Yes, you've heard this before.
While it hasn't played as big of a role in the efforts to derail Donald Trump (likely because his opponents found the "convicted felon, tax cheat, unrepentant adulterer" angle more appealing), it looks like the Democrat Party is returning to its standard scare tactic to rescue their sagging poll numbers.
Fortune magazine was just one of many leftist mouthpieces publicly sounding the alarm that the current Republican administration is about to deprive Granny of her Social Security check:
President Donald Trump's efforts to slash federal staffing across agencies is also resulting in the loss of technical expertise need [sic] to help maintain critical systems, including those used to pay Social Security benefits.
REMINDERS:
When Republican George W. Bush hinted at restructuring the government's archaic retirement program in order to keep it solvent, Al Gore and his fellow Democrats warned against his "risky schemes" that put the elderly at risk.
When Republican Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan introduced innovative ways to reinvigorate the monetary albatross of Social Security, Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats said Romney would bleed the system dry and they ran ads showing Paul Ryan rolling a grandma over a cliff.
It should really be no surprise that as Democrats find themselves as unpopular as ever, they are returning to the time-tested electoral go-to. This time they accuse Republican Donald Trump of jeopardizing checks to the elderly even as his administration is trying to increase the amount of money in those very checks by reducing the system's waste and fraud.
To be sure, as the single largest expenditure of the U.S. government each year - over $1.35 trillion paid out annually - there's undoubtedly plenty of waste and fraud to be found.
But even eliminating all of it is like spitting in the ocean.
The truth of the matter is that this country is long overdue for a serious conversation about the future of this disastrous program. It was a bad idea from the start - something that could only have seemed like a good concept to people struggling through a Great Depression. People are far less likely to think when they're starving. And they're far more likely to jump at bad policy if it promises them security when they feel like they have none.
That's how we ended up initiating this knuckleheaded system where the current working generation pays into a pot that the government then distributes to the current retired generation. Did everyone at the time just believe that everything - job growth, population numbers, life expectancy, etc. - would stay constant forever? Because even the slightest variations in any of those things would spell (and has spelled) disaster for the taxpayers.
A FEW MORE REMINDERS:
When Social Security began, life expectancy was 58 for men and 62 for women. The retirement age was 65. Today, life expectancy is 76 for men and 81 for women. The retirement age is 67.
America is currently facing a labor shortage, and the workforce is a smaller percentage of the population than it was in the past. Meaning, more drawing from the system than before, fewer paying into the system than before.
In 1973, the U.S. government had the brilliant idea to make murdering children in the womb a legally protected "right." Consequently, there are roughly 63 million "workers" who are missing from our labor force because they weren't convenient enough to keep around.
These things just begin to scratch the surface of why, even as the left continues to prop him up as one of America's greatest presidents, FDR's asinine Ponzi Scheme has turned into a carnival of horrors for the American taxpayer. And as one of my favorite follows on X.com, David Burge, pointed out, it is the textbook definition of a Ponzi Scheme:
The only sane thing to do would be to phase out the system entirely. Let current workers know they will serve and sacrifice for their country by paying into a system that will not exist when they reach retirement age. They will be responsible for providing for their own retirement, and should know that from the moment they first enter the workforce. But we are entitled, not sane, so let's not even waste our time discussing what won't happen.
The next best, logical thing we could do is raise the retirement age significantly, and reduce the payout amount dramatically. But we are emotional, not logical, so that's not likely either.
At the very least then, people with functioning brains would agree to ensure that the money we are spending is actually going to people who should be getting it. That's what Trump's DOGE entity is attempting to do, and being roundly criticized for doing so.
Tell me again how this house of cards doesn't crumble soon.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
