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US Admits Social Security Going Bankrupt; Warns Public Should Be Given ‘Adequate Time to Prepare’ for the Collapse

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For years now, government agencies, politicians, economists and pundits have tried to sound the alarm over the federal government’s out-of-control spending and spiraling national debt.

The predictions of dire financial consequences have actually been widely publicized in the mainstream. In July 2014, for example, The Hill reported on an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office that Congress’ and the White House’s inability to control or reform entitlement spending – considered to be politically radioactive by members of both parties – is collapsing the budget . . .

And in August 2015, Reuters reported that the current trajectory of entitlement spending – boosted in large part by taxpayer-supported health insurance subsidies mandated under Obamacare – is simply unsustainable . . .

[And] the 2015 report of the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees plainly states: “Social Security as a whole as well as Medicare cannot sustain projected long-run program costs…”, and that the government should be “giving the public adequate time to prepare.”

That is about as clear as it gets: There won’t be enough money in the future to cover the government’s promises of benefits, period. It doesn’t get more plain. (Read more from “US Admits Social Security Going Bankrupt; Warns Public Should Be Given ‘Adequate Time to Prepare’ for the Collapse” HERE)

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Social Security Administration Spending Hit Record in 2015

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Spending by the Social Security Administration–which includes payments for Social Security and disability benefits as well as Supplemental Security Income payments and the administrative costs for these programs–hit a record $944,143,000,000 in fiscal 2015, according to data published by the U.S. Treasury.

Even in constant 2015 dollars (with adjustments made using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator), that was up $33,748,280,000 from the $910,394,720,000 the Social Security Administration spent in fiscal 2014.

As of September, there were 59,737,817 beneficiaries getting Social Security or disability benefits, according to the SSA. At the same time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 148,800,000 people who had either a full- or part-time job in the United States. That means there were only 2.49 people with jobs for each of the 59,737,817 Social Security and disability beneficiaries.

At the same time, there were only 121,839,000 people with full-time jobs in the United States in September, according to BLS. Those 121,839,000 full-time job holders equaled about 2.04 for each of the 59,737,817 people getting Social Security or disability benefits.

The $944,143,000,000 spent by the Social Security Administration in fiscal 2015 equaled about $6,345 for each of the 148,800,000 persons in the country with a job as of September. It equaled about $7,749 for each of the 121,839,000 people with a full-time job. (Read more from “Social Security Administration Spending Hit Record in 2015” HERE)

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Social Security is in Worse Shape Than You Thought [+video]

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cThe Social Security Administration projects that its trust funds will be depleted by 2033—not an optimistic forecast. But it may be even bleaker than that.

New studies from Harvard and Dartmouth researchers find that the SSA’s actuarial forecasts have been consistently overstating the financial health of the program’s trust funds since 2000.

“These biases are getting bigger and they are substantial,” said Gary King, co-author of the studies and director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. “[Social Security] is going to be insolvent before everyone thinks.”

The Social Security and Medicare Trustees’ 2014 report to Congress last year found trust fund reserves for both its combined retirement and disability programs will grow until 2019. Program costs are projected to exceed income in 2020 and the trust funds will be depleted by 2033 if Congress doesn’t act. Once the trust funds are drained, annual revenues from payroll tax would be projected to cover only three-quarters of scheduled Social Security benefits through 2088.

Researchers examined forecasts published in the annual trustees’ reports from 1978, when the reports began to consistently disclose projected financial indicators, until 2013. Then, they compared the forecasts the agency made on such variables as mortality and labor force participation rates to the actual observed data. Forecasts from trustees reports from 1978 to 2000 were roughly unbiased, researchers found. In that time, the administration made overestimates and underestimates, but the forecast errors appeared to be random in their direction. (Read more from “Social Security Is in Worse Shape Than You Thought” HERE)

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Bill to Stop Nazi Benefit Payments Heads to Obama

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Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

A bill that would block suspected Nazi war criminals from receiving Social Security benefits is heading to President Barack Obama for his signature.

