Thank You Congress...

...for once again telling me what I can and cannot do with MY money.

WASHINGTON - With the acquiescence of their leaders, key House Republicans are drafting Social Security legislation stripped of President Bush's proposed personal accounts financed with payroll taxes and lacking provisions aimed at assuring long-term solvency.

Instead, according to officials familiar with the details, the measure showcases a promise, designed to reassure seniors, that Social Security surplus funds will be held inviolate, available only to create individual accounts that differ sharply from Bush's approach.

Under current law, any Social Security payroll tax money not used to finance monthly benefits is in effect lent by Social Security to the Treasury, which uses it to finance other government programs. Government actuaries say the surplus is expected to vanish in 2017 when benefit payments exceed payroll taxes collected.

In addition, the GOP bill "doesn't deal with solvency," according to another official, indicating it would avoid the difficult choices of curbs on benefits, higher taxes or changes in the retirement age needed to implement the president's call for long-term financial stability.{...}

{empahsis mine}

Grrrrrr.

Yes, let's suck up to the AARP once again. Never mind the millions of younger people who have to foot the bill for this bit of stupidity. They don't count because our polling numbers tell us they don't vote. And the people who vote are the ones we need to be paying attention to. Because they're the ones who keep sending us back to Congress, and our cushy jobs with our cushy paychecks, every two or six years. By all means, they're the ones who matter. Not the people who foot the bill.

One of the secondary reasons I voted for Bush was that he promised to do something about Social Security. He promised to give me control of a part of my money, to invest as I saw fit. While I never thought the solution he was plugging would be the one that made it through Congress, this proposal is too little, too late. I sincerely hope that he vetoes this pig if it actually makes it through Congress. If he chooses not to, well, that's YET another sign to me that he really wanted my vote, but now that he's got it, he doesn't really care all that much.

Perhaps, the next time an election comes around, I won't vote Republican. Perhaps I won't vote at all. I am sick and tired of playing by the rules. I always vote. Because I believe that if you don't, you don't have a reason to bitch. You didn't take part and you have effectively disenfranchised yourself. Well, you know what? It doesn't do me a fat lot of good to vote when the disenfranchisement happens anyway, does it?

I can understand Congress being a bunch of wishy-washy idiots. That, apparently, is their purpose in life. But if the President accepts this "compromise," and, at some point in the future---after millions of dollars in pork have been attached to the stupid thing---signs it into law, well, that's it. That will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."

---Alexis de Tocqueville

Posted by Kathy at June 22, 2005 10:24 AM