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Posted by Jerry McDaniel

Written by David F. Delorey, Jr.

In a mere four pages, ratified in 1788, the Constitution of the United Sates of America became a body of fundamental law which guarantees the natural God given rights of the people to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for a common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty.

One hundred and forty one years later, the Great Depression began on Oct.  29, 1929 when the stock market crashed.  Suddenly, millions of people were out of work, bread lines formed to feed families, and the elderly could not support themselves.  A potential solution, like the one adopted in Germany in 1889, was a “social insurance” program run by the federal government which stressed the government’s responsibility to provide for citizens’ economic security.  In 1932, Franklin D.  Roosevelt was elected and he put forth such a plan where workers contributed to their future economic security through taxes paid while they worked and then paid out when they retired or became disabled.

From the outset, Roosevelt’s plan had a major stumbling block – – a plain reading of the Constitution finds absent the power of Congress to implement and run a federal social insurance program.  But, such legal limitation did not deter Congress, or the President, or the Supreme Court to assume powers not found in the United States Constitution.  The day that the Constitution was changed without a vote of the people came on August 14, 1935, when President Roosevelt signed the 33 page Social Security Act of 1935 into law.

This legislation indeed wove a new de facto constitutional thread into the United States constitutional fabric when the Congress and the President bypassed the Constitution Amendment process in Article V of the Constitution and ignored the limits of Congressional power stated in the “Enumerated Powers” in Article I of the Constitution.  Implicit with the avoidance of the required constitutional compliance process was that the several sovereign states were denied their right to deliberate, debate and ratify the law.  As a result, Congress and the President, on their own, raised everyone’s taxes and created a new federal government run insurance program bearing upon all the states.

Many have claimed over the years that the Social Security Act is unconstitutional which is the Constitutional right of the people to do so.  There is plenty of evidence to support the claim.  However, even if they are right and it is, the program is so deeply ingrained in the workings of Republic that such may be impossible to reasonably remove or replace it.  This constitutional precedent is now manifest as one of the largest financial burdens on the American taxpayer.  Along with the subsequently enacted federal social entitlement programs of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, these programs now collectively pose a significant financial threat to the very existence of the Republic as the question of irresponsible levels of deficit spending by the Congress, potentially causing a bankruptcy of the government, becomes part of the political narrative today.

This evolving journey into the consequences of the Social Security Act began with its implementation in 1937 and its administration by the Congress.  The program started modestly with 60% of all wage earners, largely older Americans, being taxed about 2%.  According to the act, all tax revenue collected were to be deposited in a trust fund.  The fund, known as the Social Security Trust Fund, is technically comprised of two component funds in the original Social Security Act of 1935: Section 201, the Old-Age Survivors Insurance program; and Section 904, the Disability Insurance Trust Funds.

The Republic’s Social Security Act unsustainable financial dilemma came as a result of Congress converting what started as a self-funded program into an enormous de facto pay-as-you-go program by appropriating all “surplus” tax revenues [monies collected which exceed what was needed to pay benefits] to fund the annual federal budget.  With this process, Congress ignored its fundamental fiduciary responsibility to retain these assets in the Treasury to pay future benefits, and clearly ignored the word “trust” in the “Social Security Trust Fund.” Today, the Social Security Trust Fund contains only promises that the federal government will repay the fund.

This deficit spending process was facilitated by the specific wording in sections 201 and 904 of the original 33 page Social Security Act of 1935.  Both sections state that all monies collected may only be invested “in interest-bearing obligations of the United States or in obligations guaranteed as to both principal and interest by the United States.” Congress was left to determine the nature of these “obligations”, which presumably could have included such tangible assets as gold, silver and the like.  Instead, Congress elected the option of “borrowing” the “surplus” taxes collected from the Social Security Trust Fund and spending the proceeds on other things.  From an accounting perspective, Congress created nothing more than a “Ponzi Scheme” because there is no guarantee that future tax payers can sustain the level of payments to current beneficiaries forever.  Such a system will eventually collapse, and could result in putting the federal government in default of its “obligations.”

