Tornado Alley (PROG)

[wbmw]

Perhaps you should start by reeducating all those folks who are truly clueless about the so called the "Social Security Trust Fund". It's astonishing how often it's quoted as the savior of the system when in reality it isn't. Every politician in the country knows it. If people don't understand this simple accounting deceit the rest of the arguments are rendered meaningless. We do live in a fairy tale.

n4807g, I do understand your point, but you may be exaggerating the problem.

Social Security is losing money, and the Trust Fund isn't a fix-and-forget kind of band-aid. It actually does require reform to fix permanently, but you would be naive to think that the government would fail to support Social Security costs when so many Americans are dependent on it.

The easiest solution is to delay the problem by infusing more cash into the Trust Fund. That's always an option if true reform doesn't come in time, and IMO it's the most likely answer for now.

You might call that irresponsible, but I'm only saying so in light of the larger problems, because entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid are far larger than Social Security, and in danger of being unfixible due to the huge cost curves of health care.

I wouldn't go so far as to call your concerns a red herring, but let's get real and prioritize. We need to fix the health care problem first if we are really serious about the national deficit. And privatizing these entitlements isn't the answer.

Can you imagine a business who would be willing to take a money-losing business off of the hands of the government? It just wouldn't happen - unless - a corporation was willing to make sufficient cuts to the benefits, and sufficient increases in the revenues, such that it becomes a profitable business.

And what would that mean to seniors? It would mean they'd get screwed, hard core.