It’s an article of faith in mainstream media discussions of the budget: Social Security and Medicare are the “entitlements” driving our debt problems. That’s not really true, but that’s overwhelmingly the starting point for these discussions. Occasionally, perhaps by accident, someone questions that assumption.
That’s what happened on NPR‘s Morning Edition on Monday (8/8/11), when Rep. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) was interviewed by Steve Inskeep about, among other things, the entitlement burden.
Read what happened—or listen to the excerpt below:
INSKEEP: Congressman, if I can, we’ve just got a few seconds. You have mentioned defense spending. You’ve mentioned tax increases. Those are two areas of disagreement. The biggest part of the federal budget is entitlements…FRANK: No, wrong. I’m sorry. The Defense budget is bigger than Medicare, and Social Security is, in fact, self-financing, still is.
INSKEEP: Let’s stipulate for this conversation: A very, very, very, very, very big part of the budget is entitlements. Democrats are seen as resisting cuts. Is your side—in a couple of seconds—going to appoint people to the special committee who are ready to make a deal?
FRANK: I am not going to tell an 80-year-old woman living on $19,000 a year that she gets no cost-of-living, or that a man who has been doing physical labor all his life and is now at a 67-year-old retirement—which is where Social Security will be soon—that he has to work four or five more years.
But I disagree with you that in terms of draining on the budget, Social Security is largely as self-financed…
INSKEEP: OK.
FRANK: …and the military budget is larger than Medicare. So demonizing entitlements and saying that—in fact, here’s the deal…
INSKEEP: Congressman, I really have to cut you off there. But I do….
FRANK: Well, I wish you wouldn’t ask these complicated questions with five seconds to go.
INSKEEP: We’ll come back and bring you back for more. Always a pleasure to talk with you.
GO BARNEY, GO BARNEY!!
But yes, this pisses me off too.
Q: And how is NPR different from Limbaugh and O’Reilly?
A: Same brain, but different tone of voice.
Inskeep was just awful. Yet another partisan “journalist” forcing his guest to try to correct patently false statements rather than present his views. At least the other professional ignoramus recently cited here, David Gregory, is in GE’s pocket, so what can you expect? But this guy is working for NPR. How about an Acton Alert for Steve Inskeep?
By the way, neither NBC News Ombudsman David McCormick nor Executive Producer Jennifer Sizemore have responded to my David Gregory Action Alert comment of August 2nd, so presumably they also failed to respond any of the other 35 very negative reactions to Gregory in general and the broadcast in particular sent to NBC and posted here. One wonders what exactly does an NBC ombudsman do at the office. I guess they’re all too busy trying to explain why NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams somehow missed the March 25 story every other major news media outlet reported, The New York Times, for instance, on page one, that in 2010 GE earned $5.1 billion in the U.S. and paid U.S. federal taxes of . . . ah . . . er . . . let me see now . . . zero.
Frank FTW. I wish other politicians had the balls he does.
Well, to be FAIR, lets!
Using 2010 as the example, lets break down the spending categories.
Defense and Security – 20%
Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP – 21%
Social Security – 20%
Debt Servicing – 7%
“Safety Net Programs” – 14%
Federal Retiree and Veterans – 7%
Research – 2%
Transportation – 3%
Education – 3%
Foreign spending – 1%
All Other – 2%
With regard to Social Security, Barney is only correct with regard to how the various programs within SS were intended to be funded. Unfortunately, the unfunded liabilities of Social Security are enormous and far exceed any concept of being “self-funded”. He has also misrepresented the changes suggested to SS with his 67 year old retiree example. The retirement age tables will have to be addressed at some point simply due to the fact that “boomers” are expected to live much longer than those when SS was first established. Add to that the plain fact that as the boomers approach the peak retirement years, the pool of workers available to support the fast growing retirement community begins to shrink considerably with regard to worker – retiree ratio.
