SOCIAL SECURITY CRFB LETS CAT OUT OF THE BAG, NO ONE NOTICES
Dale Coberly talking about reforming entitlements and the impact on Social Security . . .
CRFB, “The Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget”, is an organization dedicated to reducing the National Debt or federal budget deficit, so it says. But it seems to spend most of its time calling for “reforming entitlements,” meaning “cut Social Security” which has nothing to do with the Debt/Deficit. Social Security is paid for entirely by the workers who will get the benefits. In the past it has lent money TO the government, and today the government is paying that money back, just like any ordinary business. This was done so the larger Baby Boom generation could pay in advance for it’s own benefits just like any other generation and not leave the smaller following generation stuck with paying more than was fair by the normal pay as you go financing system. Today, however, CRFB decided to scare us by showing that by 2050 interest on the National Debt would cost more than the Defense budget.
But here they gave their game away. They published a chart showing the rising cost of interest on the Debt compared to the cost of Defense and other Budget items. They included the cost of Social Security even though that is not a budget item. And that showed that between now and 2050 the cost of Social Security will rise from 5% of GDP to about 6% of GDP. Imagine that! A one percent increase in the cost of groceries for 25% of the population. And that is paid for by those people themselves, and would be the cost however the money was found . . . whether government taxes, stock market profits, private charity, or from under the mattress. All SS does is ensure that the money will be there by arranging for the workers themselves to pay for it themselves by putting a small part of their paycheck in a financial institution that can guarantee it will be there when they need it, with enough interest to cover inflation and the normal expected rise in the standard of living. The government oversees but DOES NOT PAY FOR Social Security. Meanwhile it does not seem to me to be a looming crisis that the cost of paying for the groceries of 25% of the population will increase by 1% of GDP over the next 30 years. Or that paying 6% of GDP for the groceries of 25% of the population is unreasonable. Or that if the people are paying for it themselves…as they are . . . they should be forced to work an extra two or more years before they can collect their own money. Or that “the rich” should be forced to pay it for them. But no one noticed.
“Net Interest Will Total $10.5 Trillion Over the Next Decade,” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (crfb.org)
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CRFB, “The Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget” gets referenced on this board now & then, and it seems to be widely understood that they really, really want a balanced Federal Budget, which neither Dems or the GOP is willing to come up with. So, they can safely be ignored.
IMO, they would probably settle for closing a few Cabinet departments in lieu of cutting soc sec benefits, if not cutting medicare, or especially medicaid benefits. Dems will not allow this, nor should they. Not Agriculture, not Defense, probably not Energy either since they build our nukes. Other depts are not safe from closure.
Dobbs,
I wish you would explain your opinion. CRFB has been relentlessly lying about Social Security for at least the last ten years. My opinion is that they care more about killing SS than they do about the budget deficit. they certainly never propose a tax increase to cut the deficit/debt.
The GOP has suggested enormous VAT taxes (to replace income tax, apparently.)
IMO, CRFB has no credibility & must be ignored.
The NYT has a lengthy piece on various reduction options, involving cuts in most areas, even including agricultural subsidies. Only defense is spared.
Programs You’d Have to Cut to Balance the Budget
‘Three scenarios for balancing the budget in 10 years without raising taxes.’
With no cuts to Soc Sec, Medicare or Defense, there would have to be 70% cuts everywhere else. Including Medicaid/CHIP/Obamacare.
Even cuts would require 27% cuts in all areas.
No cuts in Defense, but cuts everywhere else would require 31% reductions.
NYT: Several conservative lawmakers say House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has promised a House vote on a balanced federal budget. That’s a harder task than it sounds, given the size of the federal deficit.
More recently, Mr. McCarthy has said he doesn’t want to cut spending on defense, Medicare or Social Security — or raise taxes. Those constraints mean cuts to the rest of the budget would have to be brutal.
“It’s incredibly difficult to balance the budget within 10 years,” said Marc Goldwein, a senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that backs deficit reduction. “It goes from being incredibly difficult to practically impossible if you start taking things off the table.” …
(So, why is the CFRB expecting measures that are ‘incredibly difficult to practically impossible’ to achieve?)
well, goldwein is trying to say you can’t take Social Security off the table,
thats because Goldwein and CRFB have no interest in the deficit. they want to kill social security. and if they can keep the people confused about SS and the debt, they can probably get away with it.
these people are expert liars. you can never tell what their real lie is unless you study their publications, which is no fun at all.
it helps to study the Trustees Report..all of it, not the “Summary,” and do actually “do the math” not just say “it’s the math” like reporters who never did any math in their lives like to say.
