Political Quotes

“I would like to discuss for the next 4 or 5 minutes why everybody is talking about Social Security, why they are concerned that Social Security is in trouble some time in the future, why young people today think the chances of their getting any Social Security are pretty remote. It is the young people today, probably under 35 years old, that are most at risk in not having Social Security in their retirement years if we continue to fail to do anything to keep Social Security solvent. The chart that I brought in represents where we are now. If we look at the top left part of the chart, the little blue area in the top left is the current surpluses coming in to the Social Security trust fund, in other words, the amount of taxes that are in excess of benefits payments going out. That is going to stop around 2011 or 2012. At that point, there are going to be fewer Social Security taxes coming in than are needed to pay current benefits. Of course, Social Security, since it started in 1935, has been sort of a Ponzi game where current workers pay in their taxes that is immediately sent out to current retirees, and so it is a pay-as-you-go program.”