Rebecca Deiter – 10/20/10

This page was last updated on October 20, 2010.

Health-care reform will be good deal; Rebecca Deiter; Beaver County Times; October 20, 2010.

This is Mrs. Deiter’s third letter in two weeks. In previous letters, Mrs. Deiter told us “History will prove Obama’s worth,” claimed she was barraged by “negative untrue attacks about Barack Obama” via e-mail, defended ACORN, and lobbied for a severance tax on Marcellus shale natural gas. In another letter, Mrs. Deiter and her husband supported a charter school (“Charter school deserves a chance”, 1/6/10).

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“By definition, Social Security is a social insurance program that is funded through dedicated payroll taxes called FICA.

“When initially signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, it, too, was maligned much like health-care reform. At present, Social Security provides benefits for retirement, disability, survivorship and death, which are the four main benefits provided by traditional private-sector pension plans. In 2008, the Social Security system paid out almost $616 billion in benefits.

“By dollars paid, it is the largest government program in the world, and the single greatest expenditure in the federal budget. Social Security is currently estimated to keep roughly 40 percent of all Americans age 65 or older out of poverty.”

[RWC] Here are a couple of things Mrs. Deiter failed to note.

First, according to the Social Security Trustees in their 2010 report to Congress, SS was to go into deficit (benefits paid exceed SS taxes collected) in 2016, the Disability Insurance portion of SS will be bankrupt in 2018, and the overall SS “trust fund” (the equivalent of a stack of federal government “IOUs” for revenue already spent by the feds for other programs) will be exhausted by 2037. Because of the current recession, news reports indicate SS is already in deficit, a full six years ahead of the 2008 projection. That’s because SS (as well as Medicare) is a Ponzi scheme.

Second, if you plan on SS benefits as your sole source of income during retirement, you plan to live in poverty.

“By reviewing timing of its enactment (after the Great Depression), and the two landmark Supreme Court cases against Social Security in 1937 (Steward Machine v Davis and Helverling [sic] v Davis), you can draw comparisons to current misguided opinion and efforts to repeal health-care reform.”

[RWC] Mrs. Deiter contradicts herself. Mrs. Deiter wrote above SS was signed into law by FDR in 1935, then in this paragraph says “after the Great Depression.” The first SS taxes were collected in 1937 and the first SS benefits check was issued to Ida May Fuller in 1940. Ms. Fuller paid only $22.75 in SS taxes, but received $22,888.92 in benefits! As a reminder, the Great Depression didn’t end until World War II.

Here’s something else to remember about SS. At 12.4%, the current SS tax rate is 6.2 times its original 2% rate. Since 1950, Congress increased the Socialist Security tax rate 20 times! Further, the max taxed earnings cap increases every year by law and is now more than twice what it was in 1990 ($51,300). In constant dollars, the original earnings cap of $3,000 in 1937 should be $45,154 today, not the $106,800 it is.

Note how Mrs. Deiter refers to a complete federal government takeover of our healthcare merely as “health-care reform.” As a reminder, included in “health-care reform” was a complete takeover of the student loan industry.

“Social Security was a good deal for the country, and so is health-care reform. Let those amongst you who expect Social Security benefits or currently cash a security check dare to complain of socialism.”

[RWC] Why do people like Mrs. Deiter think turning over their responsibility for healthcare and retirement is “a good deal for the country?” Do they not realize in doing so they give government ever-increasing power over their lives at the expense of personal freedom? This stuff may be “a good deal” for the bureaucrats and politicians who get to exercise ever-increasing control over our lives, but it certainly isn’t good for “We the People.”

The final sentence is a tired old lefty talking point. This talking point ignores the fact we are/were forced to pay FICA taxes (15.3% off the top) and very few of us can afford to throw away 15.3% of our paychecks for our working lives. A lefty running for Congress in 2002 asked me, “Do you prefer no social security [sic] and no health care for your tax dollars that you will continue to pay for, or do you prefer a social security [sic] check monthly and the benefit of Medicare?” I responded, “This is a silly question. You’re asking if I want to throw all my SS and Medicare taxes down the drain and receive nothing for my 30+ years (so far) of taxes. … To answer your question, I already made peace with the fact I won’t get the same level of benefits as my parents and grandparents. My retirement will be fiscally sound with or without SS and Medicare benefits.”