BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

Mr. Luddite

On 10/26/2014 10:51 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 26 Oct 2014 08:51:03 -0500, amdx wrote:

On 10/25/2014 8:54 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 25 Oct 2014 19:49:18 -0500, amdx wrote:

FICA is a retirement and disability payment, it does NOT count.

Since 1968 FICA is just another income tax, intermingled with the
other revenue in the budget.

That may well be, but the fact is, it is a disability and retire fund.
You pay into it and you get a check sent to you.
It is not like an income tax where you pay in and people that don't
pay in get a welfare check sent to them.

Mikek

I guess you never heard of SSI but the reality is that FICA has been
"on budget" since 1968 and the government has spent the surplus for
pretty much anything they wanted. Now it is a distinction without a
difference since FICA does not even cover the checks they write.

The idea that there was ever a big bag of money that the government
saved for you in Washington was dashed in 1939 when FDR decided any
extra money was simply a resource the government could use to fund his
upcoming war. That was when the government got the power to spend the
FICA surplus and put an IOU in the box. The "trust fund" is just
another line item on the national debt.

It's also how Bill Clinton was able to (and still does) declare a
"surplus" in the budget late in his term.