“Toomey is wrong to say the stimulus package “gave us record debt without creating jobs”—because the debt is piling up thanks to unsustainable entitlement spending, and yes, the stimulus definitely did create some jobs.”

The amazing thing is that you’re able to publish this and not expect everyone to burst out laughing. You(along with the partisan “Fact Check” guys) must be the only people in the free world who believe this.

“because the debt is piling up thanks to unsustainable entitlement spending”

Um, what? I would like to see your evidence for that claim because I don’t think it’s true.

http://www.ncpssm.org/news/archive/2010_ss_medicare_trustees_report/

Granted NCPSSM has an agenda — namely preserving Social Security and Medicare — but let’s look at the most recent Trustee’s report. Thanks to healthcare reform, Medicare is now estimated solvent until 2029. Granted, 19 years means that we have to do work to fix it further, but you can hardly claim that it is racking up debt now; it isn’t. And healthcare reform will bend the skyrocketing cost-curve, which will have make further reforms more effective.

Also, because of the surplus in the Trust Fund, Social Security will be able to continue paying out 100% of expected benefits until 2037, and afterwards will have enough incoming revenue to pay out 78% of expected benefits.

Again, this doesn’t give us leeway to ignore these programs until 2026, when we might TRULY have a crisis in our social safety net. But claiming that Social Security and Medicare are contributing to the deficit/debt NOW is not true.

Almost 100% of the current deficit can be attributed to things OTHER than social safety net spending. The wars, the Bush Tax cuts, the bailouts, and the recession.

http://www.perrspectives.com/images/cbpp_bush_tax_cuts_deficit.jpg

Dan
—

May owe you (another) apology for that last comment. I missed the part where FactCheck referred to Social Security and Welfare. I thought that we you personally.

The biggest reason why debt has risen is that we saw the economy fall apart from the poor stewardship of the economy of Bush and the GOP. GDP is down, and tax reciepts have fallen while necessary spending to keep the country afloat after the biggest economic meltdown since the Hoover administration. To blame Obama for the missteps of the Republican Party is just shifting blame away from those who should accept it: the Republican Party.

Everyone needs to stop the lies about Social Security. It has a 2.6 TRILLION dollar trust fund. It can pay benefits until 2037 without any changes.

We have record debt because Bush and the GOP enacted reckless tax cuts for the wealthy in 2001 and 2003, while also starting wars in 2001 and 2003 without any thought to how they would be paid for; the latter of which was a tragic mistake. If the GOP had been responsible, they would have come to the American people and said, “We need to go fight terrorism, so everyone needs to dig deep and pay a little more to support the effort.” That would have been “fiscal responsibility”.

it was in a newspaper that Pat Toomey would consider raising the retirement age to help save social security. How many people do you think will be able to work till 70. Some republicans want to privitise social security so why do we need a social security tax anyhow because the only ones that will be able to retire will be people with couchy jobs and they can save their own money.

There is no Social Security Trust Fund. This is a myth.
As to Social Security Entitlement, something has to be done. The Democrats have talked about raising retirement age. When Social Security was enacted, average life expectancy was 62, and benefits kicked in at 65. Adjusting for longevity, the retirement age would be closer to 80.

sorry, Social Security is bankrupts and is paying out more than it is bringing in. There is not trust fund, the fund is government bonds which means taxes have to be raised to astronomical levels to pay those bond debt.

To say that debt is not at record level because it was higher when US was fighting WWII and coming out of depression is hair splitting. and as to the Stimulus creating jobs, are there more jobs now than in Jan 2007, or more jobs this month than this month last year. Toomey’s ad is correct and accurate. The Stimulus is a failure and we are approaching debt and deficits never seen in the US. Entitlement shortfalls were not included in Fact Check calculation and did not exist in 1945.

Bob —

That’s a very myopic way to look at things. Yes life expectancy has risen, and that is mainly due to people not dying as children. However, the typical person that reaches the age of 65 today lives only a few years longer than the typical person that lived to 65 in the 30s.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html

That might seem like a semantic difference, but it isn’t. From the book “The Battle for Social Security”

In 1940, men who survived to age 65 had a remaining life expectancy of 12.7 years. Today, a 65 year old man can expect to live not quite three years longer than he might have in 1940, or 15.3 years beyond reaching age 65. For women, the comparable numbers are 14.7 years beyond age 65 in 1940; 19.6 years in 1990.

So while people ARE living longer, we have *more* people living longer (and thus paying Social Security taxes during their working years, rather than dying as children). The average life expectancy might have been shorter at the inception of Social Security, but people who reached the program were on it for nearly as long. Life expectancy changes are something to be marvaled at sure, but they are not things which the creators of Social Security ignored.

Bob Guzzardi-
The GOP is using life expectancy of all people using the better infant mortality of today to make an argument based in fallacy that “Social Security is broke” when it is not in the least bit broke and has run surpluses for almost thirty years.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/fun-with-mortality-tables/

Bob the Democrats could always lower the unemployment rate the way bush and the GOP did, just let people drop off the roles so they don’t count. It’s So republican to throw people by the wayside.

bill healy-

It’s so Republican to throw 95% of americans under the bus.

Bob Guzzardi,

you are absolutely right. I have just taken a class in Public Policy we looked at Social/Entitlement Programs. They are not trust funds and they are not insurance, they are Ponsi schemes perpetuated by taxes! (The new health care program & cap and trade ya know to prevent global warming are the same [taxes] but I’m not getting into that, it just puts me in a bad mood). There is only enough money going in to the entitlement system to cover it month to month there is no excess. BUT this month is the first that S.S. is negative because there are too many laid off (no tax revenue) to keep the system going. It seems as though 401k plans may be confiscated, possibly to keep S.S. going but I’m not sure, I have to keep reading on this issue. So much for being self-reliant.

Don’t ya just love a planned economy? Keep going progressives, soon you’ll run out of other people’s money and you’ll have the economic equality you have been asking for.