given the depth and length of this recession (no matter that the anemic GDP is “positive”), but its reaching the ridiculous now given the time between loss of job and continuing dependence.

I would suggest that the GOP admit that the Soc Sec is unconstitutional and propose a const amendment to authorize a scaled-down version more in line with the supplement to prevent elderly homelessness that it started out as.

But yes, all the tea honesty could cost votes, but the best way for pols to speak in this era and most others, is straight talk, I think. We are the adults.

They hand everything back to the left in 2012.

I am not sure what Moe meant by sobriety, I doubt it meant roll over.

I agree we don’t need grandstanding but the time is short to be playing by Marquess of Queensberry rules.

This is my point. Will the rule mean that the GOP will not fund SS and Medicare? Of course not. Therefore, in order to be honest and not lose the elderly vote and more, one would have to propose a const amendment authorizing what one proposes to fund, it seems to me.

The Left media will be all over an honest GOP about the unconstitutionality of much of the safety net and more. And then will be all over us for authorizing funds for unconstitutional benefits.

We have needed to prepare an answer and proposal in this regard for years.

I also oppose judge-made law as in the 30s forward re interstate commerce decisions that were overbroad etc although much of what the court approved would have needed to be done with amendments.

My bottom line is that the GOP can’t be for ending soc sec and Medicare and Medicaid. Therefore we need to be for a const amendment to authorize what we must do, ie what Reagan called the safety net for the truly needy and the original Soc Sec supplement to prevent mass elderly homelessness and therefore fashion a const amendment that would authorize and at once limit the scope and spending in said amendment.

Gamecock, is in to intellectual honesty! smile

Been writing less due to money, ie the need to make it requiring more time. Also not getting paid for writing now except by Observer freelance and Examiner. Also am more into issues than candidates, and so now and re-energized.

I have always thought that we conservatives have been too loose with the constitutionality thing on these major programs and am sad to see Boehner & Co take this step without already prepared to deal it.

Therefore, I suspect that Ryan & Co will let me down and simply accept the bogus Sup Ct rulings and by doing so, give up much of the intellectual power of conservatism, esp the essential core of the virtue of small government and the firewall the Founders erected that has been torn down.

If we are to fix America, we have to walk this big govt back and it needed to be started before Obama tripled the problem. It was already a fatal problem.

Yes, this is the neo-con, religious right war hawk DeVine preaching the core of conservatism which is small govt, fiscally responsible economic conservatism., which I have always been but just don’t as often emphasize.

whew…tried…more later

That’s the way Congress would work if it really ran like a corporation. Companies regularly give benefit and bonus packages to people who save them money. Congress does not do that: it gives reelection to people who spend and waste more of the people’s money. This is the entire root of the problem.

Until we have a system where legislators are rewarded for cutting the budget and keeping it as small as it possibly can be, it won’t happen. They will all seek to aggrandize their offices for personal gain because they don’t get rewarded for NOT spending other people’s hard earned dollars, except in protest elections that happen spasmodically. Make it regular and the Federal Budget will shrink.

We say we do that at election time: we each and all proclaim that we’re donating money to campaigns for Senators and Congresspeople so they can stop spending so much of our money. They hire consultants to write fundraising emails to us, talking about how much they want to cut the budget and rebalance America’s finances. So we donate to them, we fund their campaigns, and two or four years later we’re faced with a slightly different collection of characters who say the same thing all over again with an even more jihugic federal expenditure to deal with.

Congress is a perpetual money machine on the receiving end. It’s composed of people who couldn’t ever survive in the world of business. You get elected to Congress by asking for charity and you survive in Congress by spending money that you didn’t earn. This is more true for Democrats but only slightly less true for Republicans.

If you want to change that and really change the system, turn it over.

mirac777-lots of good ideas

How John McCain? Fred Thompson? Ted Stevens? Orrin Hatch? Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms? All GOPers on Socia Security and the public payroll. It’s the system, not the parties. If we want to be viable, we have to be fair-minded, not idealogues. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place.

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why anyone would want to run for Congress. It’s certainly not the base pay. It has to be the slush that comes back. And so what happens is that all our legislators want the slush.

Jim DeMint had an article in the Wall Street Journal that I largely agreed with, warning the new crop of Tea Party Senators and Reps. about the perils of being “for sale.”

One of my answers to that is that we should pay people who are successfully elected to Congress much MORE, not less. I would think that $500,000 a year for a Representative and $1,000,000 a year for a Senator is about right. But at the same time, put very serious restrictions in place that will either increase or decrease their pay based on the budgets they pass.

My idea is to make Congresspeople less susceptible to perks and graft by elevating them above it. Nobody is going to complain about making half a million or a million dollars a year: and at that point they should be enough above the fray that we can enforce upon them a reality to cut the Federal Budget.

DeMint said: “If you’re not for sale, you can’t be bought.” I agree, but in a slightly different sense. The way you make people not for sale is to make sure they all have plenty of money to live on for an upper-middle class family. Everything beyond that should be strictly excluded. Period.

The privatized plans in Chile have worked out quite well, in part because investment is fairly conservative. The pensioners there have not experienced the drop which you fear for the reason that a diversified portfolio, even in bad times, is quite resilient. (And if that is the concern, can we not simply have a “safety net” that covers you if your assets go below a certain level, instead of requiring every one to enter the worthless investment program that is Social Security for the sake of a very few?

Even the worst 10 year period in the 20th century was barely a loss.

http://observationsandnotes.blogspot.com/2009/04/best-worst-10-years-in-stock-market.html

By the time someone is 55, we are talking about an investment portfolio of bond and mutual funds. We aren’t talking about an investment in an outcome at a casino.

principles of long term investment.

Principle one: as you near retirement you move your portfolio into much lower risk vehicles. But just following the basic stupidity of your comment, if you put your 401K/IRA into market index funds starting in 1987 when the Dow was 1,750 you’d be doing quite well now, even WITH a 30% drop. Invest 15% of your gross income – the cumulative effect of your and your employer’s contribution to SS – and you’d be fater and happier today than if you were chasing a SS check.

If you started working in ’87 at $25K and got a 4% raise annually, by simply investing in a Dow index that follows the market you’d have $300,000 in your retirement account right now. That’s only based on the money currently going to SS, assuming no additional contribution. If you tossed in an additional 5%, you’d have $400,000.

In the above example, you would have invested about half of the total, the market would have added the remainder. You won’t come anywhere near that with your SS checks. You’re infinitely better off even with a 30% drop.

If you put the balance in Treasuries or a similar lower risk vehicle as you approach retirement, that risk is gone. In addition, you actually own the account so if you die, your family actually has an estate.

There is no situation where SS is a better outcome than private retirement accounts.

about rent-seeking corporatists – no matter what industry.

was that it was a trivial part of SS, but that there was a lot of fraud/inefficiency involved.