Pelosi et al are shameless

[cutterx2202]

I don't know what to say. Basically the opposite of everything you have mentioned is the truth. Go back to your Fox News conservative chest thumping though.

*Whoosh
(the noise of the words going over your head as you miss the point, and the topic.)
Who bolstered Fox? I didn't (though I do watch it, along with others, though the others are more for entertainment value because they think they're unbiased. All of them are biased). Also, there's not really room for opinion in there being a debt. There's also not room for opinion on there being a spending problem. There's also no room for opinion on how much Obama's spent over budget since in office. Those are all facts. So what opinion of mine are you on the opposite side of?

[Annoying]

And just FYI, even if the military is complete anihilated, spending would still be higher than the tax revenues. You gotta have to cut / reform the welfare state

Wait, wait. You even answered the solution in the middle there. Tax revenues. I don't understand the whole "we have to cut things and only cut things to fix our debt issue". Why can't we cut things and increase taxes? Or you know, just pull the tax cuts worth more than two and a half trillion? Or fix tax loopholes for businesses? Or all those things?

[Cthulhu 2020]

Welcome to America, where socialism is considered left of center.

That's the American right, not America. Socialism exists somewhere on the far far left and is nowhere near Obama's policies. Socialism is a scary buzzword, twisted by Fox News and other "popular" right wing media, that the vast majority of Republicans have demonstrated they know nothing about. You ask them what socialism is and they'll spew forth "Obamanation" and then ramble off the definition of communism.

There's not an irrational fear of Fox, there's a rational dislike for their distortion of the truth, half truths, and flat out lies. Sorry, Fox News isn't a reliable news source. It's pretty much right wing drivel and propaganda, such as the OP's, which is "CUT OUR SPENDING CUT OUR SPENDING" "Where?" "I DUNNO BUT PELOSI IS AN IDIOT AND ANYONE WHO DOESN'T WANNA CUT SPENDING IS A SOCIALIST LIBTARD.". And before you bring it up, yeah, we know MSNBC isn't better, that's why nobody uses it as a source. See my signature for "How News Works"

[cutterx2202]

Wait, wait. You even answered the solution in the middle there. Tax revenues. I don't understand the whole "we have to cut things and only cut things to fix our debt issue". Why can't we cut things and increase taxes? Or you know, just pull the tax cuts worth more than two and a half trillion? Or fix tax loopholes for businesses? Or all those things?

We already tried raising revenue with taxing the "rich" earlier this year. It's time for cuts. Every option has been exhausted (even though cutting should be the first).

[Zdrasti]

Controlling spending yes. Cutting spending massively, no. That'll just lead to another downturn. As for our spending being out of control and our debt being crippling, well the free market seems to indicate that people don't mind our debt ratio. The real problem is economic recovery.

[Spectral]

We already tried raising revenue with taxing the "rich" earlier this year. It's time for cuts. Every option has been exhausted (even though cutting should be the first).

You know what else would have stabilized debt and deficit relative to current levels? Not fretting endlessly and letting tax cuts expire:



Throw in some minor military cuts and we could've been damned near balanced.

[Thage]

We already tried raising revenue with taxing the "rich" earlier this year. It's time for cuts. Every option has been exhausted (even though cutting should be the first).

What options have been exhausted? The GOP has staunchly opposed damn near everything the administration and Democratic Congressmen have introduced to be voted on, instead wasting million in taxpayer dollars introducing one abortion bill after another that inevitably get smacked down in the vote. Furthermore, the first thing GOP Congressmen want to cut are social welfare services, which 47% of Americans are currently relying on to live.

Instead of championing a livable minimum wage for all jobs, they're witch-hunting the poor so their rich campaign donors don't have to pay a tax burden that history has shown time and time again they can easily shoulder. Instead of slashing our grossly bloated military budget, they're screaming and hollering that we need to spend damn near more than the rest of the planet combined so we can police the world (a policy that has absolutely devastated the US's reputation among the rest of the world ever since Bush decided to invade Iraq on false justifications). Instead of admitting that keeping two large-scale wars off the budget (when even Cheney repeatedly claimed 'deficits don't matter') was a disastrous move, they've opted to call the rich 'job creators' despite all common sense pointing to supply and demand being the real job creators, and that the middle class and working poor buy more proportionally than the wealthy do (a rich man doesn't typically own 1,000 cars despite making 1,000 times more than the poor man with one car).

