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Godot51

(311 posts)
Sun Dec 22, 2024, 06:56 PM Sunday

The basic republican lies about Social Security and Medicare.

Note: Copy & pasted from Facebook, from 2017.

I DON'T THINK PISSED REALLY COVERS IT ! ! !

Alan Simpson, the Senator from Wyoming calls senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he compared "Social Security " to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats. Here's a response in a letter from PATTY MYERS in Montana ... I think she is a little ticked off! She also tells it like it is!

"Hey Alan, let's get a few things straight!!!
1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole (tit) for FIFTY YEARS.

2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63).

3. My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and "your ilk" pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to age, 67. NOW, you and your "shill commission" are proposing to move the goalposts YET AGAIN.

5. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now "you morons" propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because "you idiots" mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal our money from Medicare to pay the bills.

6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why? Because you "incompetent bxxxxds" spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt.

To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling "bxxxxxxt" to your incompetence.

Well, Captain Bxxxxxxit, I have a few questions for YOU:

1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your pathetic 50-year political career?

2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?

3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?

4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?
It is you, Captain Bxxxxxxt, and your political co-conspirators called Congress who are the "greedy" ones. It is you and your fellow nutcase thieves who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers.

And for what? Votes and your job and retirement security at our expense, you lunk-headed, leech.
That's right, sir. You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic, political careers. You know it, we know it, and you know that we know it.
And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bxxxxx.

P.S. And stop calling Social Security benefits "entitlements". WHAT AN INSULT!!!!

I have been paying in to the SS system for 45 years “It's my money”-give it back to me the way the system was designed and stop patting yourself on the back like you are being generous by doling out these monthly checks .

EVERYONE!! If you agree with what a Montana citizen, Patty Myers, says, please PASS IT ON!!!!

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kacekwl

(7,648 posts)
1. I will gladly
Sun Dec 22, 2024, 07:33 PM
Sunday

give 2 dollars a month to a fund that records Patty Meyer's letter verbatim to be played many times a day on national TV and social media.

HUAJIAO

(2,674 posts)
3. Everybody gets this wrong. They ARE entitlements.
Sun Dec 22, 2024, 09:09 PM
Sunday

we paid for them and we are ENTITLED to them.

LoisB

(9,020 posts)
5. Came to say the exact same thing. We have allowed "entitlement" to become as dirty a word
Sun Dec 22, 2024, 09:42 PM
Sunday

as "liberal". It's all b.s. In addition to which, Social Security is retirement insurance. F (federal) I (insurance) C (contributions) A (act). We paid the premiums all our working lives.

summer_in_TX

(3,294 posts)
8. Telling others that they ARE entitlements that we paid for so we are entitled to them unfortunately won't work.
Sun Dec 22, 2024, 10:37 PM
Sunday

The propaganda is too entrenched to overcome with that reference. Entitlement plays off the long connotation of the word "entitled" which we all know to refer to arrogant types who deserve to get their comeuppance. I'm quite sure it was focus-group tested by Frank Luntz. Every time we use that frame, we play into the negative associations that are at an unconscious level and are not going to budge.

But EARNED BENEFITS, maybe could do the trick. We paid into it all our lives and we EARNED every dime we get back. Let them just try to play their little framing tricks on that one.

Same with the hopeless task of trying to overcome the negative associations with SOCIALISM. We know that indeed in Russia, which claimed to be socialist, many cruelties occurred and widespread suffering occurred with decades of rationing, largely bare shelves at the markets, and long waitlists for too few apartments. It's also antithetical to capitalism. Most Americans are not anti-capitalists. Too many mom and pop businesses all across the US. They may not like major corporations but that doesn't mean they want socialism or can ever be persuaded it is a good thing.

But why use that term, ever? We have a perfectly good phrase that fits the way we help our communities that was widely used from our earliest days: the common good or the general welfare. It's in our early documents, an important part of American history. It's not an economic system so it doesn't pit capitalism against socialism or communism. It's compatible with any of them. That's why the US Postal Service was in the Constitution, why public libraries were widely promoted everywhere, public education, fire departments, and more. They're not in competition with the concept of capitalism, they each benefit the other.

Dems everywhere need to gain skills in framing. That and pushing back – HARD – against the negative frames used against us.

WarGamer

(15,744 posts)
6. Simpson left the Senate in 1997.
Sun Dec 22, 2024, 09:43 PM
Sunday

The law extending 65 to 67 was instituted in 1 month increments per birth year.

This LTTE must be around 30 years old... maybe older.

Other than that... it's all true!

nmmi

(203 posts)
7. The surpluses have been and are in interest-bearing accounts since the beginning
Sun Dec 22, 2024, 09:50 PM
Sunday

Last edited Sun Dec 22, 2024, 11:00 PM - Edit history (1)

[Quote]My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades [/Quote]

they were -- and are -- invested in special non-marketable interest-bearing Treasury securities.

https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html

Q27: Do the Social Security Trust Funds earn interest? -
. . . The Trust Funds have earned interest in every year since the program began.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
The only disbursements permitted from the funds are benefit payments and administrative expenses. The Trustees must invest all excess funds in interest-bearing securities backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. The Department of the Treasury currently invests all program revenue in special non-marketable U.S. Government securities, which earn interest equal to average rates on marketable securities with durations defined in law.
The balances in the trust funds represent the accumulated value, including interest, of all prior program annual surpluses and deficits.

[Quote]until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero losers in return for votes,[/Quote]

Please cite a source for this. When did this happen, and how much was raided?

[Quote]“It's my money”-give it back to me the way the system was designed [/Quote]

It is being given back as designed. Since 2021 SS income has fallen short of SS benefits and trust fund securities are being cashed in to make up the difference.

Table 4: TRUST FUND OPERATIONS, 2023
....................... OASI DI
Net change in Reserves -70.4 29.0

. . .
Since 2021, the OASI Trust Fund has been drawing down asset reserves to finance benefits and will require increasing amounts of asset redemptions during the next decade. The OASI Trust Fund has a projected reserve depletion date of 2033, the same year as in last year’s report.

The DI Trust Fund is projected to remain solvent throughout the long-range period, as in last year’s report. The DI trust fund ratio increases throughout the projection period from 92 percent at the beginning of 2024 to 858 percent for 2098.

The Trustees project that the combined OASI and DI Trust Fund reserves will continue to decrease in 2024 because total cost ($1,482 billion) is expected to exceed total income ($1,382 billion). For OASDI, the Trustees project that total cost will exceed total income in all future years, as it has starting in 2021.


The process is automatic and will continue unless Congress changes the law.

The report is signed by four high Democratic officials
Janet Yellen,
Secretary of the Treasury,
and Managing Trustee of the Trust Funds.

Xavier Becerra,
Secretary of Health and Human Services,
and Trustee.

Julie A. Su,
Acting Secretary of Labor,
and Trustee.

Martin O'Malley,
Commissioner of Social Security,
and Trustee.


More: Trust Fund FAQs: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html
Myths and Misinformation About Social Security Part 2: https://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths2.html
https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html

not fooled

(6,114 posts)
9. For the record, recently Alex Lawson stated the reason
Sun Dec 22, 2024, 10:47 PM
Sunday

Social Security income does not match benefits paid out: because so much income has increasingly gone to upper income earners, thus bypassing being taxed for Social Security and Medicare.

In other words, Republican driven income inequality is the real reason that Social Security is projected to not be able to pay full benefits in the future. They create the problem, then refuse to raise the cap to solve it. Lawson revealed this when he was on Thom Hartmann's show recently.

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