By 1995, 95% of the American workforce, not subject to Congressional exclusions, were covered by the Social Security Act.  While many exemptions have been eliminated through 1990, six million government workers in the ten states of: Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio and Texas are still exempt from the act and it’s taxation requirements.

By 2011, more than 56 million people were covered by the Social Security Act spending $731 billion or 20% of the federal budget.  The Social Security Trust Fund had about $2.6 trillion in assets on the books.  The Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) payroll tax rate was 6.2%, paid each by the employee and employer, for a total of 12.4%, for the first $106,800.00 of income.  There were no “surplus” revenues because payouts to beneficiaries exceeded the tax payments deposited in the Social Security Trust Fund.  Federal spending that year was $3.46 trillion and the Treasury posted a $1.3 trillion federal deficit.

Today, the Social Security Act is now the largest government social insurance program in the world measured in dollars paid.

Predictions are that the Disability Insurance Trust Fund [Section 904 of the Social Security Act] will exhaust in 2016.  After 2020, the United States Treasury will need to fund the entire program by redeeming the unfunded “obligations” Congress created to pay program beneficiaries.  From an accounting perspective, the Treasury will continue to use this process until the projected absolute exhaustion of the entire Social Security Trust Fund balance sheet in 2033.

The problem is getting worse.  The current economic recession, world economic problems, and other matters are putting a formidable upward pressures on future projections.  Evidence is that the 2012 projection from the “Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees” exhaustion date of 2033 comes 3 years earlier than 2036 exhaustion date projected in 2011, only one year earlier.

Congress is well aware of the “ticking time bomb” aspect of the Social Security Trust Fund.  Printing money is not the solution – it causes inflation which every American suffers from.  Kicking the can down the road” only passes the problem on to our children and grandchildren.  A “Balanced Budget” amendment to the Constitution pursuant to Article V of the Constitution would help.  But, Congress has consistently opposed it simply because balancing the books takes away the politically popular option of deficit spending.  This whole matter is plainly a “third-rail” issue because the people who funded the program through payroll taxes are not to be trifled with for fear that these people will reflect their outrage at the ballot box.  Getting reelected is indeed at risk.  Predictably, sustained legislative paralysis has ensued.  The fact is that the problem is real and it is being ignored by Congress and the President.

The consequences of what started in 1935 are now overwhelming as a result of a mere 33 pages of unconstitutional legislation.  If Congress only had stuck with the framer’s concept of a limited federal government, that is, without a federal government run insurance program, we would not be in this mess now.

Let’s look at this issue at the personal level to understand the problem in simple terms.  Commonly understood is that if somebody took your money with the intent to deprive you of said monies, this act would called theft.  It is a crime.  Now comes Congress persistently collecting taxes for one thing, then “borrowing” the money to spend it on another thing, and putting forth no plan to repay the “borrowed” monies.  Did Congress steal the “surplus” money from the Social Security Trust Fund? It certainly looks like it.

How can we solve the problem?

The first problem to solve is that Congress needs to stop stealing the “surplus” money from the Social Security Trust Fund and start putting back what it “borrowed.” As Will Rogers once said: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. “

The second problem to solve is cash flow.  When the “baby boomers” reach retirement age, the Social Security Trust Fund is projected to remain insufficient indefinably to satisfy the level of benefit payments compared to a smaller number of projected wage earners paying into it.  The only available long-term remedy is for Congress to either vote to raise Social Security Act taxes, or diminish Social Security Act benefits, or both.

