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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us March 1, 2005 Crisis is real for Social Security funding By Doug Forsyth Ashland When it comes to Social Security the liberal left wants to pretend that there is not a problem and rather to bury its collective head in the sand. There is a real problem folks and it will come back and bite us one day. Social Security will fall into deficit into 2018 and the "trust fund" will not make up the shortfall because there is no money in it and there never has been. From everything I have read, no money has ever been saved for future retirees. The federal government simply has not saved the extra tax money pumped into the trust over the years. The fact is, since 1939, federal law has required Social Security to "invest" any extra money it has in Treasury bonds, which in essence means that the government has lent the money to itself. Social Security funds have been consolidated with all the other tax revenue and spent on programs such as defense, education and roads. Right now the Social Security retirement fund consists of nothing more than a bunch of paper IOUs. When the Social Security program begins to redeem these bonds, the Treasury having already spent that money, won't be able to repay Social Security from any existing store of cash. So in the future we will face a stark choice. We can either condemn our children to ever-higher taxes or ourselves to sharply lower Social Security benefits if we retire at 65, or we can change the system. Personally. I am in favor of keeping tax and benefits in balance. We pay out only what we take in. We do not increase taxation nor saddle ourselves with extra debt but rather increase the retirement age to 75, so we all work and save longer. And I also concur with the columnist, David Brooks, who suggested a scheme where the government allows parents to open tax-deferred savings accounts for each of their children at birth of a $1,000 deposit and $500 deposits in each of the next five years. The money could be invested in a limited number of mutual funds and could not be withdrawn until retirement. Over time it would grow and thanks to compound interest when they retired, they would each receive a retirement benefit of some $100,000. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Slippers Women's & Men's Slippers Ceramic Piggy Banks heloc libor rate Calenders 2005 Calender 2005 Accelerate Weightloss Products Memory Foam Mattress afsa studentloans home equity loans teleconferencing W2 Forms fasa student loans Matchmaking & Dating Scripts African Safari Conference Calls - $50/Month Security Systems student loan consolidation wholesale diamonds Currancy Exchange web conferencing Online Casinos Community Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams