Quote from TM_Direct:
I'll let you do it....SS has been in effect , bankrupt for all intents and purposes...You and I pay into SS now so they can give it to elderly today but they are not getting $$ that was set aside for them 50 years ago, they are getting $$ that they took out of our check's last week....also, look at the Federal budget pie and you will see how much goes to those programs each year....if you recall Clinton put in a welfare reform bill ot help save it...I read once where the fed gov't has spent approximately trillion dollars on these social programs since 1968.....has the gap between rich and poor changed with these programs or increased?
Lot's of false info and assumption is there.
SS is currently not bankrupt in fact there is currently a SS surplus (that should be used to offset impending increased drawdowns that *could* bankrupt SS) that Bush administration is planning on raiding to offset those tax breaks to top .01 of Americans.
HHS and Medicare costs *have* grown out of control - but they cannot be blamed for "bankrupting" any pension plans that I know of. The rise in these costs also has much to do with the aging population and the dismal state of healthcare economics in this country. Hardly a simple indictment of HHS/Medicare
Welfare (other than Medicare = less than $100 Billion out of 2 Trillion plus federal budget) This is the biggest lie in government. The amount of federal and state dollars that actually get spent on poverty fighting programs like food stamps, homeless shelters, and child nutrition, etc. is less than 3 months of the Pentagon's current peacetime operating budget.
Googled this up:
Conservatives and liberals alike use this claim as proof that federal poverty programs don't work, since after all that "lavish" spending, people are still poor. But spending on AFDC, the program normally referred to as welfare, totaled less than $500 billion from 1964 to 1994--less than 1.5 percent of federal outlays for that period, and about what the Pentagon spends in two years.
To get the $5 trillion figure, "welfare spending" must be defined to include all means-tested programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, student lunches, scholarship aid and many other programs. Medicaid, which is by far the largest component of the $5 trillion, goes mostly to the elderly and disabled; only about 16 percent of Medicaid spending goes to health care for AFDC recipients. ("What Do We Spend on 'Welfare'?," Center for Budget and Policy Priorities)
Furthermore, the poverty rate did fall between 1964 and 1973, from 19 percent to 11 percent, with the advent of "Great Society" programs. Since the 1970s, economic forces like declining real wages as well as reduced benefit levels have contributed to rising poverty rates.
