POLITICS: GAO Official: No Short Term Crisis in Social Security: Long Term Issues Ahead

Government Accountability Office has indicated in a report that the Social Security system does not face an immediate crisis. However, it cautioned that it does have long term financing problem and that intervention sooner rather than later would be prudent. The GAO is a nonpartisan government entity headed by David M. Walker. It was also critical of President Bush's two month campaign to gain support for his reform plan. He suggested that the time would be better spent if both the president and members of congress concentrate on improving the systems finances.




Its interesting and the politics going on both sides are doing nothing to save the system. The President has aggressively pushed his plan without really discussing any other and the Democrats have gone on a massive disinformation campaign to muddy the waters. The report pretty much sides with the Presidents claim that there are problems up ahead and that we need to fix them soon. If you think this is painful wait till the system is in crisis.


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FredT the administration needs money and need the money now, that is why the Social Security is targeted.

He can not wait for the younger generation he has to target the middle age ones with his cuts.

I am all for private accounts if I was 20 but at my age now all I am going to get is a cut and no enough time to build a retirement account from SS.

If the administration only targets young workers he would have the approval of it right now.

But people like me in my age range knows better if is after our money that is in the pot already, he can not wait for the young ones to build their pot.

Because it will take to long.

In order for Bush to get aproval he has to lower the age range to under 40 and leave us the middle age alone.

Its all about money, he need it now.

Great find-

MAJOR nit here though-
GAO= government ACCOUNTING office

Government Accountablity 'Project' is totally different.

Social Security history
Although Social Security did not really arrive in America until 1935, there was one important precursor, that offered something we could recognize as a social security program, to one special segment of the American population. Following the Civil War, there were hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans, and hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans. In fact, immediately following the Civil War a much higher proportion of the population was disabled or survivors of deceased breadwinners than at any time in America's history. This led to the development of a generous pension program, with interesting similarities to later developments in Social Security. (The first national pension program for soldiers was actually passed in early 1776, prior even to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Throughout America's ante-bellum period pensions of limited types were paid to veterans of America's various wars. But it was with the creation of Civil War pensions that a full-fledged pension system developed in America for the first time.)
-and-
In 1894 military pensions accounted for 37% of the entire federal budget.

And for a look at 'real' compassion:

State old-age pensions were also subject to the vagaries of state politics. In Louisiana in 1937, for example, the Governor issued an executive order cutting the old-age pensions of black citizens in half during the months of June and July as an inducement for elderly black pensioners to return to the cotton fields to help with the harvest. In many places throughout the cotton-belt local officials simply closed the relief offices during the harvest season.

Now, tell me SS is a liberal idea:

The Social Security program that would eventually be adopted in late 1935 relied for its core principles on the concept of "social insurance." Social insurance was a respectable and serious intellectual tradition that began in Europe in the 19th century and was an expression of a European social welfare tradition. It was first adopted in Germany in 1889 at the urging of the famous Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. Indeed, by the time America adopted social insurance in 1935, there were 34 European nations already operating some form of social insurance program.

Industrialization caused the need for broad based safety nets. Until that need is replaced the nets will remain OR a whole lot of congressmen will be out their next elcetion.

One of the earliest American advocates of a plan that could be recognized as modern social insurance was Theodore Roosevelt. In 1912, Roosevelt addressed the convention of the Progressive Party and made a strong statement on behalf of social insurance:

So much for lefties, eh?

Bush just will have to let this old dog alone. He isn't facing reelection but a bunch of Republican Representatives will be.

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