Also, the S&P recently posted a five-year high since Bush tanked the economy, and all over the country local economies are showing signs of recovery, so I guess Obama's got this shit back on the right track after all.

And in closing, it's funny how since Reagan, every GOP president has left the White House with a deficit while Clinton left with a surplus.

[Wildtree]

http://video.foxnews.com/v/215557570...=2114913880001

It's 95% Pelosi talking, so the source of the news channel is irrelevant - these are her own words. I realize some of you have an irrational fear of Fox (AKA: Foxiphobic)

AKA? I've never heard that term before.... Must be really aka.. POOOA may be more correct.. pulled out of ones arse...

And no one is scared about Fox. Fox is just a right wing republican propaganda channel... And it doesn't take much informed education to identify that.
Republicans are right wing already... Now if someone is right of the right wing, it's super easy to spot.

It may not, if the average person consumes news only through the few public Networks on TV and Radio. And a lot of average people lack the approach of a broad self information. They are usually too lazy. Those are the main followers of FOX lies.. There's however a reason why Fox is not the dominating news network.
With the increased abilities and accessibility of the internet, plus increase of cable and sat channels, the population started to inform itself better.
International News sources are more than often more accurate and reliable than the national sources. Which is a shame actually.
BBC should not be the best and most reliable source in regards of neutrality and objectivity for domestic topics in the USA at all.
The least manipulative news on public US TV coming from CBS. The most manipulating news are from Fox and NBC.
But even for CBS one is better off to cross check with international sources..

Your post has only a tiny part of correctness... Spending cuts... but not in overall for now. It needs to be prioritized.
Cut back Defense spending by easily 50%... The remaining 50% are still sufficient.
Use the money and put it where it's needed. Put it into the population. Establish a streamlined healthcare system identical to most other western countries. They manage to provide their people true healthcare with less spending per capita. And there's a whole catalog of things where spending falls short, as well as spending too high on other topics.
Pelosi isn't wrong. Truth of the matter is, that the right wing republicans making a deal out of something that happened during every presidents term, and became custom.. Ceilings are raised all the time. Budgets are altered and raised all the time. And for the most part that was never an issue, rather standard procedure..
Just during this presidents term the topic got dragged into the public, to paint the current admin as a failure.
Truth of the matter however is.... Both parties are responsible for the countries spending and debt burden. That has been accumulated over the countries entire existence. A bunch of right wing fanatics try to sell to the people that the current admin is at fault. At fault for something that built up over at least 100 years of spending. Congratulations to every American who prides him/herself into being educated enough to believe those right wing fanatics.
I am sorry, but whoever believes that crap shows extreme flaws on common sense and a lack of basic intelligence.

[Endus]

I know Obama gets a lot of heat from the US marxists because they think he failed to implement the socialist utopia that they all hoped for (because, you know, socialism works, but nobody has reeeeaaaaaaly tried it 100%, trololol).

9 times out of 10, people who use "socialism" as a bad word have no idea what it actually means.

There's two ways to use it;
1> To describe a government that provides social support policies for those in need. By this definition, basically every first world nation on the planet has been "socialist" for decades, to varying degrees. The only way to make the US "not socialist" would be to cancel ALL medical support you can't pay for out of pocket (no Medicare/Medicaid, no emergency care unless you have insurance, etc), no welfare/food stamps/etc (if you can't afford food/shelter, be homeless and starve to death), no money for public education at all, etcetera. ALL of those are "socialist" policies.

2> The other is economics. Socialist economics differs from capitalism in that the means of production are socially owned, rather than privately. Socialist economics already exists. Every single company with workers who are shareholders is socialist. Credit unions? Socialism. Union-owned factories? Socialism. That's ALL it means. It's still a profit-driven machine, it just means the profits are being shared by those running the factory, not a CEO or external shareholders. That's it.

If you think "socialism" means anything other than those two, then you need to brush up on basic definitions.

Deficit 2012 = 1.1 Trillion
Military Budged ~ 0,75 Trillion

Even with half the discretionary spending you barely get above the deficit, I wouldn't call that "large saving of money". And even if, this would mean a 100% cut in the military. It's quite obvious that this is not an option, so my point stands, you want to cut the deficit, cut entitelments.

So we shouldn't cut the military, because that won't solve the problem 100%. But we should cut various entitlements, and don't pay any attention to the fact that none of THOSE will 100% solve the problem, either.

