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

To: Road Walker who wrote (373137)	3/8/2008 3:12:07 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1576743

With the full faith promise of Government of the United States of America that he will get the benefits. What backs up the benefits is only the current law. The benefit schedule has been changed and changed again, and it could easily be changed once more, in fact it will almost certainly have to be, either increasing the retirement age again (which means that people who don't live to the new higher age don't get any benefits, despite any imagined promises) or by lowering the upward adjustment of benefits. The SS tax is a tax, and the benefits are social spending. The whole thing is taxing and spending in the same way as any other government spending. If we are going to make a big move towards zero base budgeting the biggest program (Social Security), and the most rapidly growing large program (Medicare) have to be a part of it. And reducing the benefits (even to zero, which I'm not calling for and which would not be a result that would be expected from "zero based budgeting") would not in any way impact the "faith and credit of the US", it doesn't involve any sort of default, it would just be changing what the government spends money on.