(Gingrich suggests Ryan Medicare plan is 'right-wing social engineering')

Conservative talkie Laura Ingraham interviewed Rep. Paul Ryan the other day and she got him to side with Rick Perry's ludicrous assertion that Social Security is nothin' but a Ponzi scheme.

Speaking on conservative radio on Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) agreed with Texas Gov. Rick Perry's (R) claim that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme."

When asked by host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday whether the country's social insurance program is a Ponzi scheme, Ryan replied, "That is how those schemes work."

Ryan: "So if you take a look at the technicality of Ponzi -- I would -- it's not a criminal enterprise," he said, according to a transcript. "But it is a pay-as-you-go system where ... earlier investors or, say, taxpayers, get a positive rate of return and the most recent investors -- or taxpayers -- get a negative rate of return."

A Ponzi scheme that's worked incredibly well since its inception back in 1935. Ryan is one of the Conservative young guns, someone they hope will articulate their vision for the future. Or, to put more realistically, he's a typical Wall Street corporate shill. His budget that was passed by House Republicans is designed to kill off Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. He hemmed and hawed responding to Ingraham, but finally agreed. I don't know why he just didn't endorse the idea immediately. So, as my pal Howie thinks. Will Perry pick Ryan to be his VP?

Right now he's playing it pretty even keeled as to who he will endorse:

Continue reading »

The ironic thing was that I had been planning to write a positive piece this morning about Obama’s remarks on housing in yesterday’s Twitter town hall, as I was pleased he was acknowledging the mistakes of his housing policy, and was hopeful that this statement — along with the outstanding news this morning of new Treasury rules forcing banks to give some mortgage relief to unemployed homeowners — signaled a tougher stance on Wall Street. And I was hoping that Christine Varney’s departure from the antitrust division at the Department of Justice might give an opportunity for someone more aggressive to be appointed there, so my mood was pretty good before I saw this morning’s all-hope-dies-here headline on Social Security. Oh, well. This administration has specialized at raising progressive hopes one minute and crushing them the very next.

The question now on Social Security is what exactly is on the table and what isn’t. The statement the White House put out this morning is this:

There is no news here. The President has always said that while Social Security is not a major driver of the deficit, we do need to strengthen the program and the President said in the State of the Union Address that he wanted to work with both parties to do so in a balanced way that preserves the promise of the program and doesn't slash benefits.

That not slashing benefits part of the statement sure sounds good and makes me feel better, but what does working with the Republicans in a balanced way mean? They want to cut benefits, not raise the payroll tax. And Social Security — unlike Medicare and Medicaid which include a lot of payments to providers that can be tinkered with in different ways to potentially lower costs — is all benefits. So is it on the table or isn’t it? The White House says the President is opposed to cutting benefits, which is wonderful, and I’m grateful for them reiterating that in the wake of the news reports this morning. But if you put it on the table, that means benefits might get cut, which is a disaster for the middle class, and a disaster for the Democratic Party. It would break the Democratic coalition into pieces, do more to alienate the base than any other thing the President could do, alienate seniors, who have never been too crazy about Obama anyway and who we need to move toward us in 2012, take away the political high ground Democrats seized because of the Ryan budget’s attacks on Medicare and Medicaid.

Continue reading »

Well, gee. Is this a bug - or a feature? Who could ever have predicted that concentrating all the wealth at the top and exempting them from increased Social Security taxes would lead to a decrease in the Social Security trust fund?

The nation's wealth gap is widening amid an uproar about lofty pay packages in the financial world.

Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data -- without counting billions of dollars more in pay that remains off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries.

Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total U.S. pay in 2007, the latest figures available. The compensation numbers don't include incentive stock options, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock units and certain benefits.

The pay of employees who receive more than the Social Security wage base -- now $106,800 -- increased by 78%, or nearly $1 trillion, over the past decade, exceeding the 61% increase for other workers, according to the analysis. In the five years ending in 2007, earnings for American workers rose 24%, half the 48% gain for the top-paid. The result: The top-paid represent 33% of the total, up from 28% in 2002.

The growing portion of pay that exceeds the maximum amount subject to payroll taxes has contributed to the weakening of the Social Security trust fund. In May, the government said the Social Security fund would be exhausted in 2037, four years earlier than was predicted in 2008.