and it is fatal to talk about Social Security with a head full of the lies you have heard over the past thirty years…heard so often they are part of your basic thought process and literally (physiologically) prevent you from making sense. the brain does not care about sense, logic, or morality. all it cares about is association and repetition. you can fix that a little by something called “study” which is systematic forced association and repetition.
non-partisan expert liars:
when you think they are lying about “A” it turns out the real lie is about M,N, and Q, which aren’t even mentioned
well, social security isn’t part of the budget, so it does not matter to the deficit. medicare is part part (sic sic) of the budget thanks to “making the rich pay” liberal brilliance, but cutting it means people die, unless they learn how to control prices. that leaves defense…which they will not ut.
so this is all bullshit. all they are doing is stoking budget hysteria to keep their game going…and maybe get to cut social security even though it is not part of the budget, the deficit, or the debt.
i did learn some very bad things about medicaid yesterday. medicaid is part of the budget..it is welfare. the rich DO pay their fair share. that’s why it hurts people. medicaid is not medicare, nor is it social security..though most people don’t realize that.
The problem is that there are many ways in which the rich can take more than their fair share. Welfare is needed and the rich should pay for it. Figuring out the fair share is hard.
People think that using SS to fix issues of inequality is a good idea because SS works well, not realizing that the reason it works well is that it does not try to do too much.
Arne
yes. you are absolutely right. but let me remind our readers that Social Security is NOT WELFARE.
i have been looking at another CRFB publication today. i find it very hard to follow. i was going to submit it as evidence of how non partisan expert liars go about their business, but i want to make sure i understand it first” they are playing a shell game with numbers. i am sure they can justify every statement they make, but it is all aranged to mislead the reader.
According to CBPP
Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?
In fiscal year 2022, the federal government is estimated to spend $5.8 trillion, amounting to 23.5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Of that $5.8 trillion, over $4.8 trillion is estimated to be financed by federal revenues. The remaining amount will be financed by net borrowing. As the chart below shows, three major areas of spending make up the majority of the budget:
Social Security: In 2022, 21 percent of the budget, or $1.2 trillion, will be paid for Social Security, which will provide monthly retirement benefits averaging $1,538 to 49 million retired workers. Social Security also expects to provide benefits to 3 million spouses and children of retired workers, 6 million surviving children and spouses of deceased workers, and 9 million disabled workers and their eligible dependents. …
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) is a progressive American think tank that analyzes the impact of federal and state government budget policies. – Wikipedia
(The other two areas:)
Health insurance: Four health insurance programs — Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace health insurance subsidies — together account for 25 percent of the budget in 2022, or $1.4 trillion. One-half of this amount, or $733 billion, goes to Medicare, which provides health coverage to around 80 million people who are aged 65 and older or have disabilities. The rest of this category funds the federal costs of Medicaid, CHIP, and ACA subsidy and marketplace costs. …
Defense: Another 13 percent of the budget, or $768 billion, will be paid for national defense activities. …
Dobbs
keep working at it. by talking about numbers you don’t understand you will confuse yourself, and anyone who listens to you , until you agree with the R’s that we muct cut entitlements…including the part of it we pay for ourselves…and get back with interest to pay for our groceries when we can no longer work.
Interest on the Nat’l Debt
CBPP: CBO estimates that in 2022 net interest payments will amount to $399 billion, or 7 percent of total federal expenditures and 1.6 percent of GDP. As Figure 2 shows, that ratio of interest costs to GDP is currently similar to that over most of the prior 70 years and only about half the level of interest costs from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, even though the debt ratio is currently well above its level during that decade. This phenomenon reflects the significance of interest rates, not just the level of debt, in determining the budgetary cost of debt. …
yes. very intersting, but distrcts from what we are talking about here. we should either not worry about the interest on the debt or we should run around in circles scream and shout about the interest on the debt to distract ourselves from the fact that Social Security has nothig to do with the debt.
Dobbs
CBPP is wrong. Social Security is zero part of the budget. now if I say my grocery bill is one hundred millionth percent or so of the Federal Budget, I would not be lying perhaps, but my grocery bill is still not PART of the Federal Budget. The folks at CBPP may be well-intentioned, but they are not thinking, or writing, clearly here.
Again: Social Security is paid for entirely by the workers. It has nothing to do with the Federal Deficit.
Unless you like to think backwards. If I borrowed a thousand bucks from my grandmother, and then when I paid her back called that payment a “deficit” in my accounting system, that might help me keep track of where my money is going, but it would be a lie to then say my grandmother was responsible for my deficit.
