Political Punch

What could you buy for 16% of your gross wages? (8% worker 8% employer)

A great 401K

It's a disgrace nothing is being done to fix it just like the oil drilling situation. The liberals always say how the fix won't take place until 10 years down the road. 10 years later nothing has been done and they use the same excuse.

Posted by: geevill | Jul 9, 2008 3:31:04 PM

The republicans controlled all branches of government house, senate and presidency for years prior to 2006. So why didn't they do it then? Because they are pandering hypocrites.

I'm John McCain and I approve this message.

So - McCain proposes increasing payroll taxes? or decreasing social security / medicare payments?

which is it? what a weasel he is - blah blah blah , he is for truth justice and the american way, blah blah blah. all this while he adds nothing to the debate. he doesn't have any of the kind of smarts we need to work our way thru some of the problems facing our nation.

Part of the SS problem is Senator Mccain and others like him - who collect SS benefits to the tune of 24,000.00 a year and who most assuredly do NOT need it.

I think the only logical conclusion you can draw from this is that McCain literally does not know what he's talking about. Give him a speech on Social Security privatization and he can read it just fine, but ask him to speak extemporaneously on it and he's just lost.

Unfortunately, that also applies to just about every other topic in the world.

Face it Republicans: You've picked another idiot as your candidate. An appropriate choice for your party, given your collective IQ, but not good for the country.

McCain, by his own admission, knows little about the economy. (How he can justify not learning about it sooner, after all his years in Congress voting on many issues that affect the economy, is another question.) Here he has glaringly shown his ignorance of how Social Security was designed to operate.

Seawolf has been slurping up too much salt water. Texas municipal retirees are also in the Social Security system.
Texas Teachers are not. The trustees of the Teacher Retirement System have done so well in the stock market system McCain wants to unleash on Social Security, that some Texas retired teachers haven't had a benefit increase in seven years.

The disgrace to which McCain refers is that younger workers, who do their part for society today, will, unfairly, not be rewarded with those very same benefits, themselves, as seniors later in life, which they currently help provide to retirees.

What we get from the media is open mike accidental releases of off hand remarks, and the issue of contrasting approaches to Social Security by the candidates is ignored. Hey, how about treating the American voter like an adult. Give us an article with contrasts between the public proposals of each candidate and their past records on the issues. McCain's statement is highly consistent with his conservative, right-wing approach to Social Security.

McCain, like most wealthy conservative Republicans, hates Social Security.

Maybe, one of these days, the media will report that basic fact.

The yearly surplus from SS always goes into the Treasury General Fund where it is hidden in with other tax revenue.

This has been done ever since inception of SS.

There is no provision to ever pay it pack into SS.

So far the amount owed by the Treasury to SS is in excess of two trillion ($2,000,000,000,000.00).

Thank our Congressmen and Senators for this thievery.

There is no disgrace. There is only rank political opportunism by McCain. The Social Security crisis does not exist. Right now, the trust fund is growing, building up a surplus that will be used, as planned, for funding boomers' retirements. Based on current, conservative projections (for example, they use economic growth rates over the next 40 years that are lower than any 40 year period in US history), this money is fully adequate until around 2044, and they are fully adequate FOREVER if 1) our economic growth rate is only .5% higher than projected, or 2) the payin is increased by, for example, the extra payin by people making more than $250,000/year, as Obama has (responsibly) proposed.

So there is no need for a big solution, and there is no benefit for private accounts. Of course, McCain wants to undermine Social Security and create private accounts, so $1Trillion can be diverted to his buddies on Wall Street. So he yells and yells about a "crisis."

McCain. Just like Bush. Maybe just a bit less honest.

If this is such a "disgrace" then why does he accept his Social Security Check and why does he approve the Bush Adinistration tapping into the excess to fund the war in Iraq. When President Clinton left office there was an $87 Billion surplus in Social Secruity, Dubya used all that money up for his stupid war. Blame him and his extension cord Mc Cain for it and not the Democrats.

I think Gitlin's response is the most important one in the article. Why don't the major networks [ALL of them] consider this amazing and frighteneing criticism of our Social Security system by a presidential candidate a major story? Somehow -- probably without even being aware of it -- it's been decided that a McCain presidency will be more rewarding for media than would an Obama presidency, so they are giving McCain a free ride, slack from a rope that isn't anchored anywhere. {It's the same self-interest that had them egregiously favoring Obama over Clinton a few months back. Their irresponsibility cuts all ways.) Makes me want to puke.

One reason Social Security is in trouble is that all the monies taken out of paychecks for SS over the years did not stay in the SS account but was "borrowed" and never paid back. This happened during the Reagan years after his big tax cuts and the coffers were too low. It has happened other times too, but Big Brother does not want taxpayers to know the truth.

Why does McCain care anyway. He has no interest in keeping SS strong after he's gone. The whole Republican mindset is to amass as much wealth as they can for themselves, leave everybody else out to dry and justify it by saying GOD wants them to be rich and prosperous.

Yeah, tell that to Jesus.

So a good chunk of your SS taxes that come out of your paycheck are being used to send our best and brightest overseas to get maimed and killed. They don't actually go to SS like they used to and McCain will continue down this path.

We're not even funding Social Security anymore. We're borrowing against it to pay for a war that McCain has no hesitation of continuing.

The very name of Social Security implies thats it's all of us helping each other. McCain is appealing like so many Republicans to individual greed over community need. We have a lot more to fear from the Reactionary Republican Guard in Washington than the Revolutionary Guard in Tehran. McCain doesn't need to worry abut it for himself since he's been a government employee either in the military or Congress since he was 18. And by the way, with his 26 years in Congress what has he done to fix the situation?

The real disgrace is how the federal government continues to raid the SS funds to fund itself. The other disgrace is he is pandering. McCain and his rich wife couldn't care less about how average americans made ends meet. They have never experienced needing government assistance so they have absolutely no connection to average americans. However, he will gladly pander to you today for a vote on Tuesday 11/4/08.