There\u2019s a recession on. Energy prices are down, and the official cost of living with them. Therefore, you might expect government payments that carry \u201ccost-of-living adjustments\u201d to be dropping, helping to ease the deficit.<\/p>\n
Not so. When the cost of living goes up, payments to Social Security recipients — among others — also go up. This year they increased by 5.8 percent, the biggest rise since 1982, largely because of a spike in energy prices in 2008.<\/p>\n
But when the cost of living drops, Congress in its wisdom (foreseeing the squawks that might otherwise arise, presumably) has decreed that pay-outs will not drop; they will merely remain the same.<\/p>\n
Guess what? Recipients of the popular Social Security welfare payments (the courts have repeatedly ruled there is no \u201ctrust fund\u201d nor \u201centitlement,\u201d that Social Securtity \u201cpremiums\u201d go into the general fund and Congress can reduce pay-outs any time it pleases, regardless of what beneficiaries once \u201cpaid in\u201d) started squawking anyway, as soon as they heard that next year — for the first time since the automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975 — there\u2019d be no benefit hike.<\/p>\n
Enter President Obama, who has called for Congress to send every senior citizen an extra $250 handout before the next congressional elections.<\/p>\n
Democratic leaders in Congress — including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. — have signed onto the plan. Republican leaders said they, too, favor the payments, but don\u2019t want to increase the deficit to pay for them. Instead, they want to paper-shuffle \u201cfunding\u201d from moneys not yet used up out of last winter\u2019s \u201cstimulus\u201d check-kiting scheme.<\/p>\n
The White House said the stimulus payments would cost $13 billion. A congressional estimate put the cost at $14 billion. Mr. Obama didn\u2019t say how the payments should be financed. But the president is open to borrowing the money, increasing the federal deficit, just as Congress did with the first round of \u201cstimulus\u201d payments, authorized last winter.<\/p>\n
Many seniors groups applauded Mr. Obama\u2019s plan to send the checks to about 57 million senior citizens, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout relief, millions of older Americans will be unable to afford skyrocketing health care and prescription drug costs, as well as other basic necessities,\u201d said Tom Nelson, chief operating officer for AARP.<\/p>\n
This despite the fact that \u201cThe real purchasing power of their benefits is actually higher today than it was last year,\u201d according to Andrew Biggs, a former deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration and now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.<\/p>\n
But why stop there? If the government can make voters happy by simply mailing out checks whenever it pleases, without devaluing the dollar and thus eroding the value of the stocks or bank accounts of anyone foolish enough to have \u201csaved money\u201d — if Congress can just send us all checks with vague assurances that we can always borrow the money from the Arabs or the Chinese, or \u201ctax the rich\u201d to cover all this check-kiting — why a measly $250 to no one but the retireees and the disabled (who these days include a lot of apparently able-bodied people no longer required to go look for work because they\u2019re supposedly \u201cpsychiatrically disabled\u201d)?<\/p>\n
Why not REALLY end the recession by sending $25,000 to everyone with a driver\u2019s license?<\/p>\n
Thirteen billion, thirteen trillion. What\u2019s the difference?<\/p>\n
College freshmen are often given credit cards \u201cfor emergencies\u201d when they head off to school. A few months later, a grown-up often has to lower the boom on a youth who thought his desire for a new stereo or motorcycle constituted an \u201cemergency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who are the \u201cgrown-ups\u201d who will impose some discipline on these overgrown brats in Washington? When the dollar lies in tatters — along with our standard of living — will it be they, with their gold-gilt pensions, who suffer the consequences?<\/p>\n
Or will it be us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s a recession on. Energy prices are down, and the official cost of living with them. Therefore, you might expect government payments that carry \u201ccost-of-living adjustments\u201d to be dropping, helping to ease the deficit. Not so. When the cost of living goes up, payments to Social Security recipients — among others — also go up. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,9,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-taxation","category-welfare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-5o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}