Cut the military by 80%, significantly increase the tax rates on the top 5%, bump capital gains taxation to the same rate as income, cancel ANY subsidies to corporations, period, and if there's a threat that they'll move production offshore as a result, impose tariffs on their imports to punish that action.

That would solve the issue, most likely provide a surplus, without touching social programs one bit.


Also, the US budget is a runaway freight train. You can't just wave your hand and fix it. It took Clinton until his second term to bring it around to a surplus, and Bush Senior wasn't THAT terrible, fiscally speaking. His son, though, just hammered down the accelerator and let the train go for his entire 8 year span. Obama needed to stop that acceleration first, and then start to slow everything down, before he'd reach parity with Clinton's era. You can't expect him to completely fix in 4 years what G.W. Bush spent 8 years running off the tracks. He's not magic.

[larrakeyah]

Eventually they will run out of others people's money, so time will tell if Pelosi is right. It's easy to steal from others, but eventually citizens either run out of money or resort to the black market. Like Greece lol, it's easy to live on EU money until shit hits the fan.

I invested my money in a Master's degree and a future J.D., the rest is in gold and offshored, the Australian government and the leeches won't see a cent from me.

[Wildtree]

9 times out of 10, people who use "socialism" as a bad word have no idea what it actually means.

There's two ways to use it;
1> To describe a government that provides social support policies for those in need. By this definition, basically every first world nation on the planet has been "socialist" for decades, to varying degrees. The only way to make the US "not socialist" would be to cancel ALL medical support you can't pay for out of pocket (no Medicare/Medicaid, no emergency care unless you have insurance, etc), no welfare/food stamps/etc (if you can't afford food/shelter, be homeless and starve to death), no money for public education at all, etcetera. ALL of those are "socialist" policies.

2> The other is economics. Socialist economics differs from capitalism in that the means of production are socially owned, rather than privately. Socialist economics already exists. Every single company with workers who are shareholders is socialist. Credit unions? Socialism. Union-owned factories? Socialism. That's ALL it means. It's still a profit-driven machine, it just means the profits are being shared by those running the factory, not a CEO or external shareholders. That's it.

If you think "socialism" means anything other than those two, then you need to brush up on basic definitions.

Nicely worded..
Almost all European Countries are Social Capitalist systems. The countries revenues are prioritized by going back into the populations well being first, and the leftovers go into other things.
Not denying that the European countries are cutting back on the main priority, which doesn't fly well with their populations.
There's a reason why most Europeans paying a lot more taxes, and pay them much happier than Americans who pay a lot less taxes.

---------- Post added 2013-02-11 at 09:22 AM ----------

Eventually they will run out of others people's money, so time will tell if Pelosi is right. It's easy to steal from others, but eventually citizens either run out of money or resort to the black market. Like Greece lol, it's easy to live on EU money until shit hits the fan.

I invested my money in a Master's degree and a future J.D., the rest is in gold and offshored, the Australian government and the leeches won't see a cent from me.

Makes you essentially on par with companies who outsource jobs, and put their money into offshore accounts...
As long as you have ties to your country and are, or would be subject to your countries taxation, and if you benefited from your countries programs and funds at any time of your life until you left it, you are more of a leech than those who remain there....
Think about that

[Ssith]

America MUST cut spending, and cut it massively. Bottom line.

deal. let's start with the military, and one of the three wars we're involved in right now. then we can go after things like people at the airport checking out my junk. follow that with the ridiculous war on drugs.

sounds good to me.

[Wildtree]

deal. let's start with the military, and one of the three wars we're involved in right now. then we can go after things like people at the airport checking out my junk. follow that with the ridiculous war on drugs.

sounds good to me.

Yeah, that's what I don't get at all..... Even if one starts counting with the first war on Iraq and forth only. The country is basically constantly at war for decades. Several wars been fought. It appears to me, that people cannot grasp the concept of what war actually costs.
Almost all debt wouldn't even exist in the first place, if those wars wouldn't have to be paid. And it created a never ending spiral. With so many war efforts the country accumulated a whole army of potential enemy countries, which lead to an out of control military spending. It created a need that the country had to turn the luxury of a vast military power into a rather necessity. It got to the point that the military needs to be rather advanced than just maintained, to avoid retaliation, by simply overpowering even combined forces.
Oddly enough, that fine print never reaches the mainstream. It's kept from the majority of the population. In fact, it's the opposite. Right wing hardliners advocate even more spending and even more military actions. And to be fair, even on the left wing you find that kind of insanity.