The third problem to solve is the lack of personal and fiduciary responsibility.  As Alexander Tyler said in 1787: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. “

During the eight years from January 20, 1993 to January 20, 2001, the total public debt outstanding went from $4.1 trillion to $5.7 trillion for an increase of $1.6 trillion.  In the next eight years, it increased by $4.9 trillion to $10.6 trillion.  Today, less than four years later, it has increased by $5.3 trillion to $15.9 trillion.  Congress has not enacted a federal budget each year, as required by law, for the last 1,200 days.  The Senate majority leader has not allowed the budget from the House come to the Senate floor for a vote for three years.  The President’s two budgets for fiscal 2011 and 2012 were both unanimously rejected, respectively, in the Senate by 0-97, and the next year in the house of representatives by 0-414 and by the Senate 0-99.  None of the President’s four budgets included a plan to save Social Security.  There is no budget approved for the next fiscal year.  Why do we have this problem? The answer is simple.  Congress and the President embrace relentless deficit spending and they see themselves as responsible fiduciary actors.  Conversely, the Republic cannot continue to exist by “borrowing” 40 cents of every dollar it spends.  The fact is that we cannot spend our way out of debt!

Let’s set aside the details and get down to basic logic.  Congress doesn’t want a balanced budget.  If Congress wanted a balanced budget, Congress could simply take a vote to make it so.  Since Congress doesn’t want a balanced budget, “We the People” need to force the federal budget to be balanced.  Such will then force Congress every year to vote on what to fund, what not to fund, or to fund what is left over by raising taxes.  By these votes, the people will have a better measure to determine who in Congress is fiscally responsible, or not.  How do we make this happen? Start work on “Change” with a Constitutional amendment, pursuant to Article V of the Constitution, which requires the federal budget to be balanced.  After reading the foregoing story, if you are convinced that we need to act now – call your Senator and Member of the House – make them do it.

On January 20, 1961, John F.  Kennedy said “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Accordingly, “We the People” need to put the country first and stop voting for people who vote for deficit spending.  Let’s vote for candidates who have read, understand, and will abide by the Constitution and the oath to defend it.  If not, we eventually will be left with Alexander Tyler proven right once again, as governments before us have fallen for the same reason.

Source: Illinois Conservative Beacon

By Susanne Posel theintelhub.com August 16, 2012 The US government, under the leadership of the globalist puppet, Barack Obama, knows that the general American public is waking up to the tyranny that is being forced upon them. The divide and conquer ideal purveyed by the mainstream media (MSM) in America may be the second false [...]

Some people believe in the Six Degrees of Separation Theory: the idea that everyone in the world is separated from everyone else by six links.  Some people believe all of us are in this thing together, and that diversity is our strength and I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

Even if we are all connected in ways we cannot know I believe the world is filled with strangers.  Take a ride and as you pass through country, town, and city you are constantly presented with the faces of people you will never know, and all of whom have lives and families that will never know you or your life or your family.  Every day we see people we have never seen before and will never see again.  They rise out of the mist beyond the pale of our personal knowledge and immediately are submerged again never to rise again.  Our only connection will forever be that one fleeting moment when we moved through a single frame of the separate sagas which are our lives.

Unlike Cain I do believe we are our brother’s keeper, and unlike Scrooge I believe we should help our brothers in need instead of seeing them boiled with their own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through their hearts.  However, unlike the rhetoric of Marx, Lenin, and President Obama I do not believe that life should operate on the basis of from each according to their ability to each according to their need, or as we say in America today, spreading the wealth around.  In other words, I am not a socialist.  I believe in personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity.  Sadly I find myself out of phase with the Progressive Clique which has successfully maneuvered its way to power using the education system, the media, and uninformed, uninvolved, and emotional voters.

Out of phase or not, I believe in the equality of opportunity which gives everyone a shot at success as opposed to the equality of outcome which our Leader and his fellow travelers wish to foist upon us, and which gives everyone the assurance of mediocrity.   No matter the consequence, no matter the sacrifice we must stand up for what we believe or we will stand by while our nation is transformed into what we won’t be able to believe is still called the United States of America.

Day by day the bean counting pencil pushers who make up the nameless faceless bureaucracy grind out rule after rule and regulation after regulation.  President Obama’s signature piece of legislation, Obamacare, is already churning out thousands upon thousands of pages of federal requirements all meant to fill in the blanks in a 2600 page bill that we had to pass to find out what was in it.