So, returning to the original premise, Barney is flat out incorrect to state that Defense is a bigger outlay than “entitlement spending”. Medicare, Medicaid, CHIPS (food stamp program) and Social Security combine for 41% vs. 20% for Defense. The gap grows even larger when we include the various “safety net programs” including housing assistance, HEAP and other social assistance programs.
Jeez, good thing that Frank guy isn’t a member of Congress or anything important to give him 5 seconds to talk and then cut him off.
I’m pleasantly surprised that NPR even asked about entitlements.
Representative Frank, sir, if entitlements were “self-financing,” then what’s the point? Recipients could just pay themselves, couldn’t they?
Let’s not mince words – no entitlement is self-financing; the rest of us have to pay for it. It’s only self-financing from the point of view of the takers.
This is rhetoric. Barney Frank is playing word games here. Is Social Security bigger than defense? No. Is Medicare bigger than defense? No. Are Medicare PLUS Social Security bigger than defense? Yes and its not even a contest.
Ergo… “The biggest part of the federal budget is entitlements.” That’s a fact. Barney Frank said it wasn’t. The only way to justify that is to jump through rhetorical hoops. Entitlement spending must come down.
It’s not Medicare and Social Security that are the word games here. Frank and others of his ilk like to leave out Medicaid when discussing Medicare.
Medicaid and Medicare combined for 2010 are given as $ 793 billion.
Defense for 2010 is given as $689 billion. Clearly smaller.
Chart via La Wik is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png
Frank is being willfully dishonest because he is a partisan hack. He knows full well that the issue is not the spending on Medicare *today* that is the problem – it’s what happens to Medicare spending as the Baby Boomers retire and want double hip replacements and quadruple bypasses. It will consume the federal budget just to pay the debt we will have to accumulate to pay for all that spending. You can raise taxes on all the guys in cummerbunds and monocles to 100% and it won’t be enough. Frank knows this. He is not dumb. And to say that Social Security is “self-funding” is a joke since there is no account with your name on it full of the cash you have been contributing. Social Security has a stack of non-negotiable (ie, they can’t sell them on the open market) IOUs from the Treasury. General Fund revenue goes to pay Social Security. When Baby Boomers start to collect, the demand for cash from the Treasury increases exponentially. Frank knows this. He is not dumb. Just being deliberately dishonest to get his party’s talking points out there.
“…it’s what happens to Medicare spending as the Baby Boomers retire and want double hip replacements and quadruple bypasses”
Life-saving surgeries suddenly become welfare! LOL, talk about “death panels”. What about the former vice-president? He had heart surgery paid for by TAXPAYERS who fund his GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTHCARE PLAN, along with EVERY CONGRESSPERSON who is saying we should end these programs for the poor while preserving them for themselves. The hypocrisy surrounding all of this stupid rhetoric is blinding. We have 70 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities and cutting a regressive, self-sustaining program like social security is not going to fix it. We should start with the over-bloated healthcare system, which saps over 16% of our GDP each year. We rank in the 30s for health care with SOCIALIZED health care systems topping us almost every time, and guess what? Those countries keep health care costs to under 10% of GDP, while providing services to EVERY citizen.
But to reiterate the general consensus, those countries are communist, facist, and socialist all at the same time and totally backwards, am I right?
We can quibble about how medicare and social security are funded and could be funded until the cows come home because it’s a complex (and to some extent incomprehensible) subject. Anyone who chooses to can easily build a case that Rep. Barney Frank was right or that he was wrong in his extremely abbreviated comments on the August 8th airing of Morning Addition. The point, however, is that the major news media, including public broadcasting, take for granted that social security, medicare, and medicaid must all be cut back because of a fabricated debt crisis and refuse to consider the costs of the two Bush wars and the extremely regressive Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. As current opinion polls suggest, this positions them as part of a far-right minority, even though they claim to be impartial. First they misrepresent themselves, then they embrace attempts cut back programs that are vital to the American economy in order to please their ill-informed and ultimately self-destructive corporate sponsors.
actuary based programs are now an entitlement issue!