[Kraenen]

Eventually they will run out of others people's money, so time will tell if Pelosi is right. It's easy to steal from others, but eventually citizens either run out of money or resort to the black market. Like Greece lol, it's easy to live on EU money until shit hits the fan.

I invested my money in a Master's degree and a future J.D., the rest is in gold and offshored, the Australian government and the leeches won't see a cent from me.

It's ironic when people like this ARE the leeches.

[Twotonsteak]

http://video.foxnews.com/v/215557570...=2114913880001

It's 95% Pelosi talking, so the source of the news channel is irrelevant - these are her own words. I realize some of you have an irrational fear of Fox (AKA: Foxiphobic).

This is the kind of shameless lying, deceit, and incompetence conservatives have to deal with on a daily basis when arguing points.

Pelosi is acting as if there wasn't already a tax hike on the "rich." News flash: There was in January. Asking for ADDITIONAL tax hikes on the rich before cutting is moronic. She's denying there's even a spending problem. On TOP of that, she's saying most of the debt is Bush's fault. (...wow). We're in Obama's second term. It's irrational and childish to keep blaming Bush for current issues. Even if I grant you (hypothetically) that Bush had some responsibility on the initial problem, you'd be naive to say Obama/Pelosi haven't dwarfed whatever affect he's had in the past with THEIR current debts.

America MUST cut spending, and cut it massively. Bottom line. It's come to the point that if someone's primary political goal isn't to cut the spending and pay off the debt first and foremost, it's not even worth starting an argument with them as they're delusional about the state of our nation. All other issues are secondary and will, in fact, improve with no debt and a budget in the green (or balanced).

Open your eyes and see her for the scum she is (and other far left wing nuts like her) for her flat out deceit.

1. You're first mistake was coming to these forums and expecting, as a conservative, a civil debate about politics. You would be hard-pressed to find a more Liberal, Obama-loving, group of people (not including the DNC).
2. Any competent person long ago realized that Obama (and his cronies) rarely offer anything of value when they talk. Typically they point the finger of blame at Bush, or the Republicans, and cry about it all being their fault. And people eat it up. They love it. They don't think about how Obama had control for his first two years. They don't consider that virtually EVERYTHING he's said since being elected is either unfounded or has been proven a lie. They don't consider that he's spent more money then any President before him.

1. Obama says the countries deficit is "unconstitutional." Then he spends more money then any President before him including his favorite scape goat, Bush.
2. Obama ran for his first term on improving the economy, immigration reform, closing Gitmo, and jobs. He spent his first two years, where he had total control, on health care reform.
3. Obama pushed his health care reform with promises like "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." Now that the cost of health insurance is going up and doctors are moving from private practice to hospitals Obama is saying well, you can still go into the Government-run system.
4. Obama has had four years in Office. He had total control for two. Unemployment is still high. In fact if you factor in people who stopped looking for work (not part of the normal unemployment numbers Obama cites), unemployment is higher now than when he took office.
5. Obama said he would fix the economy. Our GDP actually dropped.
6. Obama ran for his second term by saying he would fix the economy. So far he's proposed gun control regulations and immigration reform (AFTER a by-partisan group put forward a framework).
7. Obama said if he could just raise taxes on the wealthy he would be willing to discuss cuts. Well he got to raise taxes on the wealthy. Now he's saying there will be no cuts and, by the way, he wants to raise taxes some more.

At this point you just have to accept that logic doesn't exist. Obama tosses around money and hand-outs and people love him for it. There's no personal responsibility. No reality. I'm convinced that, at the end of his second term, Obama will STILL be blaming Bush. And the idiots of the country will still believe him because he can talk a good game. (Grant it that's about all he can do effectively.)

---------- Post added 2013-02-11 at 11:02 AM ----------

deal. let's start with the military, and one of the three wars we're involved in right now. then we can go after things like people at the airport checking out my junk. follow that with the ridiculous war on drugs.

sounds good to me.

Not only do I agree with you, but I'll take it even further.