By voice vote late Thursday, the Senate gave final congressional approval to a measure that would shut a loophole that allowed suspected Nazis to be paid millions of dollars in benefits, clearing it for the White House. Under the bill, benefits would be terminated for Nazi suspects who have lost their American citizenship, a step called denaturalization. U.S. law currently requires a higher threshold — a final order of deportation — before Social Security benefits can be stopped.

The legislation was introduced after an Associated Press investigation published in October revealed that Social Security benefits have been paid to dozens of former Nazis after they were forced out of the United States.

The House unanimously approved the bill on Tuesday on a 420-0 vote.

The White House and the Social Security Administration signaled support for denying benefits to former Nazis following the AP’s report. The Justice Department said it was open to considering proposals that would terminate the Social Security payments.

Read more from this story HERE.

Illegal Immigrants Eligible for Social Security, Medicare Under Obama's New Plan

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Photo Credit: Examiner

Photo Credit: Examiner

Many immigrants in the United States illegally who apply for work permits under President Barack Obama’s new executive actions would be eligible for Social Security and Medicare benefits upon reaching retirement age, according to the White House.

Under Obama’s actions, immigrants who are spared deportation could obtain work permits and a Social Security number. As a result, they would pay into the Social Security system through payroll taxes.

No such “lawfully present” immigrant, however, would be immediately entitled to the benefits because like all Social Security and Medicare recipients they would have to work 10 years to become eligible for retirement payments and health care. To remain qualified, either Congress or future administrations would have to extend Obama’s actions so that those immigrants would still be considered lawfully present in the country.

None of the immigrants who would be spared deportation under Obama’s executive actions would be able to receive federal assistance such as welfare or food stamps, or other income-based aid. They also would not be eligible to purchase health insurance in federal exchanges set up by the new health care law and they would not be able to apply for tax credits that would lower the cost of their health insurance.

The issue of benefits for immigrants who are illegally in the United States is a particularly sensitive one for the Obama administration. As a result, the White House has made it clear that none of the nearly 5 million immigrants affected by Obama’s actions would be eligible for federal assistance. The Obama administration first denied younger immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children access to health care exchanges and tax credits in 2012, especially disappointing immigrant advocates.

Read more from this story HERE.

IG: $2 Billion in Benefits for 25,000 People Wrongly Awarded

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Photo Credit: iStock Photo

Photo Credit: iStock Photo

Lax Social Security judges improperly awarded nearly 25,000 people $2 billion over a seven-year period, the Social Security inspector general reported Friday.

In a report that was requested by the Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in January, Inspector General Patrick O’Carroll Jr., found 44 Social Security administrative law judges who approved the vast majority of their claimants, over 85 percent of cases.

Taking a sample of the cases approved by those judges and referring questionable awards to Social Security’s own quality monitor, the inspector general extrapolated that those judges accounted for nearly 25,000 beneficiaries whose awards may have been granted improperly.

Over the past seven years, the inspector general estimated, Social Security has spent $2 billion on those disability recipients and will “continue paying approximately $273 million to these same beneficiaries over the next 12 months.”

Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, criticized the Social Security Administration in a statement accompanying the release, saying that its “failure to conduct timely medical eligibility reviews has resulted in rubber-stamped decisions that have and will continue to cost taxpayers billions in improper awards. In failing to take meaningful disciplinary action at the Social Security Administration, even after the most egregious cases of mismanagement, taxpayers are left to wonder — who is looking after their tax dollars.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Social Security Administration CLOSES 597 Offices

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller Social Security has long-term financial challengers but the agency that administers it faces more immediate problems, according to a bipartisan report.

Sixty-four Social Security offices have closed since 2009, despite an ever-increasing backlog of applications for benefits, MarketWatch reports. The Senate Special Committee on Aging discussed these findings earlier this week.

Only 1,245 offices are currently operational in the country as of 2014, since 533 temporary mobile offices have also been closed, and of the offices still remaining, availability hours have been significantly reduced.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is in its largest five-year decline since it was created 79 years ago. Aside from offices, over 11,000 workers have been laid off in the last three years.

“They don’t do any kind of analysis on what would happen to a community when their field office closes, including figuring out how the most vulnerable populations would make their way to the next-closest office,” said Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, chairman of the Aging Committee.

