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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (112992)	5/8/2005 10:13:23 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793917

What he means is that the trust fund is only a promise to use the funds represented by it to pay future SS benefits but that there is no actual money available to make those payments. The promise is there but the funds will have to come from future tax receipts. That's no different from the Japanese banks. We will keep our promise to pay them and will do so with money we get from future tax receipts. That is what you think it means. That is what I think what is meant about borrowed money. Krathammer makes his living writing things. If that is what he meant, he would have said it in some way that more reflected that. The way he said it was meant to scare people into thinking that the IOUs are worthless. They are only pieces of paper. There is no money in the trust fund. And, it was left up to the imagination of the readers to think of the consequences. It is what I call a scare tactic.

To: Lane3 who wrote (112992)	5/8/2005 12:09:13 PM
From: rich evans	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793917

As the head of SS said on C-Span: The promise to pay the gov notes held by SS from future taxes is not different then the promise to pay the SS benefits under the SS act. If the notes didn't exist we would still have a promise to pay under the SS act and have to collect taxes to do so. As the SS guy said, one promise/debt is explicit(the notes) and the other promise is implicit(the SS act). Congress can change or cancel either promise by legislation. For example Congress could cancel the SS act and the trust fund would be dissolved and gov notes returned to Treasury.Basically because of demographics we need two programs. For the poor we need a welfare based SS program. For the rest of us , we need a mandatory Defined contribution pension plan with only certain approved investments. Rich