Ohlemacher, you SUUCK!!

Stephen Ohlemacher, AP Hack, having finished his Big Series on Social Security, milks it for one more time.

You should never go back to a dry well. It's just sad.

The issue:

Unless Congress acts, the trust funds that support Social Security will run out of money in 2033, according to the trustees who oversee the retirement and disability program. At that point, Social Security would collect only enough tax revenue each year to pay about 75 percent of benefits.

When your lead is that lame, why go on? Because, Wolverines! that's why.

President Barack Obama hasn't laid out a detailed plan for addressing Social Security. He's called for bipartisan talks on strengthening the program but he didn't embrace the plan produced by a bipartisan deficit reduction panel he created in 2010.

For the 10,000th time : The panel did not produce a report.

Republican challenger Mitt Romney proposes a gradual increase in the retirement age to account for growing life expectancy. For future generations, Romney would slow the growth of benefits "for those with higher incomes."

This means nothing. He's supported privatization at times. With a grifter like Romney, you ask not what he said, but what he did, and who he's with. He picked Paul Ryan. Ryan has a clear goal: Kill social Security.

Nevertheless, Social Security is ripe for congressional action in the next year or two, if lawmakers get serious about addressing the nation's long-term financial problems. Why? Because Social Security is fixable.


Despite the program's long-term problems, Social Security could be preserved for generations to come with modest but politically difficult changes to benefits or taxes, or a combination of both.

Some options could affect people quickly, such as increasing payroll taxes or reducing annual cost-of-living adjustments for those who already get benefits. Others options, such as gradually raising the retirement age, wouldn't be felt for years but would affect millions of younger workers.
Fixing Social Security won't be easy. All the options carry political risks because they have the potential to affect nearly every U.S. family while angering powerful interest groups. Liberal advocates and some Democrats oppose all benefit cuts; conservative activists and some Republicans say tax increases are out of the question.
But Social Security is easier to fix than Medicare or Medicaid, the other two big government benefit programs. Unlike Medicare and Medicaid, policymakers don't have to figure out how to tame the rising costs of health care to fix Social Security.

The simple fact that there is no need to touch Social Security right now won't stop Ohlemacher - No Siree!

Social Security's problems seem far off. After all, the program has enough money to pay full benefits for 20 more years. But the program's financial problems get harder to fix with each passing year. The sooner Congress acts, the more subtle the changes can be because they can be phased in slowly.

We already covered this scam : Turning the effects of a bad couple years into the effects of not starving Granny* just won't cut it.

*Aunt Fritzi this week told Nancy that The Nutty Professor (1963) was a hit when she was Nancy's age. Which means Fritzi is pushing 60.

Needs reading glasses, but still hot.
 BTW : Suddenly getting traffic from Facebook. Nice! Could somebody let me know who linked this?

Thanks,
DP