Social Security: if truth be told

By Gema G Hernández

We tend to give credit to Wall Street for creating marketing campaigns that make people desire something that they don’t need in a way that it becomes a matter of life or death if they don’t get it. While Wall Street marketing strategies are very effective the Bush administration deserves recognition for the great job they are doing preparing the public for the death of the Medicare program in a way that gets no public opposition.

As part of the Baby boom generation I am getting tired of reading about how Medicare and Social Security are going to bankrupt the system or be the main contributor to our national deficit. If truth is to be told we should acknowledge the fact that before the War in Iraq began the Social Security Trust Fund was looking financially solvent for years to come, not the way it looks now. The money from the Social Security Trust Fund has financed the war in Iraq and will finance for at least the next ten years the reconstruction of Iraq. This reconstruction is projected to cost trillions of dollars to be taken from Social Security at almost the same time Baby boomers are beginning to retire.

If the truth be told, every time a job is outsourced to a foreign country it is one less job paying to our Social Security Trust Fund. The outsourcing is good for the private corporations but bad for the American workers and retirees. The more jobs that go overseas there are less workers here supporting the American retirees. If the projections a decade ago reflected one worker supporting two retirees with the ongoing outsourcing of jobs the revised projection will be no worker to support one retiree, and this is what truly bothers Mr. Greenspan who knows better than I do the unspoken consequences to the American retirees of foreign job outsourcing by private corporations with the encouragement and tax incentives of the Bush administration.

If the truth be told, the Social Security System does not include the hundreds of Congressmen that serve in Washington who coincidentally control in their collective hands the future and the funding for Social Security and Medicare. Perhaps if Congress, the President and the Vice President are made to be part of Social Security a solution will be found and the Social Security Trust Fund will not be used to finance other non Social Security related programs. Making the Social Security the National mandatory retirement system for ALL the people from this point forward could add more contributors to the system, but more importantly, those “new” contributors will have a vested interest to protect the program because for the first time in the history of this country, Social Security will be their retirement program too.

If the truth be told, Social Security is more than a retirement program. It also protects orphans who have no mother or father able to provide for them. If we privatize the system what are we going to do with this important part of the program to help it survive? What program will cover the orphans until they reach their 18th birthdays. Would this be also part of individual responsibility? Whose responsibility? By the way this was an important program for those orphans of 9/11 whose parents did not have the financial security to leave behind other source of pensions or ongoing support until their 18th birthdays. If the truth be told, this should be known.

If the truth be told, the next White House conference on aging scheduled for October 2005 will tackle the privatization of Social Security. This is going to be the first order of business for the new aging agenda the Bush administration has ready for us. The agenda is in place but it needs your vote so if you don’t agree with the agenda you still have the power to vote. In addition to Social Security the Bush administration will also tackle Medicaid, Medicare and the centralization of programs for elders and disabled adults into one umbrella.

To prepare the country for such drastic changes without spilling one drop of political blood the administration has already begun pushing more and more for the Medical Saving Accounts. Medical Savings Accounts are a good idea if this is not designed to replace Medicare but expand our ability to cover medical costs. Unfortunately, the ultimate goal of the administration is that people will buy the idea of supporting medical savings accounts to such an extent that the next step will be to replace the Medicare program for Medical savings accounts. Having a savings account to cover out of pocket medical expenses is excellent if you are one of the lucky individuals with income to protect and disposable dollars to save, but if you are not, then the Medical savings accounts should not be the government mechanism to cover health care costs, but a supplemental option to be given to those who are able to afford it.

The more we look into the future of Social Security and Medicare the more I realize that there are two United States of America, one proud to be financially independent who brags about not needing Social Security to exist and who considers Medicare an imposition rather than a crucial program to their survival. The other United States of America is proud but poor, in need of the safety net to survive and fearful that their pride may be taken away from them if the country continues to judge the value of a human being by how financially independent they are and the by size of their wallets.

Yes, Social Security is in trouble but not by its own making it has plenty of help from the same politicians that are now saying Social Security and Medicare will destroy our financial future.