There is a ton of misinformation out there about Social Security. One of the most common is that Republicans want to cut Social Security while Democrats want to preserve it. That is a lie. In reality, Social Security is the third rail of politics and no political party would even consider cutting benefits.

Social Security had a huge surplus that was developed during the 1990s. The reason was that the Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964 paid far more in social security taxes than what was necessary to pay benefits due their parents. It was simple, there were a lot more babies than retirees for several years. Unfortunately, both Republican and Democratic Presidents spent that surplus. It started with George H. W. Bush and continued at an accelerated pace through both terms of Bill Clinton. The Social Security surplus was spent to pretend to balance the budget, with the result of George W. Bush entering office only to be confronted with a huge, unnecessary, Social Security deficit.

Sadly, this has been repeated on an annual basis. Democrats routinely claim, falsely, that Republicans want to cut Social Security. The only President who actually cut Social Security Benefits was Barack Obama, who blocked cola (Cost of Living) adjustments to social security. That resulted in a real decrease in the value of social security benefits received. Something no one in the MSM noticed or bothered to report.

We now have less people working and more people drawing social security. Because George H.W. Bush and later Bill Clinton ignored the reality of this and spent the social security surplus we all have to live with this reality. Fewer people working are supporting more people retired. This is compounded by Social Security benefits being paid to people who are dead, or who are not eligible because they are not in the country legally. It is made worse by scam artists highly skilled at stealing benefits from legitimate recipients.

Those who paid social security taxes during their entire working career have earned those benefits. Yet, the system will go insolvent unless something changes. The most urgent change is to stop paying benefits to dead people or anyone else who has not earned those benefits. Then and only then can we hope to set aside the funds necessary to reimburse whose who paid for those benefits.

But we must also be honest about something. The government is plum awful at setting aside the necessary funds to pay for benefits promised. If an insurance company did this, they would be prosecuted. Yet every attempt to privatize Social Security has been blocked by the same people who refuse to properly fund the program. People should be allowed to choose between allocating funds to a private company, responsible to protect assets, or the federal government which protects absolutely nothing. Private companies should be held to the highest possible standards, something the federal government would never even consider.

The important thing here is to allow for private companies to compete with the federal government and to resist allowing total control to the same people who have proven themselves totally incapable of acting responsibly. If baby boomers had been allowed to invest their social security taxes in a private insurance company, they would now have more retirement income and those private insurance company would have been more subject to more federal oversight, by far, than the federal government itself.

We all want and need social security. The real question is who is more likely to provide that security, and more importantly, who absolutely cannot be trusted to do that?

TDM