Jane V. Delanko – 3/21/11

This page was last updated on March 22, 2011.

Stop scaring seniors; Jane V. Delanko; Beaver County Times; March 21, 2011.

Between September 2004 and September 2007, the Times published at least eight letters from Ms. Delanko (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). All bashed the Bush administration in one form or another and the last six were about getting out of Iraq. We haven’t heard a peep from Ms. Delanko about Iraq since. The first letter after 2007 was in 2010 when Ms. Delanko supported U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire (D-4) for voting against Obamacare because “this law will be throwing the elderly under the bus” (“Health-care reform will hurt the elderly,” 4/1/10). Given Ms. Delanko’s history of repeating Democrat talking points, the 2010 letter surprised me a bit until I read a Times article a couple of months later. In “Memories of steel” (Larissa Theodore, Beaver County Times; June 23, 2010), I learned Ms. Delanko was 81 years old. Later Delanko letters are here and here. Three of the four post-2007 Delanko letters touched on Social Security.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“It seems like the politicians love to scare the senior citizens who have earned their rights and have paid into the Social Security Fund all their working lives.”

[RWC] No one has “rights” to receive Socialist Security benefits. As noted by the CATO Institute, SS benefits “are not guaranteed legally because workers have no contractual or property rights to any benefits whatsoever. In two landmark cases, Flemming v. Nestor and Helvering v. Davis, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Social Security taxes are not contributions or savings, but simply taxes, and that Social Security benefits are simply a government spending program, no different than, say, farm price supports. Congress and the president may change, reduce, or even eliminate benefits at any time.”

“There is a huge amount of money in the fund, but too many hands spoil the pot.”

[RWC] There is NOT “a huge amount of money in the fund;” there never has been. By law, SS tax receipts in excess of benefit payments must be used to purchase federal debt (bonds). The same is true for Medicare. Other than what comes in via current taxes, all Medicare and Socialist Security taxes collected were spent a long time ago by the feds for other programs. The mythical Medicare and Socialist Security trust funds are nothing but stacks of IOUs (Treasury bonds) issued over the years by a federal government with debt over $16 trillion and growing. SS went into deficit (benefits paid exceed SS taxes collected) in 2010 and will remain in deficit. Therefore, SS must redeem IOUs to pay for benefits. When the SS Administration redeems one of their IOUs to pay for benefits, the feds must issue debt or print dollars. There is no pot of gold or stack of dollar bills just waiting to honor the IOUs.

Medicare and Socialist Security are “pay as you go” income redistribution programs. That is, today’s Medicare and SS taxes pay for the benefits of today’s Medicare and SS benefit recipients. The Medicare and SS taxes Ms. Delanko paid were not put into an account to pay for her retirement benefits. The Medicare and SS taxes Ms. Delanko paid were used to pay for people collecting benefits while she was employed. Today’s Medicare and SS taxpayers are paying for Ms. Delanko benefits, not Ms. Delanko. This is the very definition of a Ponzi scheme and why both of these programs are in financial trouble.