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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (321592)	1/18/2007 6:29:30 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574055

As I've said before, we need both: cut spending and raise taxes. We don't need both. Actually we might not need either depending on how you define "cut spending". Restraint in growth alone would bring the budget to balance without the need for any actual cuts. (Although I'd prefer to have the cuts). If I were king, the first thing I'd do is immediately tag all incoming social security taxes to each individuals' social security number. Then I'd calculate the debt load minus existing assets in the fund. Then I'd float US bonds for the amount owed in excess of the assets. This would add to our national debt, but it would highlight the true cost of the system That might make sense if you used the funds obtained to buy out the future social security obligations, and stopped paying social security in the future. It doesn't make sense if your just going to float bonds (and pay interest on them) and not do anything with the money. I agree that the future obligations should be accounted for, but you can account for it on the books without directly borrowing the money, or you could borrow the money and use it now to reduce future obligations. Borrowing the money and not reducing future obligations would be a bad idea. Next I would forbid SS revenues from every going into the general tax revenues that Congress spends. What would you do with any SS tax intake that exceeds a particular years required spending? The basis of my program will be, let's acknowledge our problems so that we can then deal with them responsibly. I agree with the idea. And I agree that the future obligations are currently not properly accounted for. So we do at least have some degree of agreement.