Please give us a break
We need to lower the age of Social Security. That would allow more seniors to get out of the work force and release jobs for younger folks.
Raising the age is cruel. Just because people are living longer does not mean they’ll be able to work longer.
The whole problem would be solved if we could move back to the pre-Reagan progressive income tax rates. Nowadays Dick Cheney, who makes a million a week, brings home $650K after taxes. In 1980 he’d be bringing home about $150K a week. I think he could do okay with that.
1% of the electorate owns 25% of the GDP. That is unhealthy and always has been.
NPR – Nation Pentagon Radio
Inskeep parrots the rest of the media instead of studying his predecessor Bob Edwards. He looks to day time talking heads instead of Cronkite or Murrow. How very, very, very, very, very, very, very sad.
Of course you guys forgot to include the unpaid for “decade old” wars in Iraq, Afganistan and Libya. US troop involvement in WWII was less than 6 years and look at the upside down “debt to GDP ratio we had then. Beware the military/ industrial/ media complex.
If we ever get an honest accounting of government expenditures (which I doubt) I expect we will find military spending exceeds everything else. Maybe Frank is working from a cleaner set of books – we don’t know because he was cut off. In any event, it appears that even the fans of Aggression and Insecurity spending (let’s call it what it is) acknowledge we are dumping nearly a fifth of the federal budget into a landfill. Certainly some small part of that is actual defense, if we look at how much money peaceful and progressive nations of the world are spending on defense, we come closer to a reasonable number – even there, there’s a distortion from the military adventures the US has drug it’s “allies” into, and China putting money into military spending they might not if the US did not have such an aggressive posture. It seems to me that the military repeatedly asks for 80 billion or some other quantity of chump change to fight some war or another, and routine outspends the amount they are authorized by a factor of somewhere between 4 and 100. How is that factored in? Good article here, BTW: http://www.counterpunch.org/wittner08172010.html
I get tired of the misinformation from conservatives. I don’t know how many of them are honestly ignorant versus how many are dishonestly spreading disinfo.
Defense discretionary spending is 85% of the budget, & defenseï»Â¿ spending is highest since WWII.
Trust fund spending is separate from the rest of the budget. Social security, for example, doesn’t add to the debt. Social security pays for itself because people just get the money back that they put into it. So, it would be the worst kind of lie to include it as part of the debt discussion.
Also, a deceptive part is past military spending is included as non-military spending.
http://www.voa.org/Get-Involved/Advocate/Issue-Alerts_1/Non-defense-Discretionary-Spending.aspx
“The discretionary spending that Congress has to approve every year when it develops the federal budget is further divided into two major categories: defense and non-defense. About 58 percent of all discretionary funding is defense related. Non-defense discretionary funding, then, is less than half of the discretionary category, which is itself only one-third of the total federal budget. In other words, non-defense discretionary funding makes up only 15 percent of this year’s federal budget.”
http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
“Current militaryâ┚¬Ã‚ includes Dept. of Defense ($653 billion), the military portion from other departments ($150 billion), and an additional $162 billion to supplement the Budget’s misleading and vast underestimate of only $38 billion for the â┚¬Ã…“war on terror.â┚¬Ã‚ Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã…“Past militaryâ┚¬Ã‚ represents veterans’ benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt.”
“El Greco Says:
August 11th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
I’m pleasantly surprised that NPR even asked about entitlements…
Representative Frank, sir, if entitlements were “self-financing,” then what’s the point? Recipients could just pay themselves, couldn’t they?…
Let’s not mince words â┚¬“ no entitlement is self-financing; the rest of us have to pay for it. It’s only self-financing from the point of view of the takers.”……….WRONG IN EVERY WAY
Geez……. this is crazy. Every penny in Social Security was paid for by, wait for it…… WORKERS!!!!!! Not the government, NOT the corporations, NOT anyone but earnings that rightfully belong to WORKERS!!!!!!!
