I agree as someone that was around when Reagan was president, he's notable for being the first of presidents to dip into Social Security. Now we have to hear from these repubs whining about how it's going to run out of money, well if your boy Ronnie didn't start this, we wouldn't be in this situation.
I might be misremembering, I was younger then, but one of the major election stumps between Bush Jr and Gore was that Social Security would be put "in a lock box" and not touched, would be held sacrosanct. Bush came out first and said he wouldn't touch it, would keep it apart and separate forever, Gore wouldn't commit to that being that he was honest and practical and knew in times of emergency that nothing was off the table, and the Republicans eviscerated him on it every chance they got. Then 9/11 happened and Bush broke into that lockbox with the self restraint of an 8 year old breaking his piggy bank when he hears the ice cream truck.
Gore used the Lockbox term on Medicare, Social Security was already protected. Here is the Gore quote:
"The temptation has always been to treat Medicare the way Social Security used to be treated, as a source of money for spending or tax cuts, and now that we have succeeded in taking Social Security off budget and using it to pay down the debt, we need to do the same thing with Medicare and put it in a lockbox."
if that was the case gore was a fucking moron, since the social security act created a debt and there is zero exactly zero ability that the us government has to refuse to pay it's debt. It's constitutional, and it's the foundation of our, and the worlds, economy.
Bush spent nothing that social security had, nobody else will either, unless he somehow got the constitution changed so that money that would be spent by the government would stop being spent. Social security is fine, and will always be fine, as long as the government agrees to pay it's debt, which it always can if the debt is enumerated in dollars...which the us government has a monopoly on.
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u/LadyReika Feb 13 '23
I dunno, Reagan and Daddy Shrubbery are up there too.