Issue Position: Social Security

Issue Position

Being now 65 years old and receiving Social Security benefits, it particularly bothers me that our government has curtailed the annua cost of living adjustments (COLA) to Social Security benefits at th same time as it has accepted pay raises for Congress and The Senate. I think that most of us are willing to share some sacrifice for the sake of the nation; but when the powerful ruling class takes money from people who might badly need it so that they can feather their own nests, something is wrong.

COLA increases should be reinstated for all recipients imediately, including the increases that would have been applied for the past two years.

Also, a large portion of the money paid out by Social Security is NOT to retired persons. It is paid as disability insurance to young people who are often not really disabled at all. The money we paid into this system all our working lives was supposed to be in a "lockbox" reserved for use only for one purpose, our retirement. That lockbox has been raided by corrupt politicians who use our money to further the dependency on themselves and buy votes.

It is interesting to note that the Obama administration threatened to hold up Social Security payements, holding them for ransom to get the debt ceiling increase he wanted. In the first place, the money paid to legitimate retirees under Social Security is NOT the government's money, it is money that was paid into the system by those retirees. The benefits paid by Social Security are actually too low (assuming the average American lifespan) to exhaust the value of the money paid in over a retiree's lifetime of work plus the reasonable interest that money would have drawn. We should note that Obama did NOT threaten to withhold Food Stamp, Welfare, or bailout money to his crony capitalists--just Social Security and Military Pay. I hope you find this as reprehensible as we do. Possibly even more offensive is the lavish rasies Obama has given to his White House comrades

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