Politics today are confusing.

 

 

Politics today are confusing. I was watching a Trump campaign advertisement about Social Security. Here was this ad with this nice senior citizen telling us how Biden was going to cut her Social Security and cut her Medicare. I thought that this was a little bit of a stretch so I googled Biden and Social Security. I think that under Biden these two programs are safe. He did take a fiscally conservative approach in the 80s with cuts in the cost of living adjustments to help the deficit but overall, I think the programs would be pretty safe under him.

Now Social Security and Medicare have always been paid for with a separate tax. Trump I believe has proposed eliminating the Social Security and Medicare tax and just have the money come out of the general fund. That raised a lot of red flags to me. The first one is what would happen to all the money that I had put into it? Would it just go into the general fund too?

This started me to think about a program that I was involved with so bear with my story. My wife and I have been sailboat racers at our local club for years and at the end of the year we would have very nice awards banquet. One Sunday afternoon we were sitting with the Race Director and he was telling us how mad the Board was with him for the amount of money that he was spending for awards and he needed to come up with a way to raise money for the awards. Now my wife used to be a sailing instructor so we came up with the idea for an adult sailing class, run by the racing program that could raise money for the awards banquet. It also increased exposure to the club that also helped membership. The program was very successful and the racing program now had the money it needed. A few years went by and things got a little bit tight financially for the club so the board voted to absorb the Adult Sailing Program and the income it generated into the general fund. Well let’s just say that the awards banquet was never the same.

Is that what will happen to Social Security if it was absorbed into the general fund? That is what I would be afraid of what would happen. Now the racing program was part of the club and the board had every right to do it but I do think it had a long term affect on the racing program. Now Social Security is not part of the general fund and I believe it is that way to protect the program from politicians that would want to use the funds for other things like paying for tax cuts for the rich. Paul Ryan wanted to privatize Social Security. I know that sounded exciting to some but I think it was just another scheme to funnel that money to the rich and the poor would have suffered.

Social Security is important and it must be protected. It really must be protected from greedy politicians that only want to line the pockets of their friends and themselves.