Hope and change has become bait and switch.  Mr. Obama isn’t even trying to win votes from those who disagree with him.  He isn’t trying to change minds. He is trying to buy votes.  He is betting that generations of entitlements have finally birthed the lumpen proletariat that his theories of government proclaim must exist for History to reach its summit.  He is betting his second term on the belief that there are now enough people dependent upon the government that they will vote for a handout instead of voting for a hand up.  He is betting that America has been dumbed down enough and bribed enough to trade our heritage of freedom for the yoke of a guaranteed something instead of the opportunity for everything.

Class warfare, penalizing success, dividing America into interest groups and voter blocks this is the strategy Mr. Obama thinks will win as he works to build a coalition of leftist intellectuals and those convinced they are disenfranchised.  Looking at the polls it appears he has the solid core of 40+% who will vote for a Democrat even if he is the devil himself.  The question is will the unengaged and uninformed voters who should at least hope he will change when combined with the illegals and the dead who at least get to vote in Chicago be enough for him to win?

Can you imagine what a second Obama term will look like won on the basis of a promise to double down on social democracy, a complete disregard for the balance of power, and a desire to totally transform America?  What will be left of the America we have known?  How would we ever get back to where we came from?  No entitlement once enacted has ever been repealed.  The size of government never shrinks.  The power it usurps from the people and the States is never surrendered.

A world filled with strangers keeps getting stranger all the time.  No matter how many degrees of separation we should never be as divided as our Dear Leader tries to portray us.  We are Americans, and we can do better than this.  Reject the siren song of free entitlements which are never free, and embrace the liberty our forefathers won for us.  Let us renew the great experiment in human freedom and strive to see our nation rise again to be the last best hope of man that it is meant to be.  The shining city on a hill that can light the way to a future worthy of free men and women held together by unity not united in our separation.

Even if it takes more than six degrees of separation to connect to others what does it matter how connected we are to people around the world if we are in terminal disagreement with our fellow Americans?  As a nation we are divided between those who want to strive to achieve and those who thrive because they receive.  The Progressives have bred generations of passive takers who believe they are entitled to the fruit of others’ labor.  They pay no taxes so they don’t care how high taxes go.  They have no conception of paying for what you have, so they don’t care about the national debt.  They see Americaas a vending machine, so they don’t believe in our unique place in History.  They desire a shabby world of bread and circuses based on equality of outcome, so they don’t long to be all they can be..

Those of us who want America to be what America has been and what it should be, the home of the brave and the land of the free, can’t let divisions divide us anymore!  We must unite to save liberty or we will stand alone at the end of the day.  We may be strangers to one another.  We may not know each other but if we are fellow believers in the personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity we must unite over what connects us to save what has always made us E PLURIBUS UNUM.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

AP Photo

By GARY FINEOUT
AP
June 27, 2012

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A federal judge has refused to stop Florida from removing potentially non-U.S. citizens from its rolls.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state to halt the purge, arguing it was going on too close to a federal election.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle said Wednesday that there was nothing in federal voting laws that prevent the state from identifying non-U.S. citizens even if it comes less than 90 days before the Aug. 14 election.

Hinkle ruled that federal laws are designed to block states from removing eligible voters close to an election. He said they are not designed to stop states from blocking voters who should have never been allowed to cast ballots in the first place.

Gov. Rick Scott praised Hinkle’s decision, saying “irreparable harm will result if non-citizens are allowed to vote.”

Read more at the Huffington Post

Tulsa,OK, Congressman John Sullivan. Image:Newson6.com

By Becca Lower

An interesting fact has come up in the Oklahoma congressional primary race between incumbent Tulsa Congressman John Sullivan and Jim Bridenstine.

According to the non-partisan website GovTrack.us, Sullivan hasn’t bothered to show up very often to do the job that the voters in Oklahoma’s 1st District sent him to do. From February 2002 through the first quarter of 2012, he missed 679 of the 7,650 recorded or roll call votes taken in the House of Representatives. That’s 9%, worse than the median of 2.4%.

