You won't be getting a Social Security cost of living increase next year...

The reason is gas prices are holding down the calculated price measure. That may be a little unfair to seniors. Many of them don't own a car or even drive. The cost of food, especially meat and eggs is up. Also, thanks to Obama's regulations, electricity is continuing it's to rise.

Via WSJ:

Blame soft inflation, including the nearly 30% drop in gas prices over the past year. The official price measure used to calculate the annual living-cost adjustment was down 0.4% from last year’s level in the third quarter, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Congress adopted the formula in the 1970s. While it has resulted in an average benefit increase of 4.1% over the past 40 years, benefits have gone up an average of just 2% over the past 10 years. There were no increases for 2010 and 2011.
Keep on reading…

Obama's IRS reluctant to penalize employers who consistently file W-2s with mismatched names...

Most with mismatched names and numbers are illegals...

CNSNews.com reported::

An audit report published this month by the inspector general for the Social Security Administration says that the Internal Revenue Service’s reluctance to penalize employers who consistently file W-2s on which the Social Security Number and name do not match has “hindered” the SSA’s efforts to stop “unauthorized noncitizens” from using Social Security Numbers that are fake or belong to someone else.
The audit report looked at “inaccurate wage reporting”—or the filing of W-2 forms on which the name and the Social Security Number do not match. The SSA has long said these no-match W-2s are frequently filed on behalf of illegal aliens. According to the IG audit report released earlier this month, a senior IRS official admitted to the IG that the service knows this is the case.
“Furthermore,” said the report, “a senior employment tax official at the IRS acknowledged that unauthorized noncitizens accounted for a high percentage of inaccurate wage reporting.”
The audit looked at the U.S. employers who in tax years 2007-2009 (the latest for which all data was available) had the worst records for filing W-2s on which the names and Social Security Numbers did not match
The IG determined the 100 employers who filed the the largest raw numbers of no-match W-2s in those three years and the 100 employers (with at least 100 employees a piece) who filed the most as a percentage of their payrolls.
The audit discovered that the employer with the very worst record for filing no-match W-2s had filed 117,792 over the three years—an average of 39,246 no-match W-2s per year.[...]
“SSA senior staff did not believe employers had an incentive to submit accurate annual wage reports because the IRS rarely enforced existing penalties,” said the report. “SSA staff believed applying penalties would deter SSN misuse. Furthermore, SSA senior staff believed the Agency could provide the IRS with sufficient evidence to show an employer knew or should have known its employees’ SSNs were incorrect. For example, a reasonable person should recognize that hundreds of workers could not have the same or consecutively numbered SSNs.”

Taxes to go up $1,000 a year for the typical American household in January

This will affect all workers, even the ones whodon't pay or owe any federal income tax. President Obama wanted to give money to the 47% of the country that doesn't pay federal income taxes, but vote democrat.  The mechanism for that reward was a 2% cut in the Social Security tax taken out of workers paychecks. Social Security is already financially unsound long-term. This tax cut  has to go away.

 Via WSJ:

Neither the Obama administration nor congressional Republicans want to increase taxes on everyone, but most workers are likely to see lower take-home pay in 2013, eating away at economic growth.

The White House, in its latest offer Monday to resolve the fiscal cliff, made a key concession that would be felt by every U.S. wage earner: allowing the expiration of the payroll tax cut, a provision that has lowered the workers’ share of Social Security taxes by two percentage points for the past two years. That translates into an average tax increase of about $1,000 a year for the typical American household making about $50,000 annually.

Letting the payroll tax rate revert to 6.2% from the current 4.2% would raise government revenue by about $125 billion next year, equivalent to 0.8% of total U.S. economic output, according to J.P. Morgan Chase.

Social Security $8.6 trillion in the hole over the lifetime of someone born today

Social Security faces an unfunded liability of $8.6 trillion over the next 75 years.

(CNSNews.com) — Social Security faces an unfunded liability of $8.6 trillion, according to the 2012 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds.

The unfunded liability is the amount that has been promised in benefits to people now alive that will not be funded by the tax revenue the system is expected to take in to pay for those benefits. [..]

The $8.6 trillion in unfunded benefits Social Security is expected to pay over the next 75 years equals $73,167.83 for each of the 117,538,000 households the Census Bureau said were in the United States in 2010.

Guess who thought a “pay-as-you-go” Social Security system would saddle future generations with huge debts

 

Signing Of The Social Security Act

Would you believe Franklin D. Roosevelt?