Every time a Repuglican tries to put Social Security into he DEBT DEBATE, it just absolutely makes me CRAZY….. I guess that is their purpose. They want to make the people with brains so crazy that we never know which way is up or down. Hurray for Barnie Franks that he even TRIED with this A…H…
Political bickering doesn’t buy groceries.
I have listened to a number of Steve Inskeep’s interviews and find his style of questioning very irritating. If he is going to ask complicated questions, he should allow ample time for the interviewee to answer those questions. If NPR won’t give him the time, then he should ask simple questions…or should I say simple-minded questions.
As I stated before, NPR, part of Corporate Public Broadcast (CPB), is now the “Reader’s Digest of the Air Waves”. In 2001, George W. Bush appointed Kenneth Tomlinson (Previously head of Reader’s Digest) to head up CPB. Since then NPR News has been taken over by his conservative appointments.
Social Security benefits are included as part of the budget. But they shouldn’t be, since its assets and individual social security revenue pay for these benefit payouts. It is also a well-known fact that the federal government even borrows from Social Security in order to help make up for revenue shortages, some of which have been caused by tax-cuts over the years. Social Security is an entitlement, but it is also a piggy bank that the federal government can steal…oops…borrow from.
I heard this segment on NPR & thought for a moment that i must be listening to FOX News. I’m glad FAIR caught it too. It was outrageous that Inskeep brought up the subject with seconds to go on such a misleading premise, and bravo to Barney Frank for calling him on it. It reinforces my decision to send my own discretionary spending not to NPR but to my local community radio station that airs Democracy Now.
I am with Robert Fong who says in an earlier post – August 12th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
“Inskeep parrots the rest of the media instead of studying his predecessor Bob Edwards.”
I wish every NPR host and reporter would study Bob Edwards! I listen to Bob on satellite radio – his depth and breadth, his willingness to give his guest time to frame and discuss complex topics, and his astute listening (never interrupting or overlapping) to his guests should be NPR’s standard for every program.
Want fairness? Look for Bob Edwards. He’s the best.
Barney Frank is right about Social Security and Medicaid. It is self financing and the selves are we the people who have the funds taken from our paychecks to go toward funding these programs. Republicans are idiots.
>> That’s not really true, but that’s overwhelmingly the starting point for these discussions.
Scientific and rational analysis of any system will show its weaknesses and ways to attack it. The US government is a system, and the media, is a big weakness, since the media, industry, the military and the finance industries are all incestuously owned and operated in such a way as to decide priorities and keep the American people out of it, but this kind of disinformation and games.
I am not sure there is really a solution, other than that the people if they want to retain any liberty, freedom, power, opportunity at all have to be constantly fighting and watching, and I don’t think Americans have it in them anymore to do anything but talk.
The attitudes revealed in these posts are alarming.Obama and Romney are empty, fraudulent, posturing suits. Someone here said that democrats don’t lie as much as,
or “the way” repbublicans lie. Someone quoted Chris Matthews, a media creep, as having said that Obama will savage Romney. Obama deserves Matthews, they’re two of a kind; corporate tools, with no redeeming qualities. Mainstream media, especially TV, are also corporate tools with no redeeming qualities. Hillary, also a corporate tool, but “with” redeeming qualites, had the nomination sewed up, until Obama made it clear to corporate America, that he was a much more reliable tool than Hillary, and near the end of the Hillary/Obama contest, mainstream media, and the rest of corporate America, with corp’s like Goldman-Sachs, mercilessly and ceaselessly attacked Hillary, meanwhile, giving tons of money to Obama to insure an Obama victory. Yet, after Obama has essentially given whatever is left of the country to corporate power, you still support this fool. It shows to what incredible lengths we’ll go, to continue to believe the most obvious illusions and betrayals, because we have no other viable choices or alternatives.