Perhaps CPBB is lumping in FICA (the tax which is not a tax) with overall Federal revenues then. They don’t specify. Shame on them, but they are said to be ‘progressive’.
Social Security also includes matching contributions by employers, which employers often believe is an onerous expense on them,. In that sense, it is not paid for ‘entirely by workers’.
But then, the self-employed get to pay that portion also. So not only do they pay once, but twice.
Fred
this is all true but misleading.
1) employers say FICA is all the workers money when they want workers to believe the return on their money is less than some arbitrary discount rate. but they call it a “jobs killing tax” when they want people to think it is the employers money and a threat to their jobs. and when they are alone with their peers (other bosses) they say it is all “their” (the bosses’) money. thing is it doesn’t really matter. workers get what they get. which is better than they get in any other plan. it is all the boss’s money until it becomes the workers money. and self employed only pay it once…those employed by others pay only half of it. the justice there is that self employed have more choice about how much they get paid than do employees. it is not an important question unless you choose to worry yourself sick about what is “fair”..’oo is really getting the biggest piece of burfday cake.
as for progressives… they are the good guys, but when they talk about Social Security they are stupid good guys. not one in ten thousand of them know a damn thing about social security or even about reality: they call SS a “regressive tax” because they heard that word in sophomore economics and can’t wrap their minds around the fact that Social Security is highly progressive. kind of like complaining that a movie ticket is a regressive “tax” because a rich guy pays the same price for a seat as a poor guy. [or those poor benighted souls who worry that a cigarette tax is “regressive” because the rich guy pays the same tax per pack as a poor guy. this is idiocy pretending to be “fair”.
Thanks for that acknowledgement. It sort of made my day.
Fred
I have been acknowledging you from the beginning, even when i was hurting your feelings by disagreeing with you.
Back when I was an employee long ago, I remember management talking about ‘burden rates’, which was about the extra costs incurred by having emolyees, over & above their salaries. No thought was given to how being thought of as ‘burdens’ might hurt their feelings.
fred
i actuationsally don’t like to hurt people’s feelings, but dipolomat-speak was not taught in my neighborhood, generally we thought good manners was a sign that someone was not sincere. i dn’t automayicly believe that, but i still don’t know how to talk nice.
no harm intended.
still can’t see what i am typing.
Related.
My Plan to Extend Medicare for Another Generation
NY Times – Joe Biden – March 7
Millions of Americans work their whole life, paying into Medicare with every working day — starting with their first job, even as teenagers. Medicare is more than a government program. It’s the rock-solid guarantee that Americans have counted on to be there for them when they retire.
For decades, I’ve listened to my Republican friends claim that the only way to be serious about preserving Medicare is to cut benefits, including by making it a voucher program worth less and less every year. Some have threatened our economy unless I agree to benefit cuts.
Only in Washington can people claim that they are saving something by destroying it.
The budget I am releasing this week will make the Medicare trust fund solvent beyond 2050 without cutting a penny in benefits. In fact, we can get better value, making sure Americans receive better care for the money they pay into Medicare.
The two biggest health reform bills since the creation of Medicare, both of which will save Medicare hundreds of billions over the decades to come, were signed by President Barack Obama and me. …
The Affordable Care Act embraced smart reforms to make our health care system more efficient while improving Medicare coverage for seniors. The Inflation Reduction Act ended the absurd ban on Medicare negotiating lower drug prices, required drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they increase prices faster than inflation and capped seniors’ total prescription drug costs — saving seniors up to thousands of dollars a year. These negotiations, combined with the law’s rebates for excessive price hikes, will reduce the deficit by $159 billion.
We have seen a significant slowdown in the growth of health care spending since the Affordable Care Act was passed. In the decade after the A.C.A., Medicare actually spent about $1 trillion less than the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected before the A.C.A. reforms were in place. In 2009, before the A.C.A., the Medicare trustees projected that Medicare’s trust fund would be exhausted in 2017; their latest projection is 2028. But we should do better than that and extend Medicare’s solvency beyond 2050.
So first, let’s expand on that progress. My budget will build on drug price reforms by strengthening Medicare’s newly established negotiation power, allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for more drugs and bringing drugs into negotiation sooner after they launch. That’s another $200 billion in deficit reduction. We will then take those savings and put them directly into the Medicare trust fund. Lowering drug prices while extending Medicare’s solvency sure makes a lot more sense than cutting benefits.