Via The Washington Post:

Would Franklin Roosevelt approve of Social Security? The question seems absurd. After all, Social Security is considered the New Deal’s signature achievement. It distributes nearly $800 billion a year to 56 million retirees, survivors and disabled beneficiaries. On average, retired workers and spouses receive $1,839 a month — money vital to the well-being of millions. Roosevelt would surely be proud of this, and yet he might also have reservations. Social Security has evolved into something he never intended and actively opposed.

It has become what was then called “the dole” and is now known as “welfare.” This forgotten history clarifies why America’s budget problems are so intractable.

When Roosevelt proposed Social Security in 1935, he envisioned a contributory pension plan. Workers’ payroll taxes (“contributions”) would be saved and used to pay their retirement benefits. Initially, before workers had time to pay into the system, there would be temporary subsidies. But Roosevelt rejected Social Security as a “pay-as-you-go” system that channeled the taxes of today’s workers to pay today’s retirees. That, he believed, would saddle future generations with huge debts — or higher taxes — as the number of retirees expanded.

Discovering that the original draft wasn’t a contributory pension, Roosevelt ordered it rewritten and complained to Frances Perkins, his labor secretary: “This is the same old dole under another name. It is almost dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress . . . to meet.”

Sheriff Joe Arpaio on investigation into Obama's social security number: " there could be a shock there somewhere that my guys came up with"

Arizona  Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has convened a posse to investigate allegations President Obama is using a fraudulent social security number and forged birth certificate. He is playing his cards close to the vest, but he has strongly hinted there is a problem with the social security number.

Tuesday night, speaking to a tea-party group in Arizona, Arpaio said, "I can't tell you everything, but there could be a shock there somewhere that my guys came up with. I can't talk too much about it. It's in the process."...

The posse, assembled under the authority of Arpaio's office, consists of three former law enforcement officers and two retired attorneys with law enforcement experience. Members have been examining evidence since September concerning Obama's eligibility to be president under Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, which requires a president to be a natural-born citizen.

He referenced disputes over the Social Security number attributed to the president and said, "There are a couple of things you and nobody else here knows anything about yet that could be a little bit exciting."

WND and others have claimed proof that President Obama's social security number was issued in Connecticut when Barry Obama was a teenager living in Hawaii. Also, President Obama's social security number is flagged when entered into the new E-Verify system.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) defends Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s description of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.”

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and poops like a duck, it's probably a duck.

(The Hill) — The Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee on Tuesday drew fire from the Democrats for backing Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s description of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.”
Social Security fits the technical definition of a Ponzi scheme, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told conservative Laura Ingraham on her radio show.

“It’s not a criminal enterprise, but it’s 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,” he said. “That is how those schemes work.”

Flashback: Romney Compared Social Security to Criminal Enterprise

 

The Perry campaign zings Mitt Romney on Social Security.

Reported by the Weekly Standard:

The Perry campaign blasts out a pretty clean hit on Mitt Romney:

Last night, Romney said, “Under no circumstances would I ever say, by any measure, it’s a failure. It is working for millions of Americans.”

However, in his book “No Apology: The Case For American Greatness”, which was published just last year, Romney compared those managing Social Security to criminals, saying:

“Let’s look at what would happen if someone in the private sector did a similar thing. Suppose two grandparents created a trust fund, appointed a bank as trustee, and instructed the bank to invest the proceeds of the trust fund so as to provide for their grandchildren’s education. Suppose further that the bank used the proceeds for its own purposes, so that when the grandchildren turned eighteen, there was no money for them to go to college. What would happen to the bankers responsible for misusing the money? They would go to jail. But what has happened to the people responsible for the looming bankruptcy of Social Security? They keep returning to Congress every two years.” More here..

Rick Perry on Social Security: “It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people"

Texas Gov. Rick Perry isn't backing down from his claim Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. He first made the claim in his book “Fed Up!”.

OTTUMWA, Iowa —... Asked by a woman in the crowd about Social Security being viewed as an entitlement program, Perry reiterated the suggestion in his anti-Washington book “Fed Up!” that the program amounts to a Ponzi scheme.

“It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people The idea that they’re working and paying into Social Security today (and) the current program is going to be there for them is a lie,” Perry said. “It is a monstrous lie on this generation, and we can’t do that to them.”

Later, in Des Moines, when a reporter asked about the suggestion his campaign was backing off some positions in the staunch states-rights book, Perry said, “I haven’t backed off anything in my book. So read the book again and get it right.”

