The author of the article “The Social Security “Goody Bag” basically made the point of the people he was mocking. Every time congress in their magnanimous generosity changed the law to add the “Goody Bag” items, they did not add funding to make up the difference. Yes, there might have been a perceived need for the changes, but the intention of the original law was to be a safety net for those that did not have the foresight to prepare for the later years. Disability benefits, survivor benefits, children, etc. were not the intention of the bill. If congress thought, there was a need they should have created a new “tax” for workers to fund these new “needs”.
What congress saw was this huge, at the time, pool of money laying there doing nothing and they found a way to spend it. Congress also in their “wisdom”, have in the past, and currently raided the pool to fund general budget needs. At the time the law was written there were no provisions in the bill to keep greedy hands off the pool. So now we have a Social Security that is looking at bankruptcy, holding IOUs from a government that funds a lot of its general and social budget needs with loans from China and will probably not be able to reimburse the money taken…
We may have more people working but we also have more people retiring and living longer, and with all of the “Goody Bag” items, we are draining the SSN account faster than was intended.
All of these “Goody Bag” items should be funded separately not using SS funds.
Steven Edwards
Garner NC