There is no solution. We’re left to do the best we can, with what we have, if we’re lucky enough to have anything.
It is unreal how so many people are so ignorant over basic issues that affect everyone. The Social Security Fund as well as the Medicare fund ARE self-funded! Both funds are directly funded by workers through the payroll FICA and Medicare taxes every signle working American pays with every single paycheck they’ve ever received. The Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.6 trillion dollar Surplus! Those of you who are even more ignorant, both of these programs are programs that only people who paid into them benefit. They are in essence insurance programs.
It is a play of words when our corporatist government officals lump the Social Security and Medicare benefits with all General Fund expenditures. The Social Security and Medicare programs don’t get funded out of the General Fund, they are self-funded. They do this in order to confuse people and to dillute the major general fund expenditure–our wars!
Our wars ARE NOT SELF-FUNDED!
Our wars use up 58% of our general fund budget, and all of that money is taxpayer money that could be used for our own infrastructure, jobs creation, education, and other essential services for our country. This past December, Congress passed the largest war spending bill in the history of mankind, at $758 Billion dollars. Then a few weeks ago, Congress passed yet another war spending bill at over $650 Billion dollars. That totals over $1.2 Trillion dollars for 2010 for our wars alone–money that has to be take out of our own domestic programs and services!
Our corrupt politicians manage to hide this information from the general public, and instead try to convince people that the biggest expenditure that is ‘hurting’ our deficit and such are “entitlements” and they lump in Social Security, Medicare–which are self funded–with other programs that are not self-funded. Why do they do that? because they want to shape public perception against Social Security and Medicare so they can then turn around and steal OUR money to pay for their wars.
Take note that the amount of money this Super congress is supposed to cut is the amount of money they are wasting on our wars. They are trying to convince the public that it is necessary to cut more domestic programs and services in order to “fix” the deficit and debt issue–yet in reality, they want Americans to do without while they use our money to continue funding their wars of choice. Wake up people! Our tax dollars should be used first and foremost on needs in this country, on improving our infrastructure, and providing essential programs and services, like education!
Inskeep’s a hack. Every day he reminds me of what a great loss to NPR it was when the fired Bob
Edwards. Of course, SS and Medicare are self-funded: Roosevelt intended that SS be separate from the general fund so that congress could not vote it away or defund it, like they are trying to do now.
I would remind everyone that this founding principle is being undercut by Obama himself. By declaring a ”tax holiday” on FICA collection from employees, he has attacked it’s separate funding source. The other shoe will shortly drop when he removes the second revenue stream, employer funding. Then SS will indeed be an “entitlement”. Still don’t think Obama is a foe of SS? Recall his “scary” speech on the eve of the “default crisis” where he stated he wasn’t sure he could send a SS check to Granny. He never could: it’s a separate account!
When i lit into Mr frank many many years ago that Fanny and Freddy were both going down and what the results would be for this country he told me to my face that all was well.He tried to shoot down all my “speculations”.He assured me…he cajoled me….he argued with me… he ranted that i did not care for the poor in that same old way, and in the end he lied his ass off.I was right he was wrong.Period end of discussion.His words on anything are just that.Words.Here is a “word”to the wise.Fool me once shame on you….
I fault anyone ,for interviewing him on anything.
John Polifronio…..Who other than my sainted mother is not a corporate tool?And who do you “like” in the political world?
NPR is a lost cause for the most part. I read the NPR Check blogsite instead of listening. Some of the comments there are very witty, funny even and routinely parody Innskeep and the others.
