When we subtract the social security surplus from the budget, we can see just how badly the Bush administration has mismanaged our national budget. Bush has made it common policy to keep Social Security cost of living increases down, so that the Social Security tax surplus can be used to finance our military and pork barrel spending. The 2009 U.S. budget shows us something about the state of the Social Security system in the USA today.
Social Security Taxes Collected: $949.4 billion
Social Security expenditures: $644 billion
Social Security surplus: $305.4 billion
While many of our old people are forced to eat dog food, can't go to the doctor because they can't afford to pay their Medicare copays, and can't buy heating gas for the winter, the Federal government takes that extra $305 billion dollars, which would equal an extra $470 per month for every Social Security recipient in the U.S., and uses it for such wasteful nonsense as bridges to nowhere, to studying the DNA of bears. It just issues new Treasury Bills to the SS trust fund, which it has no intention of ever actually redeeming. LIke the banks, our government is selling us a bill of goods while ripping off our elderly.
We need to separate Social Security from the Federal budget, and we need to spend the social security taxes that our government collects on our seniors, not for financing pork in the budget. I would prefer a pay-as-you-go type system, in which the taxes collected are divided between the senior citizens now, rather than keeping the cost of living increases below the actual amount that their bills have risen, and spending the extra money on pork barrel politics. That $305 billion dollars per year is basically just stolen from our seniors every year by a government that has become so bloated that it can't collect enough taxes to pay for its largesse.
Under Bush, if we subtract the Social Security surplus and add in the off-budget spending, he has averaged spending about $650 BILLION dollars more each year than our government has collected in taxes, at the expense of our Senior Citizens, the part of the population which is the least able to defend itself, while lowering taxes for corporations and the rich, and subsidizing the losses of the banking industry, all at the expense of those who have worked hard all theri lives and earned the right to live without hunger or in fear of freezing to death in their declining years.