Archive for the ‘Taxes’ Category
by Thomas E. Brewton
Emphatically, NO.
A reader on the Intellectual Conservative website, responding to the recent post titled Savings?, posed this query:
Let me ask a silly question: Do your Social Security contributions count as savings?
The answer is that Social Security is the polar opposite of savings.
The effect of Social Security is to decrease savings. None of the money remitted as Social Security taxes is available for individuals or businesses for real savings that could support productive investment in business expansion and create new jobs, thereby enriching the people.
As soon as Social Security taxes reach the Treasury, they are removed and replaced with non-marketable, low-interest-rate Treasury debt. The money scooped from the Social Security accounts goes straight out the door to pay Social Security beneficiaries and, if any money is left over, to pay everyday Federal operating expenses. Not a penny is invested in productive assets.
(Alexandria, VA) — The Democratic Party's "New Direction for America" might attempt to steer government toward a sounder financial footing, but its course leads to $79.1 billion in new annual federal spending, according to a line-by-line analysis by the non-partisan National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF). Among the findings:
- Health care represented the largest spending category at $28.8 billion, or 36 percent of the total agenda. Within this category, Democrats proposed to "fix the Medicare prescription drug program," which would cost $29.5 billion annually. The plan did call for spending cuts amounting to just over $1 billion, in order to "end wasteful giveaways to drug companies."
- Veterans care was high on the list as well, at $19.8 billion. The initiative to launch a "G.I. Bill of Rights for the 21st Century" would provide increased pay, health care, and other benefits for veterans and their families. This program would increase outlays by $99 billion over 5 years, and would be offset by increasing the top income tax rate.
- Education spending, at $16.2 billion, represented approximately 20 percent of the total net agenda. The Democratic plan called for increasing the maximum individual Pell Grant to $5,100 ($4.0 billion in total annual spending), recruit science and math teachers ($3.7 billion yearly), and reduce college loan interest rates ($7.4 billion annually), among other items.
- Yet another proposal called for an "AmeriSave" account system that would establish a dollar-for-dollar federal match for the first $1,000 contributed to a personal retirement plan. This initiative would cost taxpayers roughly $7.5 billion each year.