Read more from this story HERE.

Government Suspends Controversial Program to Recover Money from Adult Children of Dead Taxpayers

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Social Security Administration announced Monday it is suspending a controversial program that goes after adult children of deceased taxpayers who the government claims were recipients of overpayments more than a decade ago.

Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin said she has directed an immediate halt to the three-year-old program while the agency does a review. The controversial program seized tax refunds in an effort to recoup the funds.

The move to halt the program came after many of the recipients and members of Congress complained to the federal agency.

“While this policy of seizing tax refunds to repay decades-old Social Security overpayments might be allowed under the law, it is entirely unjust,” Democratic Sens. Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland said in a letter to Colvin.

After Colvin’s announcement, Boxer said in a statement: “I am grateful that the Social Security Administration has chosen not to penalize innocent Americans while the agency determines a fair path forward on how to handle past errors.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Slouching Toward Bankruptcy

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Photo Credit: Tax Credits

Photo Credit: Tax Credits

In November 2004, President George W. Bush was re-elected after campaigning on personal accounts for Social Security. It was unfair, he argued at the time, to make a generation of young people pay into a system that’s going broke. Bush’s plan promised to make the program solvent, allow younger workers the option to earn a better return by investing part of their Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts, while maintaining the status quo for current retirees.

Republicans held substantial majorities in both houses of Congress, including 55 senators. Yet there would be no Social Security reform.

Opinions vary about why that was. Writing in Forbes in 2011, Peter Ferrara, one of the strongest advocates for Social Security privatization, argued that the proposal failed because “Bush’s White House staff in charge of the Social Security reform effort never understood the politics or policy of personal accounts, and proved ineducable on the subject.” On the other side of the issue, William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argued in 2007 that “President Bush overestimated the amount of political capital he had banked.”

In his memoir Decision Points, Bush blames the failure on the “rigid Democratic opposition” and the lack of “strong Republican backing to get a Social Security bill through Congress.” He also recognizes that he bears some responsibility himself. Bush suggests, for instance, that he might have made some progress with centrist Democrats had he not personally campaigned against Democratic incumbents in 2002 and 2004. He also thinks that if in 2005 he had started with immigration reform rather than Social Security, he could have passed both and the country would be a better place for it.

Since the Bush debacle, Republicans have not had the courage to rally behind a plan to reform Social Security. But while the political will may not exist, the 77-year-old system remains in serious need of a makeover.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senator Lee Says Young Americans Think They Are ‘More Likely to See Elvis Alive in This Lifetime Than Get a Dime From Social Security’

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(CNSNews.com) — While speaking about Social Security, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked the audience at the Young Americans for Liberty Conference on July 31, “Most of you probably believe you are more likely to see Elvis alive in this lifetime than to get a dime from Social Security, am I right?”

Judging from the applause and cheers, it seemed that a large majority of the audience agreed with the senator. At the event, Lee was asked, “You mentioned Social Security and I would say probably most of the room on the way to the airport had to go through TSA and probably opted-out of TSA. So we were all trying to opt-out of TSA security, but what about Social Security? Would you allow our generation to opt-out of Social Security and say, ‘Look, we won’t take a dime from Social Security, we’ll take care of ourselves, let us keep our money.’ Is that a viable option, is that something that can be proposed?”

Lee responded, “Let’s talk about Social Security opt-out. The reason that that is so appealing probably to every single person in this room — and tell me if I’m right — is because most of you probably believe you are more likely to see Elvis alive in this lifetime than to get a dime from Social Security, am I right?”

After the audience applause, Lee said, “That’s about what I thought. So, the reason for that it’s not arbitrary, it’s not irrational that you feel that way. You have good reason to feel that way. You’ve seen the government set up this program, set it up in the 1930s. It was set up as an investment program, an income security program.”

“It was kind of like insurance, it was kind of like a savings plan,” said Lee. “The government told the people — even though none of us were born when this happened — the government told the people this can never be taken away. You’ll pay into it, the government will safeguard it, we’ll put it into a really safe box, and then we will give it to you when you retire.”

Read more from this story and see video HERE.