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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (14362)	4/2/2012 2:23:59 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

and there is trillions in the account. There is nothing there. There is a liability equal to the asset canceling it out. The net effect of the trust fund is zero. Taxes have to be raised (or borrowing increase, other spending cut, or money "printed") to the same extent to cover future increases in SS spending as if there was no nominal trust fund. Federal pensions; Well, I'd start by eliminating Homeland Security and Allllllllll those pensions. Would you really eliminate it or just break it up? Its possible that some money could be saved by the later, or it could cost extra money I'm not sure (you would perhaps save the small amount of money paid to the department head and the most senior centralized staff, but you would pay additional money for restructuring costs so at least in the short run it would cost more, and in the long run the savings would at most be small, insignificant compared to the deficit). If you really want to eliminate it, eliminate the parts and functions not just the department structure, then you could save a lot of money. OTOH its still only about $55bil compared to trillion plus deficits, and would you really want to eliminate the customs, the border patrol, immigration and naturalization, the coast guard, the secret service, federal law enforcement training, FEMA, the Nuclear Incident Response team (now assumed within FEMA, but formerly separate), the strategic national stockpile for national medical disasters, the environmental measurements laboratory, etc.? Some of those maybe could or should be eliminated. Also I'm all for eliminating the TSA (or making it a small organization that oversees the private provision of airport security). But the TSA is only about $8bil out the $55 (and presumably some would still be spent to oversee the private sector security efforts), and the department staff that could be eliminated by breaking up the department is probably only millions per year (and depending on how the restructuring is done the new structure could even pay for more people). You probably save at most $10bil a year, and worst case you actually spend more. But ya, I agree federal work force should shrink and pay go down. I think total pay should go down (because of the lower employment levels), and per employee the future increasing baseline should be cut, but actual direct cuts from future wages would probably take longer and use more political capital than its worth. After taking all the time and political capital which could have gone to other ways of cutting the deficit, the effort might lose anyway, so you might get nothing. Better to just contain future increase in pay and benefits, while cutting expenses (again from an increasing baseline, its probably impossible to make direct actual cuts) in transfer payments and government medical payments predominately from entitlement programs (since that's where the real money is, esp. in the future)

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (14362)	4/2/2012 2:26:13 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

Damnit! I don't want to argue SS again. They fixed it in the 80's and there is trillions in the account. No sorry, they spent every last dime and replaced them with a promise to either cut federal spending in the future or to greatly raise taxes in the future to pay back these IOU's. Plus the benefits given are still being increased further from what was given in the 80's. I'm sorry that you don't want to deal with SS again, but that is what was done and you can't wish it away. The whole problem is that SS is an intergenerational transfer program that really only works when the next generation is larger and more prosperous that the previous generation. That is no longer the case.