OLEAN -- Among the worst things about an intractable war such as the one in Iraq is the distraction and disregard it spawns among politicians and media members alike, who realize that back on the homefront they can blithely ignore the steady dissipation of what was once a great and beautiful society.
That would be ours. The American society I grew up in, prospered in and loved.
You want some examples? Here, try this tidy little sum on for size, and see if it impresses you: $1.75 trillion.
Not exactly chump change, right? What does it represent?
According to a growing public advocacy group called the Campaign to Save Social Security and Medicare, this is the amount Congress and the executive branch have snatched and spent in the last 39 years by "raiding" the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for unrelated government programs.
Not only that, says the advocacy group, but in the relatively short time George W. Bush has been president (2001-2007) the amount of Social Security dollars spent on unrelated federal programs and projects has totaled $954 billion.
In other words, of all the incredible sums of Social Security money blown in the last four decades on things unrelated to retirees and the elderly, the current Bush Administration -- in just the last six years -- has pissed away about 55 percent of it.
The Congressional Budget Office is still working on the figures, but predicts the 2006 amount that Dubya's government dipped into the Social Security Trust Fund for non-retiree spending will total about $185 billion, the highest such figure ever. That's just for last year.
Another comparison to put this amazing heist into perspective:
In a 32-year period covering six presidents (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the Elder, Clinton) from 1968 until Dubya's election, $777.6 billion was spent by the feds from the Social Security Trust Fund on unrelated programs. In the one-and-a-half terms Dubya's been in office, $954 billion from that much-raided fund has been funneled to other uses. Quite a contrast in pace, don't you think?
Put another way, Dubya's government blew 120 percent of what his predecessors "raided" from the Social Security piggy bank in just 18 percent of the time it took his half-dozen forerunners. Outstanding performance, Dubya. Truly impressive.
George W. Bush is to the depletion of the Social Security Trust Fund as Babe Ruth was to the home run.
Of course, this is all an exercise in rhetoric in the first place. The Social Security Trust Fund doesn't really exist in the format you might think it does -- piles of currency, bonds and bullion stored safely in some vault under Fort Knox or some other federal facility, awaiting judicious disbursement to the growing hordes of retiring Baby Boomers. The more accurate mental picture would be just a big paper pile of IOUs somewhere in the cavernous basements of Congress.
Congress and the White House in recent decades have tended to treat the Social Security Trust Fund like you and I would treat our own private retirement nest egg -- cavalierly and without discipline. We get a bonus in pay or some sort of windfall, and briefly consider putting it into a savings fund or tuition fund or housing account or something we really need to plan for.
Then we say, screw it, let's buy that new car or take that expensive vacation or get that wall-sized TV. We don't live forever, you know.
Our federal government is the same way. As soon as that little payroll deduction box labeled FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) shows us how much we get nicked for Social Security contributions each week or month -- often before it shows us -- the feds have the money spent. Trust fund? Don't make me laugh.
This is what Al Gore tried to make us pay attention to in the 2000 presidential election. The Democratic candidate kept droning on in his stern, patient, patronizing fashion about putting those payroll contributions in a "lockbox" that couldn't be opened unless the money truly went to aging Social Security recipients. Oh, how we laughed when late-night comedians made sport of his teacherly manner and his stiff body movements in debate to portray the locking away of such fortune.
Mr. Gore, we ain't laughin' anymore. We owe you one big, fat apology.
Of course, we're all to blame. With terrorism and wars and politics and crime and science and technology and space adventure and abundant corporate riches and globalization and so much other interesting, pressing stuff to write about in recent decades, most Washington reporters and commentators found it boring as hell to research and compile stories on the Social Security issue. I was right in there with the rest of the reportorial crowd, ignoring the hell out of it -- until I approached retirement age myself and realized I was getting screwed along with the rest of aging Americans.
I probably averaged about two stories a year on the subject in my 22 years in the nation's capital -- and groused each time I drew the assignment. Mea culpa. Who's sorry now? Me. Now I'm wondering why I didn't scream and holler about the hypocrisy and misleading design of our entire supplemental retirement system.