1. End all foreign wars and close all military basis on foreign soil. Cut our military by (roughly) 1/3. Relocate most of our remaining forces to our borders and actually secure them. (Our military was designed to protect our borders. Our borders are NOT more secure by having troops in Iraq, or Japan.) This will help address military costs AND secure our borders.
2. End Social Security. It is, by definition, a Ponzi Scheme. If anyone other than the Feds offered a program with the exact same design it would be considered illegal. I'm sorry but I don't consider it a "balanced" approach for me to pay for someone else's retirement AND save up for my own.
3. Cut funding to ALL redundant programs. An example would be Planned Parenthood. All major metro centers already have free clinics that offer all the same services.
4. End all welfare programs. No I'm not an evil bastard. I'm fine with helping my fellow man (or woman). However I understand that EVERYTHING the Feds get involved in becomes a bloated, failing, mess. Honestly I just think any money I want to donate, should go to the charity I choose. And there are many charities out there.
5. Eliminate FEMA. We can all agree that FEMA failed horribly with Katrina. They failed again with Sandy. They've also required two bailouts. Red Cross (and other "private" charities) have done more with less to help victims.

Now THAT would save some real money.

[The Riddler]

1. Bush/Rove ARE to blame for a lot of our current financial problems. Whatever you want to say about them, you cannot say that they were fiscally responsible. It is not the "wars" that the neolibs always whine about which got us into this bind (though they played a part). It was all the increased domestic spending he did at the same time. When the economy is in a stage of growth is the time when you CUT federal budgets because other productive areas of the economy can step in and help out either by private donations or other spending. But under Bush the federal spending rocketed. Not as badly as under Obama and his band of idiots - but still pretty bad. Bush bears a lot of responsibility for setting the table for today's budget problems. That doesn't mean Obama isn't responsible for continuing those bad policies and making them even worse with his moronic Obamacare debacle - but it does mean there is truth to the Bush criticisms. This is what has made fiscal conservatives (both Democrat and Republican) so irritated with the GOP lately. If you're going to say you're the party of 'fiscal responsiblity' then you bloody well better act like it.

2. All the people saying that cuts to the military would solve the problem are idiots. The current percentage of federal spending on Defense is a paltry 19%. That's down significantly from 2008 when Obama took office and Defense spending was 24%. And yet despite the fact that we're spending 5% less of the budget on defense, the debt has exploded under Obama. You could cut the Defense budget to like 5% of the budget, and we'd still have a massive spending problem.

The issue is not defense spending. It is out of control, unsustainable domestic spending. Specifically, Obamacare needs to be repealed ASAP - and Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security need to be slashed by 33% immediate with the ultimate goal being the complete elimination of these programs except as very tiny skeletons of themselves that are dedicated only to ad hoc, temporary assistance to troubled state programs.

[Frozenbeef]

News programs shouldn't have a political association... It just reaks of corruption :P

[Wildtree]

Not only do I agree with you, but I'll take it even further.

1. End all foreign wars and close all military basis on foreign soil. Cut our military by (roughly) 1/3. Relocate most of our remaining forces to our borders and actually secure them. (Our military was designed to protect our borders. Our borders are NOT more secure by having troops in Iraq, or Japan.) This will help address military costs AND secure our borders.

Agreed on that completely. Because that's the sole reason for the countries debt.
Well there are other reasons and mistakes too. But the country is so extremely rich on natural resources, that they would make up for such mistake most easily.

2. End Social Security. It is, by definition, a Ponzi Scheme. If anyone other than the Feds offered a program with the exact same design it would be considered illegal. I'm sorry but I don't consider it a "balanced" approach for me to pay for someone else's retirement AND save up for my own.

Once you are at retirement age you get more social security out of it, than you ever paid in. The only exceptions are people who die earlier.
The problem with Social security however is that it has had a major flaw from the beginning.
The world wars weeded out on our populations. The system only works properly when there are more people paying into it, than there are people taking out of it.
But that is not the case anymore... We don't die by large numbers anymore, and therefore it's now to the point that there are more people who take out of it, than there are people who put into it. We can blame the government as an institution for it. But we cannot blame the current or the direct former governments. That mistake was made when the system was created.

3. Cut funding to ALL redundant programs. An example would be Planned Parenthood. All major metro centers already have free clinics that offer all the same services.
4. End all welfare programs. No I'm not an evil bastard. I'm fine with helping my fellow man (or woman). However I understand that EVERYTHING the Feds get involved in becomes a bloated, failing, mess. Honestly I just think any money I want to donate, should go to the charity I choose. And there are many charities out there.

