Senior citizens take warning! Be wary of Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. They've got their greedy eyes on your Social Security benefits.
Last week on the "Today" show, Clinton said he'd like to hike Medicare fees for "high income recipients." He also wants to boost their taxes by raising the percentage of Social Security benefits subject to taxation. It's now 50 percent in upper brackets.Clinton's endorsement of the idea follows a Perot remark that chopping benefits for affluent old-timers would save $20 billion a year. He was unspecific about a source for that number.
A day later on "Today," Perot said if elected he might send letters to rich folks asking them to give up their benefits.
Even President Bush is edging himself into the act. But his proposals make somewhat more sense. They are for small Medicare fee hikes for people with incomes above $100,000, or couples above $125,000.
Clinton and Perot seem to be declaring open season on more prosperous senior citizens. No matter what the candidates say, they are proposing tax hikes for a specific segment of our society.
At the very least it is a blatantly unfair and discriminatory assault on successful elderly people.
The targeted "class" is made up of the very people who are the role models for achieving the American dream. What kind of message does this send to those still fighting their way up the ladder?
What does it do to the incentive for individual success in America?
It's stupid.
More directly it would be an out and out rip-off of the Social Security taxes those individuals have paid for a lifetime with a government promise of benefits when they retire. These American citizens have paid those taxes with the expectation of receiving benefits in their retirement. The injustice is clear. It is nothing more or less than robbery.
Social Security taxes are imposed on all workers and employers. Self-employed individuals are also required to pay them. There are no exceptions. It is universal. One can't get away with refusing to pay it. It's a payroll tax and has been in the act since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law Aug. 14, 1935.
The law may have been the best legislation to come out of FDR's New Deal. Arthur Schlesinger, historian, said it "meant a tremendous break with the inhibitions of the past. The federal government was at last charged with the obligation to provide its citizens a measure of protection from the hazards and vicissitudes of life."
Unless the elderly make themselves heard on this issue, they can expect to see their benefits nibbled away until they're nothing more than a memory.