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Years down the line when financial analysts look at where it all went wrong…
…well, ok, they probably won’t say that yesterday was the moment it all went wrong. That’s been set up for quite some time now. But it’s definitely going to be a day with a few frowny faces drawn on the calender.
Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a retired Maryland teacher who was born at 12:00:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1946, applied this afternoon for early retirement benefits. She’ll become eligible to receive them in January when she turns 62.
Ok, so what, people apply for social security everyday. What makes this one so important?
The demands on retirement programs by the estimated 80 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 combined with spiraling health-care costs will eventually overwhelm the federal budget unless lawmakers change government policies, (Head of the Concord Coalition Bob) Bixby said.
Oh, well crap. That’s no good. Anyone doing anything to fix it?
President George W. Bush’s proposal to alter the Social Security system by diverting a portion of payroll taxes to individual accounts was rejected in 2005 by Democrats and some Republicans in Congress.
Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue said it is “highly likely” that policymakers will amend Social Security sometime between 2009 and 2011, when the next president has a “mandate” to pursue far-reaching policy changes.
Oh, ok. So like with everything else in the nation today- all our politicians are either content to wait for the next president to change things- or making it impossible to do otherwise. Got it. And in case anyone was wondering what Bush wanted to divert the money to, he was talking about letting the gov’t squirrel your money away into stocks.
So does anyone else have any good ideas of where we could possibly find funding to take care of this issue?
Before adjourning for the Columbus Day holiday, the Senate quietly passed a $460 billion defense appropriations bill. Add to this figure the nearly $200 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and the cost of nuclear weapons activities in the energy bill - and we’re talking about $700 billion for defense.
Wait… what? How much?
Even without the money for Iraq, the nearly $500 billion budget represents a historic high for defense spending - almost two decades after the end of the Cold War.
But what about the war on terror? Certainly, the current defense budget traces its roots to the flood of defense spending after the terrorist attacks. But considering what some of this money is buying, it’s no wonder we don’t feel safer.
How does spending $4.6 billion this year on the F-22 Raptor, a supersonic stealth fighter jet, help us beat al-Qaida in Iraq? This plane was conceived in the Cold War to fight Soviet planes that were never built, yet it remains the crown jewel for the Air Force. Why does the Navy need $3.6 billion to build the DDG-1000 stealth destroyer? As a career naval officer, I racked my brains to find a satisfactory answer. It may be just to keep General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works up and running after it delivers the final $1 billion Burke-class destroyer in 2011.
A stealth what? Who exactly are we fighting, and why do we need all THIS stuff?
Jack Shanahan, Head of the Military Advisory Committee of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, compiled all these figures together to argue the ridiculousness of Bush vetoing the SCHIP program, which would only cost $30 billion. Still no small chunk of change, but when compared to $700 billion? Oh, and before anyone wonders about how this guy would know what the military does or doesn’t need- he’s also the Former Commander of U.S. Second Fleet. (big time Navy guy).
So I took a hell of a detour in this article, but look at it this way- surely the argument can be used that all this money we’re throwing away in taxes towards the military machines could be used in part to at least soften the blow that social security is taking (as well as reforming health care, giving a little to education, etc…), don’t you think?
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