Another "Successful" Government Program — Amnesty
Christopher S. Bentley JBSWednesday October 24, 2007
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid late yesterday signaled his plans to hold a showdown vote tomorrow on the DREAM Act," reported USA Today.
Follow this link to the original source: "Senate to vote on giving illegals' kids a shot at citizenship"
Two weeks ago, Senator Reid spoke to some 4,000 students at Brigham Young University, sharing personal experiences from his life and "talking politics."
In one particular remark, he called the invasion of Iraq "the worst foreign policy blunder in our country's history." We certainly agree with the senator that it was a terrible policy decision. But "blunder" it most certainly was not. But that's another matter.
In comments made to reporters after the speech, which was reported by the Salt Lake Tribune but not the Deseret News, Reid was critical of several prominent leaders of the LDS Church, stating: "In the past years we've had some very prominent members of the church, like Ezra Taft Benson, who are really right-wing people ... [who] have taken members of the church down the path that is the wrong path." During his speech, he also extolled the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt as "the basis of my political direction."
Senator Reid reminded the students that government can be our "friend," and cited throughout his speech numerous government programs as successes. "For example," he added, "Social Security is the most successful social program in the history of the world."
It's useful, by contrast, to look at what Ezra Taft Benson said about the "right path" that Senator Reid and his fellow colleagues are leading us down at present. In his book An Enemy Hath Done This, published in 1968, Benson made the following statements about Social Security:
Social Security is unconstitutional....The Social Security system, as it is conceived and operated today, is not social, does not provide security, and does not qualify as a real system. It should be made voluntary in order to become social; it should be backed by reserves in order to become secure; and benefits should be computed on an actuarial basis to make it a system that is fair and impartial, to all participants, whether young or old....
It is truly ironic that the federal government requires insurance companies and private pension funds to maintain assets and reserves sufficient to pay off every last cent of their retirement contracts, yet it ignores this requirement when it comes to its own Social Security system....
As the system operates today, new benefits are voted into existence by Congress and the older citizens begin to receive them immediately, even though their past contributions into the fund are nowhere adequate to cover the cost. This means that those in the next generation have to pay their full share plus the deficit created by their elders. This is politics at its worst....
Such madness cannot go on forever. Sooner or later — and probably much sooner than we would like to think — this irresponsible game of politics will cause the entire system to collapse.
On April 18 of this year, Senator Reid's office issued a public statement about the Medicare Fair Prescription Drug Price Act, entitled "Drug Bill Would Be First Step To Improving Medicare Drug Program For Beneficiaries."
In it, he chastised Senate Republicans for resorting to "obstructionism in an effort to protect the drug industry at the expense of our seniors." Senator Reid called it a "common-sense bill" that "empowers the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use the bargaining power of Medicare's 43 million beneficiaries" — meaning the beneficiaries get to bargain with the taxpayers' money.
Two days before Senator Reid's socialist call for more government involvement in healthcare, Richard W. Fisher, CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, offered a different assessment of both Social Security's and Medicare's successes in terms of their combined deficit.
How large is the debt liability that has been created by the most "successful social program in the history of the world"? Fisher, in a speech before the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, stated:
According to official government trustee reports, the infinite-horizon discounted present value of our unfunded liability from Social Security and Medicare — in common language, the gap between what we will take in and what we have promised to pay — now stands at $83.9 trillion. The potent combination of lower birthrates, higher medical costs and longer life expectancies provides little reason to hope that the figure will fall.
Just how big is an $83.9 trillion shortfall? Well, it is six times the U.S. gross domestic product. It is more than 100 times the country’s annual defense budget. And it is about 10,000 times the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency.
If you divide the $83.9 trillion evenly among the 300 million U.S. residents, you get a per-person liability of $280,000 — more than five times the average household's annual income. Each of us would have to pay that much today if we wanted to guarantee the solvency of our entitlement system for future generations.
Let me put it yet another way. The total unfunded liability from these programs encompasses about 7.5 percent of U.S. GDP from here to eternity, which works out to 68 percent of all federal income tax revenues from here to eternity. So instead of paying $280,000 per person now, we could permanently sequester 68 percent of all current and future income tax revenue for use only on Social Security and Medicare. Or we could permanently raise income tax rates by 68 percent to accomplish the same thing —although we'd actually need to jack it up even higher because a large tax hike would probably discourage some people from working.
This is not a pretty picture.
Somehow this path looks different than the one that Ezra Taft Benson recommended.
Now, Senator Reid and his supporters in Congress are trying to drag us further down the big government path, this time on the issue of amnesty.
Given how "successful" Social Security, Medicare and other government programs have been so far, and given the enormous debt and taxes we all face in order to keep them going, I think I might be forgiven for being skeptical that another round of amnesty is going to solve our nation's immigration crisis.
