Exposure, What Democrats Fear Most

As I have mentioned before, I am a member of a small private internet political debate group. From time to time I expect I will want to share something from that group. Today a conservative Republican friend of mine posted something I felt was worth sharing. To set it up, I will say that we were discussing the recent remarks of the Democrat Minority leader Harry Reid who made the statement that our elected Democrat representatives in the Senate, 42 was the total number of Democratic Senators abstaining according to my source, would refuse to discuss Social Security reform measures so long as voluntary private accounts remain on the table of discussion. Following was the reply of "Ghoti":

"They won't even sit down and discuss fixing Social Security. This one issue may be the defining moment exposing the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

The Democrat plan is, raise the tax rate, raise the cap, raise the retirement age, cut benefits and add means testing to establish eligibility to collect. In simple terms they want us to pay more for a longer period of time on an increased amount of income and to receive less, or none at all if we have exceeded the means test, more importantly they want us to die before we collect so they can just keep the money.

The President wants us to have the Option to invest a portion in private accounts. Let's look at a simple low risk example, if I take my money and invest them in T-bills I'll end up with the same yield I would have gotten from leaving the money in the system.

So what's the difference? One is that it's my money, I can leave it to my children, whereas with the current plan the government gets to keep it if I die before collecting.

Let's make no mistake here, the current Social Security plan is a government betting that I will die before they have to pay. That's why the Democrats were so opposed to adding prescription benefits to Medicare. Medications produce longer life. In all their years controlling the government Democrats never once introduced a bill to provide prescription benefits to Medicare, Bush did it.

Recognizing that we are living longer and the current system was never designed to accommodate years and years in retirement the President has exposed the need to fix this system.

One final thought, the issue of crisis. It's not a crisis in the sense that the failure will occur during the current administration. This is a President with a vision, either way we go, fix it or not the benefits will come years down the road. He could have taken the position of leaving the problem to future administrations, and made his life easier, but that is not who he is, nor is it representative of who we the people are."

Thank you, Ghoti.