Based in Washington, D.C., at 601 E Street NW, the organization that represents itself as the advocate for the elderly seems to do more to support the government's position on Social Security than it does to expose obvious fallacies and spin stories put forth by the government.
For instance, AARP has never mentioned the theft of $739 billion from The Social Security Trust Fund even while congressmen are confessing to the crime. On May 26, 1999, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1259, the "Social Security and Medicare Safe Deposit Box Act." They passed this bill 416 to 12, about as close to a unanimous vote as you can get. And, during floor debate, many congressmen talked at length and into the Congressional Record about how they have been stealing from the Social Security and Medicare trusts. Did AARP cover any of this? Absolutely not.
Shortly thereafter, The Rock River Times published an article quoting some of these congressmen. The People's Open Opposition Party's web site at www.poop.org/trrt/confess.htm lists 24 of these verbatim confessions. Have you seen anything like that in AARP's publications? Anyone could read many more in the Congressional Record.
AARP also continues to talk about the 76 million baby-boomers while we know that's a tremendous exaggeration and fallacy. There aren't more than 7 to 10 million baby-boomers at best. Nothing that Social Security couldn't handle with its hands tied behind its back. But AARP continues with the spin story.
In their July-August edition of the AARP Bulletin, they published a long story profiling Robert M. Ball, "Mr. Social Security" and how he "says no to privatization" of Social Security. Bob Ball is a kindly and efficient actuarial expert who worked for the Social Security insurance company (in government they call it an "Administration") since graduating from college in the later years of the Great Depression, when Social Security was first getting off the ground. The story details Mr. Ball's rise to Deputy Director in 1953 and Commissioner in 1962.
At one point, AARP mentioned how "In 1982-83, he served on a national commission on Social Security that addressed the fiscal crisis in the program brought on by the high inflation of the late 1970s."
What AARP failed to mention was that this was the Greenspan Commission, which also included people like Bob Dole, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Claude Pepper and, of course, Alan Greenspan. It was the Greenspan Commission that made the Social Security Trust Fund into a slush fund.
Implemented over the next 4 years following immediate passage of a reform bill in March of 1983, this is what raised FICA taxes to their present 12.4 to 15 percent level and gave Congress and the Administration a tremendous source from which to steal. Bob Ball, that nice old gentleman was part of this rip-off scheme.
Conveniently, AARP just glosses over that fact and also misleads you into believing that the crisis they were solving had to do with inflation.
In reality, the crisis had more to do with unemployment and the fact that Social Security had to turn to its trust fund savings several years in a row. The government hated it when this happened. It not only meant that there was no excess for them to "borrow," but they had to come up with cash out of their general fund taxes so Social Security could make ends meet. This spells double taxation for American workers but it means less money to spend on pork barrel projects to politicians. Now, that's reason for crisis and reform.
The Greenspan Commission made certain that would never happen again and Congress would have plenty of extra cash in the future.
The figures speak for themselves. You must also remember that the Social Security Trust Fund holds nothing but illegal bogus nonmarketable bonds. A rip-off in themselves since they represent nothing more than double taxation for the very same people who contributed the excess or "surplus" in the first place.
You will hear stories from the spin doctors about how, when bonds must be drawn upon as they were in the late seventies and early eighties, this is merely a matter of one government entity "borrowing" from another. For instance, they will often claim that when Social Security had a shortfall in FICA taxes it borrowed from another trust fund, one that had an excess or "surplus."
Such statements are pure fiction and even if such borrowing did occur it would amount to nothing more than shifting the bill from one credit card to another. The lending trust fund, the one making the loan to Social Security, also holds nothing more than bogus nonmarketable bonds. Its real cash was also stolen by Congress and the Administration. Therefore, if the lending trust fund is going to "cash in" some of its bonds in order to make the loan, it will be drawing real cash from the general fund just as Social Security would be doing if it cashed in some of its holdings in nonmarketable bonds. It's exactly the same thing. And it's exactly the same if the lending trust fund has not yet been awarded nonmarketable bonds but still has its surplus in the general fund.
This is all bullshit and coverup put out by the thieves and their accomplices that, unfortunately, seems to include AARP.
.