The greatest long con ever

was played on the baby boomer.

From 1935 until 1983, Social Security had always been a "pay as you go" system. Current workers paid into the fund; retirees, widows and orphan received that money in their payments. Greenspan 's plan went like this: Double the amount retained from wages that the Boomers paid into the system. These overpayments would create a huge surplus. When the Boomers aged to the point of collecting Social Security, the surplus (savings) would be eaten into. After the Boomers died, the surplus would have been depleted. At that point (around 2035) the system would revert back to "pay as you go."

The NCSSR's report was enacted, and the 1983 Amendments to the SSA were the result. When Reagan signed the law, he made this statement:

This bill demonstrates for all time our Nation’s ironclad commitment to Social Security. It assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half a century ago. It assures those who are still working that they, too, have a pact with the future. From this day forward, they have our pledge that they will get their fair share of benefits when they retire . . . . Our elderly need no longer fear that the checks they depend on will be stopped or reduced. These amendments protect them. Americans of middle age need no longer worry whether their career-long investment
will pay off. These amendments guarantee it. And younger people can feel confident that Social Security will still be around when they need it to cushion their retirement.[emphasis mine]

Since 1983, the extra money that has been collected from every paycheck of every low-wage earner is invested in special series, non-marketable U.S. Treasury securities - the Social Security Trust Fund (SSTF). This is why Americans who state that they have been "investing" in the Social Security System are absolutely correct. They have been both paying for current retirees and saving for payments to future retirees (themselves, theoretically.)

The SSTF right now is actually $2.5 Trillion of government debt - three times what the Chinese and the Federal Reserve now own.. We know that the money in SSTF was supposed to remain "off budget." (Remember Al Gore's "lockbox"?)
Congress has been borrowing these funds to balance the budget. When you hear the Republicans screaming about the huge long-term debt this country has, remember that the great bulk of it is a debt that we owe ourselves. It is the money that the American workers has been paying into this system for the past thirty years, and then loaning to Congress so that things like unfunded wars and tax cuts for the wealthiest are affordable.

Now the day is coming when the American people as a whole have to actually pay back the Americans who have been putting money into the SSTF for 30 years. In order to do this, we would have to cut our Defense Budget AND end the tax cuts to the wealthiest. But the GOP doesn't want to do this! It would cut into their own private income streams. Their solution is to simply end the Social Security program instead. They plan to keep all the FICA money we've been paying in - for themselves.

So Rick Perry and the GOP are talking about Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme," as bankrupt. This is only the wind-up of a theft that they have been planning for at least 20 years, ever since they began to make the argument that "Social Security won't be there for younger workers." Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security was predicated on that fallacious supposition (another "Social Security solvency scare" begun in 2001). But now, the GOP and the Plutocrats are under tremendous pressure to get the money out of the SSTF before it is depleted by Baby Boomer payouts. They want to end Social Security and its payouts- just as the very generation the tail end of the Boomers, which has been paying