On those two points I completely disagree. In fact both topics should be the sole task of the government. There should not be a need for private organizations. In the USA these organizations are a necessity, which shows the flaw in not having enough focus on the population as a whole.
The fact that too many social essentials (like health care and medical treatment) are privatized are the sole reason for out of control spending on it.
Results in the USA spending more on these things per capita than any other western world country, where the people have more benefits. The money doesn't go where it's needed, it goes into the profit margins of the businesses and organizations. The only way to privatize these responsibilities would be to interfere with free market principles and regulate/limit profits by law. Dictating service business in these fields how much they can actually charge the most.

5. Eliminate FEMA. We can all agree that FEMA failed horribly with Katrina. They failed again with Sandy. They've also required two bailouts. Red Cross (and other "private" charities) have done more with less to help victims.

Fema failed with Katrina, yes.... But where did they fail with Sandy? Am I missing something? In my opinion, FEMA isn't at fault there. The political handling is tho. We have FEMA to handle such catastrophes, yet every spending FEMA determines, needs to be approved by Congress. And I for my part fail to see FEMA's fault when the house of representatives simply chooses not to call on a vote for the funds needed just right away (Thanks to Mr. Boehner) and instead does it 2 weeks later.. Those guys are wealthy, their ass is safe an dry in their upper class neighborhoods. Who of them cares about the people who lost everything and are sitting in emergency shelters over the holidays....
Sorry, that's not FEMA's blame.. That's Congress, and in our case Republican fault entirely.

[Masark]

Once you are at retirement age you get more social security out of it, than you ever paid in. The only exceptions are people who die earlier.

Yes, and? Any competently-run retirement investments will get you more out than you paid in. My RRSPs, assuming a conservative rate of return (and including inflation), will be worth about 4x what I paid in by the time I retire.

That's not to say Social Security is being run competently though.

[Wildtree]

2. All the people saying that cuts to the military would solve the problem are idiots. The current percentage of federal spending on Defense is a paltry 19%. That's down significantly from 2008 when Obama took office and Defense spending was 24%. And yet despite the fact that we're spending 5% less of the budget on defense, the debt has exploded under Obama. You could cut the Defense budget to like 5% of the budget, and we'd still have a massive spending problem.

The issue is not defense spending. It is out of control, unsustainable domestic spending. Specifically, Obamacare needs to be repealed ASAP - and Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security need to be slashed by 33% immediate with the ultimate goal being the complete elimination of these programs except as very tiny skeletons of themselves that are dedicated only to ad hoc, temporary assistance to troubled state programs.

Thanks for calling us idiots.....
Here's the raw numbers....
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/...s1n_30#usgs302


The link shows 3 major spending sources...
Pensions
Healthcare
Defense.

Pensions
This one cannot be touched by much, with the exception of generous government pensions to high ranked job retirees.
No one needs 5 digit retirements.. Cut those back.. you may bring that total number down by approx. 10% I would guess.

Healthcare
This one needs to be revamped, by adopting European Health systems. That cannot happen because of the demonizing of said process. Every attempt to socialize the healthcare system get's dragged into the keyword socialism. With the term being interpreted as it's most negative form, which was only ever present within few countries behind the iron curtain. Even Russia itself was never socialism. East Germany for example was socialism. There are distinctions which are most unfamiliar with the mainstream US Population.

Defense Spending.
900 bio. The third largest single figure... That could be easily cut in half, and would still be sufficient to bring down the burden...
If you look at the total deficit being almost exactly the same amount, the deficit could be cut in half right there.

Pointing fingers, calling names, is the worst approach. An approach which is for every neutral observer very obvious comes a lot more from the Right Wing, than from the Left Wing. Truth of the matter is, that the entire system is one huge mess, caused by both sides. And the only way out is, to start with the population drop their fanboy and fangirl behavoir, and to learn what the real problems are. And then to act accordingly.
Government is build by the people. Only the people themselves have the power to change it to what it was meant to be.
Everyone who puts partisanship ahead of this is in the wrong, and contributes actively to the horrible situation.

---------- Post added 2013-02-11 at 10:53 AM ----------

Yes, and? Any competently-run retirement investments will get you more out than you paid in. My RRSPs, assuming a conservative rate of return (and including inflation), will be worth about 4x what I paid in by the time I retire.

That's not to say Social Security is being run competently though.

I believe I stated that the system is a failure, didn't I? It actually has to end, as we know it. But you cannot just end it like that. A transition is needed. People constantly pay into it..... it needs to be faded out.. Causing even higher spending for the first couple or three decades.