And where does this "raided" Social Security money go? Who the hell really knows? But it seems safe to guess much of it is being poured down the fiscal ratholes of Iraq and Afghanistan when Dubya blithely announces -- as he did at the end of last week -- that he intends to ask Congress for another $100 billion to support those two bloody occupations. This, despite fresh polls that show 68 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's plan to boost troop levels in Iraq.
We're no longer getting close to the Vietnam parallel. We're there, my friends. We're there.
You're probably hearing more about the subject as you read this column. The new Democratic chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee, John Spratt of South Carolina, is holding oversight hearings this week on Iraq war spending -- something the Republicans assiduously avoided when they controlled Congress.
Spratt said last week the Iraq war has so far cost the taxpayers $379 billion, much of it borrowed by the government. The cost is expected to approach $140 billion in 2007 -- three times more for this year alone than former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the whole conflict would cost before we got into this fiscal swamp. So far, Congress has appropriated half of that amount. The rest will likely be included in Bush's supplemental budget in March. It will be hotly debated.
The Iraq Study Group -- a collection of trusted advisers that Bush the Elder used to rely on, and one studiously ignored by his son -- reported last month the war in Iraq is costing us about $8 billion a month, but that is misleading. In total, over the coming decades -- estimated the group -- this misadventure will set Americans back more than $2 trillion when medical and rehabilitation costs and all the detritus of war are finally figured in.
Hey, a trillion here, a trillion there -- pretty soon you're talking about real money, right?
Even Dubya's formerly loyal GOP hacks are sniping at him. Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, one of his most trusted foot soldiers on Capitol Hill, said last week the Iraq war is "being fought on our children's shoulders." He's right. Judd is the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. He estimated that $750 billion of the war's eventual cost will end up not being funded. That means the White House will search elsewhere to pay it off. Guess where one of those places will be.
If you answered Social Security Trust Fund, you've been paying close attention. Bush has other overall budgetary problems besides the war. He inherited a federal surplus from Bill Clinton somewhere north of $300 billion and has already turned it into a $2.8 trillion federal debt.
As the Campaign to Save Social Security and Medicare points out, the Social Security plan is deficient anyway, even before one begins to consider the above endangerments. The senior citizens are supposed to receive a yearly Cost of Living Adjustment or COLA, designed to compensate for inflation. It's pretty much of a pittance, but over the years it helps old folks keep pace. Or does it?
The aforementioned campaign officials insist the current COLA is calculated "using a formula that doesn't properly measure the increased cost of goods more frequently used by seniors."
Instead, the federal math whizzes "wrongly base it on the buying habits of younger urban workers. It doesn't meet the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs, health care and insurance, and other items seniors depend on more than any other age group."
Seniors, the campaign strategists hold, have been shafted in this manner out of more than 6 percent of their deserved COLA in the last half-decade or so. In other words, the typical senior retiree would be receiving about $408 more a year in benefits had the fair and more accurate COLA been applied since Dubya came to power.
You'll hear more about this. The Campaign to Save Social Security and Medicare is -- somewhat ironically -- a project of the larger National Association for Uniformed Services, a potential lobbying juggernaut that looks after ensuring fair benefits for retired and active veterans of the Armed Forces. It is run by a man known for his military precision, energy, leadership and wide experience within both the federal government and private sector.
Retired Gen. William M. Matz Jr. was commander or staff officer for six different divisions and was executive secretary to the secretary of defense. He's also been vice president of Raytheon Company, the outfit that brought us the Patriot missile. He was wounded in action in Vietnam. He knows how this whole thing works.
So, pay attention to Social Security and its dwindling, disappearing future. A few years back, when twentysomethings in Manhattan were asked in a reliable poll if they thought Social Security checks would be forthcoming by the time they retired, the number that answered affirmatively was near single digits. More than double the number of these young optimists in the poll said they believed in the existence of extraterrestrial beings. We all got a good laugh over these cynical New Yorkers and their responses. Now I'm pretty sure they were on to something.
Tune in again in future weeks, and I'll explain how within a decade or so, unless changes are made, the annual federal budget will be spent on mandatory "entitlements" -- bills, bonds, interest and allocations that have to be paid and made under previous law and "chiseled-in-stone" programs, leaving zero for new spending. Social Security and Medicare are big parts of that story, too.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | January 16 2007 |