Christopher S. Bentley JBSWednesday October 24, 2007
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid late yesterday signaled his plans to hold a showdown vote tomorrow on the DREAM Act," reported USA Today.
Follow this link to the original source: "Senate to vote on giving illegals' kids a shot at citizenship"
Two weeks ago, Senator Reid spoke to some 4,000 students at Brigham Young University, sharing personal experiences from his life and "talking politics."
In one particular remark, he called the invasion of Iraq "the worst foreign policy blunder in our country's history." We certainly agree with the senator that it was a terrible policy decision. But "blunder" it most certainly was not. But that's another matter.
In comments made to reporters after the speech, which was reported by the Salt Lake Tribune but not the Deseret News, Reid was critical of several prominent leaders of the LDS Church, stating: "In the past years we've had some very prominent members of the church, like Ezra Taft Benson, who are really right-wing people ... [who] have taken members of the church down the path that is the wrong path." During his speech, he also extolled the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt as "the basis of my political direction."
Senator Reid reminded the students that government can be our "friend," and cited throughout his speech numerous government programs as successes. "For example," he added, "Social Security is the most successful social program in the history of the world."
It's useful, by contrast, to look at what Ezra Taft Benson said about the "right path" that Senator Reid and his fellow colleagues are leading us down at present. In his book An Enemy Hath Done This, published in 1968, Benson made the following statements about Social Security:
Social Security is unconstitutional....The Social Security system, as it is conceived and operated today, is not social, does not provide security, and does not qualify as a real system. It should be made voluntary in order to become social; it should be backed by reserves in order to become secure; and benefits should be computed on an actuarial basis to make it a system that is fair and impartial, to all participants, whether young or old....
It is truly ironic that the federal government requires insurance companies and private pension funds to maintain assets and reserves sufficient to pay off every last cent of their retirement contracts, yet it ignores this requirement when it comes to its own Social Security system....
As the system operates today, new benefits are voted into existence by Congress and the older citizens begin to receive them immediately, even though their past contributions into the fund are nowhere adequate to cover the cost. This means that those in the next generation have to pay their full share plus the deficit created by their elders. This is politics at its worst....
Such madness cannot go on forever. Sooner or later — and probably much sooner than we would like to think — this irresponsible game of politics will cause the entire system to collapse.
On April 18 of this year, Senator Reid's office issued a public statement about the Medicare Fair Prescription Drug Price Act, entitled "Drug Bill Would Be First Step To Improving Medicare Drug Program For Beneficiaries."
In it, he chastised Senate Republicans for resorting to "obstructionism in an effort to protect the drug industry at the expense of our seniors." Senator Reid called it a "common-sense bill" that "empowers the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use the bargaining power of Medicare's 43 million beneficiaries" — meaning the beneficiaries get to bargain with the taxpayers' money.
Two days before Senator Reid's socialist call for more government involvement in healthcare, Richard W. Fisher, CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, offered a different assessment of both Social Security's and Medicare's successes in terms of their combined deficit.
How large is the debt liability that has been created by the most "successful social program in the history of the world"? Fisher, in a speech before the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, stated:
According to official government trustee reports, the infinite-horizon discounted present value of our unfunded liability from Social Security and Medicare — in common language, the gap between what we will take in and what we have promised to pay — now stands at $83.9 trillion. The potent combination of lower birthrates, higher medical costs and longer life expectancies provides little reason to hope that the figure will fall.
Just how big is an $83.9 trillion shortfall? Well, it is six times the U.S. gross domestic product. It is more than 100 times the country’s annual defense budget. And it is about 10,000 times the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency.
If you divide the $83.9 trillion evenly among the 300 million U.S. residents, you get a per-person liability of $280,000 — more than five times the average household's annual income. Each of us would have to pay that much today if we wanted to guarantee the solvency of our entitlement system for future generations.
Let me put it yet another way. The total unfunded liability from these programs encompasses about 7.5 percent of U.S. GDP from here to eternity, which works out to 68 percent of all federal income tax revenues from here to eternity. So instead of paying $280,000 per person now, we could permanently sequester 68 percent of all current and future income tax revenue for use only on Social Security and Medicare. Or we could permanently raise income tax rates by 68 percent to accomplish the same thing —although we'd actually need to jack it up even higher because a large tax hike would probably discourage some people from working.
This is not a pretty picture.
Somehow this path looks different than the one that Ezra Taft Benson recommended.
Now, Senator Reid and his supporters in Congress are trying to drag us further down the big government path, this time on the issue of amnesty.
Given how "successful" Social Security, Medicare and other government programs have been so far, and given the enormous debt and taxes we all face in order to keep them going, I think I might be forgiven for being skeptical that another round of amnesty is going to solve our nation's immigration crisis.
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