“If someone’s paying me $174,000 per year plus benefits and perks, which is what the average congressperson earns today, you’d better believe I wouldn’t be a no-show like this fellow,” said Ken Crow (Co-Founder/VP, Restoring America Project (RAP) Super PAC). RAP has endorsed Bridenstine. Crow continued, “Maybe if I were bed-ridden with a fever of 105 degrees Fahrenheit, I might miss here and there. But I doubt that was the case here, not 679 times.

He added, “Restoring America Project picked Bridenstine in this race because you know that he understands what duty means, as a Navy combat veteran in Iraq and Afghanistan. Someone who’s called to defend our country can’t go to his commanding officer and beg off whenever he feels like it. When you make a promise to the American people, you stick to it. Congressman Sullivan just doesn’t seem to be taking his duty seriously.”

By Alex Roarty
NationalJournal.com
May 17, 2012

The Great Recession took a sledgehammer to young job-seekers. As a Rutgers University study released this week reported, only half — 51 percent — of college graduates since 2006 are employed full-time. Eleven percent of them, the study found, are unemployed — a figure well above the national rate of 8.1 percent. Another 12 percent are working part-time.

Imagine, then, the difficulty that other young people, those without the advantage of a college education, face in trying to find a job. Avoiding unemployment isn’t easy for most in this job market, but the struggles are acute for men and women younger than 30.

Their hardship explains President Obama’s dilemma this November. The White House incumbent enjoyed the overwhelming enthusiasm of young voters in 2008, winning them by a two-to-one margin over Republican John McCain — an incredible edge even for a group that usually leans left. But replicating that success could prove difficult when so many of those same voters are beset by personal financial difficulty.

To do so, the Obama campaign might have to rely on a culturally oriented pitch, one that can tout the president’s support of same-sex marriage. That’s not necessarily a losing strategy, because many young people strongly identify with the president’s views. But it’s also one that Republicans bet won’t be enough to prevent them from making inroads on Election Day.

To read more, please visit: NationalJournal.com

By Kyle Becker | Own The Narrative

It’s only May and the campaign season has already turned gay.

Obama is running around like a hysterical schoolgirl courting his left-wing base, which is a portentous sign for an incumbent who should be wooing the moderate middle like Selma Hayek worked the room in Dogma.

The war on moms, condomgate, dog-eating, and now rainbow flag-waving studs in assless chaps complete the sideshow circus tableau for our nation to move ‘forward’ into. If the mise-en-scène is not jovial, it sure is frivolous; ‘gay’ in more than one regard.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I had more than a few gay friends in college, an institute of higher learning that unfortunately was not too adept at the finer points of rhetorical parlance. One of my friends came out of the closet and I neither had a clue he was gay, nor did I bat an eye. Consider it a lack of gaydar that springs from a devil-may-care individualist streak.

Apologias aside, the gay mafia demanded its pound of flesh from Obama in exchange for a commitment to ‘marriage equality,’ and he both pandered and hedged at the same time: he paid lip service to a supposedly lofty ideal while maintaining the status quo — a familiar track record for the president and a sign of electoral weakness.

Obama has thereby inflamed the more extreme elements of his base by opting for an ‘evolved’ position that basically says it’s super if states want to pass gay marriage laws, a non-committal committal if there ever was one, while chilling the religious ‘black community’ he needs another strong showing from on election day. Van Jones can flippantly make remarks about Obama coming out as gay and not losing any of the black vote — wait, why is an avowed communist and known truther doing on MSNBC again?

Read more and access this work’s audio version (monoblog), please visit here- OwnTheNarrative.com

About the Author
Kyle Becker is a political analyst and freelance writer, with articles published at American Thinker, Misfit Politics and Conservative Daily News. In 2010, he was the Assistant Director of Field Operations for Congresswoman Nan Hayworth, and a board member at Tea Party Nation. An advanced PhD. student in Political Science, Kyle speaks fluent Russian and worked in Moscow as a copy editor for the economic news agency Prime-Tass (prime-tass.com). He believes that defeating socialism and all other forms of collectivism once and for all means thoroughly discrediting the ideology utilizing reason, evidence, history, and philosophy. And humor. And whatever else works. He is currently editing his first fiction novel.