Second, let’s ask the wealthiest to pay just a little bit more of their fair share, to strengthen Medicare for everyone over the long term. My budget proposes to increase the Medicare tax rate on earned and unearned income above $400,000 to 5 percent from 3.8 percent. As I proposed in the past, my budget will also ensure that the tax that supports Medicare can’t be avoided altogether. This modest increase in Medicare contributions from those with the highest incomes will help keep the Medicare program strong for decades to come. My budget will make sure the money goes directly into the Medicare trust fund, protecting taxpayers’ investment and the future of the program.
When Medicare was passed, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans didn’t have more than five times the wealth of the bottom 50 percent combined, and it only makes sense that some adjustments be made to reflect that reality today. …
Let’s ask them to pay their fair share so that the millions of workers who helped them build that wealth can retire with dignity and the Medicare they paid into. Republican plans that protect billionaires from a penny more in taxes — but won’t protect a retired firefighter’s hard-earned Medicare benefits — are just detached from the reality that hardworking families live with every day.
Add all that up, and my budget will extend the Medicare trust fund for more than another generation, an additional 25 years or more of solvency — beyond 2050. These are common-sense changes that I’m confident an overwhelming majority of Americans support.
MAGA Republicans have a different view. They want to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. That means they want to take away the power we just gave to Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. Get rid of the $35 per month cap for insulin we just got for people on Medicare. And remove the current $2,000 total annual cap for seniors.
If the MAGA Republicans get their way, seniors will pay higher out-of-pocket costs on prescription drugs and insulin, the deficit will be bigger, and Medicare will be weaker. The only winner under their plan will be Big Pharma. That’s not how we extend Medicare’s life for another generation or grow the economy.
This week, I’ll show Americans my full budget vision to invest in America, lower costs, grow the economy and not raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000. I urge my Republican friends in Congress to do the same — and show the American people what they value.
yes, my neighbor got a big raise and i didn’t. so it’s only fair that ny neighbor should pay for my bread. and besides, my sister got the biggest piece of the burfday cake. that’s No Fair!
this is a little hard to talk about, because he is talking about two different things. the “reforms” may be a good thing [i don’t know yet], but then he spoils it by including “make the rich pay for your needs…so we all become welfare babies…and pay for it by giving the rich control over out basic needs. people who understand these things know what debt-servitude looks like.
Biden is a little confused: Social Security (not Medicare) works because it is worker-paid. He wants to tax the rich to pay for Social Security…that won’t work any better than “welfare as we knew it,” What’s wrong with Medicare is that clever people “made the rich pay” for about half of it…turning it into welfare, which the R’s CAN claim is part of the deficit…although no more part of it than the defense budget or any other black-hole government program.
trouble is that if you made the workers pay for all of it they would see their payroll tax go up, but they would not see their private insurance costs go down, and they would not realize that by paying for it theselves they would be in a better position to stop the fraud and abuse and pure stupidity Congress does with paying too much for “services” and not, say, getting a fair price for drugs.
You’ll notice that no one asks whether we can continue to afford the Reagan era tax cuts. Some how or another, those are never on the table.
not to mention the Trump era tax cuts.
what they want to cut is “government” down to a size where they can drown it in the bathtub. you will notice their colorful imagery. and yes, it is what godes on inside their heads.
There are people who hate. They get pleasure from hurting other people. Those who worry a whole lot about what is fair..meaning did they get what they think is their rightful share without having any idea, or caring about, what is “fair” for other people…are their close relatives. And those who just want it all, are of course their parents and destiny.
so much for mondays.
between my typos and general bad writing, i can uunderstand somewhat why i am not convincing anybody. but i would not be convincing anybody anyway until they learn to stop and really think their way through this.
trouble with that is that even the bad guys like to say “think” when they mean grab the first thought that comes into your (their) heads. The first thought that comes into your head was put there by a billion dollar campaign by highly paid non partisan expert liars. and “it’s the math” doesn’t mean “look at the big numbers and scream and shout without actually doing the little bit of arithmetic that would show you what “Trillions of Dollars?” means in a country of 200 million workers (and growing) earning 60 thousnd dollars a year (and growing) over the 75 year “actuarial window.” a little harder math (but not very hard) would show you that that can be broken down still further to a need to raise the payroll tax about one dollar per week per year per worker for a few years while real wages are going up about ten dollars per week per worker per year.
Then you’d have to actually think to understand that this is what it is going to cost those 200 million workers to pay for their own groceries after they can no longer work however they get the money…from their own savings or from government welfare or the miracle of the stock market (a well known safe place to keep your money in case you need it in a hurry).
I think Joe Biden is about to tell us that we can’t afford the Reagan Era tax cuts, cemented firmly in place by Donald Trump.