at an impasse here. If you think that Social Security is in good shape because it has trillions of dollars in IOU's from the feds. I don't think I'm going to be able to talk you out of it.

You are missing the point.

Defense spending is what really at issue here.

If they do nothing to SS, it will come down to paying those old fuc'ers or cutting Defense spending....or printing more money.

So what you have are a bunch of stupid old fuc'ers that do not ever want to cut Defense spending , nor their benifits and are to stupid to realize that they will be paid out in discounted dollars.

I am not saying that is a good thing , just the reality. I plan to plan accordingly.

You can join up with COG if you want