Bloodthirsty Liberal

Social Security isn’t going up this year because there really hasn’t been a substantive increase in the cost of living (the price of cardboard and corrugated iron is flat).

So President Obama concocted the idea of cutting checks for $250 to every geezer in the country, just to keep ‘em smiling placidly at their TV screens.

But according to Rasmussen idea has been met with a mixed reception, most of all from geezers themselves:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telphone survey finds that 50% of U.S. voters favor sending all Social Security recipients a $250 check to make up for the lack of a cost-of-living adjustment this year. Forty percent (40%) are opposed.

However, when voters learn that the plan is expected to cost taxpayers $13 billion, support falls. Upon learning the cost, just 41% favor the plan while 49% are opposed.

One interesting generational tidbit is that younger voters are more supportive of the idea than seniors. A majority of those under 30 support the idea. Among those age 65 and older, 43% are in favor while 49% are opposed. Senior citizens are also less supportive of the president’s health care plan than younger voters.

President Obama seems to think that if he speaks real loud and smiles a lot, the ancient among us will like him. (Helpful hint: they like shiny things.) But they take one look at his patronizing offer of two and a half Cs, and they furrow their wrinkled brows and set their sagging jaws.

But how pathetic is it of us as a people that we go “oh cool” when we hear the idea, and “oh s**t” when we hear the cost.

President Bush, right again:

Big job losses and a spike in early retirement claims from laid-off seniors will force Social Security to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes the next two years, the first time that’s happened since the 1980s.

The deficits — $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 — won’t affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion. But they will add to the overall federal deficit.

…

What happened? The recession hit and many older workers suddenly found themselves laid off with no place to turn but Social Security.

“A lot of people who in better times would have continued working are opting to retire,” said Alan J. Auerbach, an economics and law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “If they were younger, we would call them unemployed.”

And the unemployment rate would show them as such (and describe the recession a lot more accurately). But they’re much better swept under the demographic carpet where they won’t bother anyone.

So, one president wanted to address this problem years ago, and was rebuffed by the Democrats in Congress—bitch slapped, really—and another president is clueless about this problem, while trying to play Marcus Welby, MD to the nation that feels fine on the whole. And the Democrats cheer him like he’s the Arkansas Razorbacks football team.

I have but this to say:

We usually talk about the stuff we inherit from old people. But given President Obama’s penchant for talking about problems and crises he “inherited”, it’s old people themselves he inherited:

The big story for the day will probably be the new report that Social Security will start running in the red in 2016. The stories will include talk of a “trust fund” as well, as does the Washington Post:

Specifically, the trustees’ report predicts that the trust fund from which Social Security payments are made will be unable to pay retirees full benefits by 2037, four years earlier than forecast a year ago. In particular, the trustees single out the financial weakness of the part of the program that subsidizes disabled Americans, saying that fund will run out of money in 2020.

Didn’t someone bring up SS a few years ago—say there was a big problem? Whatever happened to that guy?

Anyhow, I fear that the engine of the American airship of state is coughing and about to stall, leading to a spectacular crash:

Long before the current financial crisis, nearly two years ago, a little-noticed cloud darkened the horizon for the US government. It was ignored. But now that shadow, in the form of a warning from a top credit rating agency that the nation risked losing its triple A rating if it did not start putting its finances in order, is coming back to haunt us.

That warning from Moody’s focused on the exploding healthcare and Social Security costs that threaten to engulf the federal government in debt over coming decades. The facts show we’re in even worse shape now, and there are signs that confidence in America’s ability to control its finances is eroding.

President Obama is big on sacrifices—just ask business executives in the banking, automotive, credit card, and health care industries.

But old people need to sacrifice, too. I’ve read that some people can’t tell the difference between foie gras and dog food. Let them eat Alpo. And we should use what few ice floes remain at the north pole to ship off the ones who won’t “spread the wealth.”