“It really doesn’t matter whether you agree with this, disagree, like it or don’t. These are facts. To recap:

There is no Social Security or Medicare “Trust Fund.” Beginning in the 1980s they were effectively merged into the general fund and immediately spent. The funds were not invested, they were stolen. The claim that there is a “trust” is an accounting fiction. If you or I did this with our kid’s UTMA account (college trust account) we’d go to prison.

The money is gone. The so-called “IOUs” are not negotiable debt instruments. They have no formal, legal standing as debt. Further, they cannot be exchanged for actual cash unless the Treasury is able to issue actual debt into the market, because Treasury has no cash either; it is spending $1.7 trillion more than it takes in every year. If that ability to issue ceases, the $4.6 trillion will not be paid. Period.

Neither Social Security or Medicare can pay what has been promised. Social Security is cash-flow negative now (as of last year) and will be permanently on a forward basis. Within 20 years there will be one retiree for every two persons working. But the amount of tax received from those workers will only cover somewhat less than half of the money that has been promised to be paid out. In other words once the IOUs are depleted the promised funds will not be paid. Period.

Social Security, by law, cannot borrow nor can go in the hole. By law when either (1) the IOUs run out or (2) the Treasury cannot issue any more actual debt into the market to cover the IOUs Social Security is required under existing law to reduce payments so that it is cash-flow neutral. This means that under existing law when the IOUs run out – in the best case – only about half of the promised benefits can be paid.

Medicare is even worse. There the pay-out to pay-in ratio is more like 4:1. There is also far less tax revenue available, since Medicare has a combined rate of 2.9%, where Social Security is 10.4% (12.4% after two years, assuming it goes back up.) That is, Medicare is trying to fund itself with a revenue base of about 1/4 that of Social Security, although Medicare is paid on all earnings as there is no cap. Medicare is also cash-flow negative on a permanent basis right now.

Clinton never ran a surplus. He stole the Social Security and Medicare surplus funds and spent them. This made his budget look like it had a surplus when it really did not. The claim of a “Trust” is belied by this fact, along with all the other budgets since Reagan – you cannot have a Trust arrangement if the entity allegedly encumbered, in this case the government, isn’t actually holding the funds in trust but rather is counting them for general revenue purposes!”

Read the rest: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2442123

I’m more interested in how he evades the law in this case (and he will evade it) than what the results of his birth records show.

If you’re just talking “welfare” as in payments to help poor folks, that accounted for just 14% of the 2010 budget. I’m sure that will increase due to the economic conditions, but not to anywhere near the 65% figure you cite.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258

Until you have board members who spend as much time with their budgets as they do pontificating, we’re not going to get anywhere.