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Today, Obama held a backyard discussion in Columbus, Ohio that focused on economic issues. Here’s what he had to say about Social Security:
So here’s the thing. Social Security is not in crisis. What is happening is, is that the population is getting older, which means we’ve got more retirees per worker than we used to. We’re going to have to make some modest adjustments in order to strengthen it. There are some fairly modest changes that could be made without resorting to any newfangled schemes that would continue Social Security for another 75 years, where everybody would get the benefits that they deserve.
And what we’ve done is we’ve created a fiscal commission of Democrats and Republicans to come up with what would be the best combination to help stabilize Social Security for not just this generation, but the next generation. I’m absolutely convinced it can be done. And as I said, I want to encourage people to save more on their own, but I don’t want them taking money out of Social Security so that people are putting that into the stock market. There are other ways of doing this.
Obama was also positive about the economic recovery, brushing aside concerns that we are heading into another collapse.
Is he being falsely optimistic? What’s on your mind tonight?
6 Comments
I don’t want the Social Security I “Deserve”
I want the Social Security I paid for !
Since I had my first job at age 14!
And I want it, as I paid for it, for 44 years!
At Age 65 and what I paid for!
I was not able to Opt out.
I didn’t get a choice how much was deducted from my paycheck.
No one asked me what age I wanted to collect it, I was told what age I would be when I collected what I paid for.
I don’t “deserve it,” I paid for it!
Fly is right.
Obama is getting ready to fuck us. It’s really that simple. No mystery.
Social security is not in crisis, factually. Krugman has been pointing this out for awhile.
A bigger issue here is lack of trust in the federal government, especially from younger folks. Why don’t we expect Social Security to be around when we retire? Because we don’t expect anything good to come from the government. It’s partly because of right-wing “government is the problem” propaganda, and partly because our generation really has been failed. If Obama fails to live up to the great promise we saw in his campaign, that trust might be gone forever.
I think this is about taking back the political system from the corporatists and class warriors. Obama has proved time and again that what he says can’t be trusted. The projections saying that there are problems with SS in 1937 are based on false assumption and projections that cannot possible be reliable. No one can project out 27 years with other than a remote possibility of being right. We and Obama have no business taking any action based on these fantasy projections.
See also here for the danger to SS from the Dems, and here for the truth about the so-called crisis.
Obama isn’t aware that we’ve been paying forward (extra) since the 1983 SocSec agreement between O’Neill and St. Ronnie?
Or he just figures we’re not aware and he can do his bamboozle special with pretty words. Fie.
BTW, these words of his definitely show he’s going to go with the Obama/PetePeterson Cat Food Commission recommendations. Done deal.
Beware Obama sounding liberal or progressive. He’s usually lying or weaseling.