Beca has it right…read the story by Beca and get the truth of the matter…all these claims that Social Security and Medicare are broke are put out by the Republicans wanting them discontinued and the Government out of all of their lives…What the Republicans are failing to tell you is that they are after Obama and all that the Democrats stand for…including Social Security, which IS SELF FUNDED. Also, Medicare, which the people pay for as Beca stated. out of their paychecks every month…Remember, the surplus of 2.6 Trillion dollars in Social Security doesn’t show any signs of going broke…only that the Government needs to start paying back the Social Security fund all the money owed it by the Federal Government, and start by raising taxes on the top 2-3% of the money earners, such as Cheney, who earns an 1 million a week, and Companies like GE who paid 0 taxes last yr. That would and will be the only way we can get our finances under control…Quit believing the Media such as FAUX news, who is controlled by big bucks, and don’t want to pay any taxes, but want the middle income to suffer, while Rome burns! Wise Up!
Funny how there’s so much time to ask a misguided question, yet a well-informed answer needs to be cut off. NPR is a joke.
To John P, who wrote,
“Hillary, also a corporate tool… had the nomination sewed up, until Obama made it clear to corporate America, that he was a much more reliable tool than Hillary”
That is not true. Hillary Clinton voted against herself in 2003 when she voted with THE Republicans to give PNAC Bush his war based on lies against Iraq. Hillary gave a speech, she said it was a difficult decision for her. The 2004 race was one 2003 Iraq AUMF supporter against another, because John Kerry like George had voted in favor of the PNAC war based on lies against Iraq. It was because of THIS contrast that Obama got alot of grassroots $20 donations, and it was $20 donations, not just rich people contributing, and it was because Hillary voted for the Iraq war in 2003.
Also, Hillary Clinton agreed not to run in Florida and Michigan because they upped their primaries, and then wanted to count the delegates from those states even though she had agreed along with the other Democratic candidates not to run there, but then wanted to change the rules mid-game and have it both ways. Hillary Clinton also exhorted the superdelegates, to anti-democratically over-rule the electors from states where she lost, but the superdelegates refused.
That is why Hillary Clinton lost.
Ending tax windfalls for those that receive tax relief through loopholes (such as off shore tax shelters) or special interest tax breaks should not be misconstrued as tax increases.
If I’m not mistaken, there is an oath of office taken by our representatives in congress. By signing Grover Norquist’s pledge never to raise taxes, representatives have reniged on the oath of offiice by replacing it with the pledge. This pledge does not improve the discourse with regard to retiring national debt, nor does it address the underfunded wars which began during the last administration.
While a well-trained and well-equiped military is an advantage, ten years of deployment is a weight our citizens and national economy may not bear. Military overextention has brought down more than one nation. I don’t see that entitlements such as social security or medicare ever did that. Didn’t unfair taxation play a part in the American revolution? Let’s get real with the discussion of government revenue and spending.
Social Security is a complicated financial story. While employees pay a highly regressive tax on their wages+ an equal employer share, most beneficiaries will receive more in dollars than they paid in. On the other hand Benefits are progressive. The difference is what those earnings should have increased in value as it built the infrastructure of the country and returns a benefit to the employees. This is a social benefit that all advanced civilized countries provide.
In any event it is a huge stabilizer to the economic activity level in the country and serves as a strong positive support for consumer spending in a society where income gets more maldistributed by market forces. The economy needs it almost as much as the recipients.
Inskeep is a douche.
Good ON (!!!) for Barney Frank. As a former radio jounalist, I first must applaud him commenting on the absurdity of being asked a question with 5 seconds left in the interview to respond. Most unfair…always has been and good for him for calling that out. And…kudos to him as well for sticking to his guns on “entitlements” and being very clear about priorities, decrying the military budget. I’d love to hear ANOTHER interview ASAP with NPR, especially, they of the “in-depth” news. Yeah, right.
AM Mallet corrects Franks assertion by aggregating medical budget items.
Applying the same to military/defense spending aggregated for 2012, it amounts to 1 to 1.4 trillion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
Social Security is not an entitlement… I paid cash, it is a Savings account in a Trust.. Both sides need to stop calling it an entitlement.. it does not matter if they are pro or con.. The truth is, it is a Trust, with “our money in it” and they want to steal it.