Is Gov. perry correct? Here is the definition of a Ponzi scheme from the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

What is a Ponzi scheme?

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity.

FOX News Scrubs O'Reilly Email Segment About Obama's Social Security Number

 President Obama's social security number looks very fishy. In Bill O'Reilly's "birther" debunking segment, O'Reilly completely ignored this issue. He did respond to a viewer email asking about it. O'Reilly claimed Barack Obama Sr. must have gotten the number for his son when he lived in Connecticut.  We know, from the number, President Obama's social security number was issued in Connecticut in the late 1970's. At that time, Obama Sr. was clearly back in Kenya. Furthermore, there is no evidence Barack Obama Sr. or Jr. ever lived in Connecticut. That claim is ridiculous. Shamefully, FOX News has edited that part of O'Reilly's mail segment from their website and podcast.

The scrubbed part is included in the embedded video at about the 9:00 mark. The entire video is very informative if you haven't researched this issue.

Barack Obama: International Man of Mystery

There are many mysterious things about Barack Obama. Why does he hide his long form birth certificate? Was he adopted by Indonesian Lolo Soetoro? Was he a registered foreign student at Occidental college? How did he travel to Pakistan as a young man and what did he do there? How did he get into Harvard and who paid his tuition? What was his relationship with convicted terrorist Bill Ayers? How did a man who had never wrote anything of significance, before or after,  write the bestselling book "Dreams of My Father?" In addition to these questions, we now must ask, "Why does Obama have a social security number that on first glance appears to be potentially fraudulent."

Protectourliberty.org ran the ad, embedded below, in yesterdays Washington Times.

Whose SSN is President Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama Using?  Wash Times Natl Wkly 11 Apr 2011 pg 5

You may wonder how we know this is the correct number for Barack Obama. If you know someones social security number, last name and birth date, you can pull up their selective service record at this government website. Here is a screen capture for Obama's number.

Clearly, the number in the ad was being used by Barack Obama during his adult life. Many people don't know that social security numbers have meaning. I was able to amaze many of my coworkers by guessing the first three digits of their social security numbers by asking them where and about when they received them. The first three digits define a state of issue and time period for most social security numbers issued after the very early 1970's. We know the social security number Barack Obama is using was issued in Connecticut in the late 1970's. This is very strange because Obama is not known to have ever lived in Connecticut. Furthermore, he worked at a Baskin Robins during high school and went to Occidental college on the west coast before he moved east. Both of these should have required Obama to already have a social security number. One investigator has entered Obama's social security number into the Social Security Number Verification Service (SSNVS) web site and it came back “Failed” with a Verification Results Code 1, which is defined as: “SSN not in file (never issued).” You can see a screen capture of this information here.

Dingy Harry Reid: “Social Security Has Not Contributed One Penny to The National Debt in 75 Years”

That claim is false.

“Social Security has not contributed one penny to the debt or the deficit ever in its 75 years,” Reid said at Monday’s event.

The claim is false. According to the actuaries for Social Security and Medicare, the Social Security program ran a deficit of approximately $41 billion, excluding interest on the bonds in the Social Security trust funds. Those bonds, which are a special type of Treasury bond, are placed in the trust funds in place of the cash surpluses Social Security has taken in from payroll taxes.

Missouri Democrat Rep. Russ Carnahan makes a Fool of Himself by Claiming Social Security is Stable. (video)

The crowd laughs at him.

Video: GOP Rep. Paul Ryan destroys Florida Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Social Security Debate

Rep. Paul Ryan asks Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to keep the debate on an "adult level."

Gibbs Asked About Discrepancy In Obama's Social Security Number. Gibbs Changes Subject To Birth Certificate.

Investigators claim President Obama's social security number indicates it was issued in Connecticut. There is no record Obama ever lived or worked in that state. Robert Gibbs was asked about this discrepancy today. He changed the subject to birth certificate.



Additionally, Obama's social security number was issued several years after he reportedly started work in Hawaii as a teenager.

Social Security will run deficits the next two years. Democrats applauded Reform's Demise in 2006

The CBO has projected that Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes next year and in 2011.

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes next year and in 2011, a first since the early 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security.

During President Bush's 2006 State of the Union address he said, "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security." Democrats including Barack Obama applauded this remark.

Democrats Applauding Their Own Obstructionism


Senator Obama applauds failure of Social Security reform.


Hat tip NewsBusters.