Steve Inskeep is a jerk.. way back when then went to Iraq, I wrote him at NPR after a piece he did in support of the lies, saying “the ends don’t justify the means”.. His response was, “I guess this time, the ends do justify the means”… The really sad thing is that when persons listen to NPR they think they are listening to progressive news. I still haven’t gotten over the whole bit when Howard Zinn died.. Without the web, we would have no way to communicate and find the answers and share them.
Athena who is “they”(they want to steal it……)?Social security is supposed to be a trust.The government has robbed it blind.Recently the president said without two trillion in funding, he may not send out the SS checks.How can that be?I thought they were in the lockbox?It is a Ponzi scheme.
I think it is unfair to malign NPR as a whole. last week, on the 10th or 11th there was a program that seemed to argue SS should not be in the debt debate. I am afraid I was driving around all day making stops for work, so I have no idea when it was on, or what the focus of the program was. maybe someone else heard it and can tell me.
I have long wondered why SS is debated as a drain on the debt given that I see that extra bit taken out of my pay check. The program suggested that what is under debate is should the gov’t make good on the bonds that were purchased with SS money. these bonds are a huge part of US debt (I think they said it was 1/4 of our debt, but that seems too high…)
I admit I was distracted, and may have filtered what I heard through my assumption that SS is a separate account. did anyone else hear this program?
The only good thing about NPR is that it is the only station where I live that has gone to HD Radio format. That means the main channel has the yuppies babbling nonsense about nothing, but one side channel plays only classical music, and the other only jazz. No commercials, no idiotic yuppie babble, and only about 3 or 4 minutes an hour of propaganda from the nooze desk.
I wonder if the rightwingers that left their slams here – but apparently didn’t stick around to respond to any of the excellent rebuttals – were affiliated in some paid or unpaid capacity with some organization, and their job is to go argue with facts wherever they might find it?
Another interesting take on how aggression funding is hidden: http://www.counterpunch.org/hellman08162011.html
When a country invests in education, they can count on some kind of return on their investment. When you waste money on the aggression machine, the only gains you might experience are resources extracted from others against their will. This is why I think the government should quit burning every 5th dollar they get and investing it instead.
It’s frustrating that NPR hosts “only have a few seconds left” to discuss complicated subjects. Why even bother to start the conversation if there are only seconds-of-time available?
Democracy Now! does the same thing. I’ve pretty much given up on that self-serving show. There’s always enough time for a plug about how many stations they’re broadcasting on, though.
“El Greco” spouts his usual nonsense: “Let’s not mince words â┚¬“ no entitlement is self-financing; the rest of us have to pay for it. It’s only self-financing from the point of view of the takers.”
Social Security and Medicare have their own dedicated revenue streams: the FICA tax and the Medicare tax. That’s what makes them self-financing.
Social Security has been taking in surpluses for near-30 years, which was part of the design after the implementation of the Greenspan Commission recommendations in the early 1980s. Prior to that, Social Security had been a pay-as-we-go system and primarily an intergenerational social contract (which conservative whackjobs hate) where the working generation paid a portion of their income to allow a dignified retirement for those who had worked prior to them and left them a functioning economy because of that work.
The problem the Greenspan Commission addressed was the Baby Boom, which was going to lead to a much higher ratio of retired workers to active workers, which of course would make the math relied upon up to that time untenable. The Greenspan Commission, rather than recommending, for example, raising the cap on wages subject to FICA tax to capture more from those who could afford it most, simply doubled the FICA tax rate on all workers then paying in to the system, holding the surplus in special non-marketable T-notes that comprise the social security trust fund. Once again, the ultra-wealthy managed to protect themselves, as they almost always do.
Meanwhile, given the current $106.8K wage cap on FICA taxes, Rush Limbaugh, with a $400M 8-year contract working out to $50M/year, satisfied his FICA obligations in his first 4.4 hours of work on the first calendar day of the year. Most of us pay through the entire year.