February 2006
The following transcript is for the podcast entitled “Restore the Trust.”
Welcome to the PACT America podcast.
Well, I recently finished my latest podcast, the one called “Baby Bust,” and I was worried that on the surface it might appear to be contradictory. I've been saying that Social Security won't go bankrupt as long as the trust fund is available for use, and that's true.
You know, Social Security does have a plan to help get the Baby Boomers through, but it relies on that trust fund. And that trust fund has been spent; we need that money for that trust fund to be paid back so that these people, these Baby Boomers, can get their benefits.
Now the problem is that if you look at the government as a whole and all of its financial obligations, not only will it be difficult to pay back the Social Security trust fund, but there's also government pensions and other obligations. You know, there's just not... Unless we get started now with a good plan like the PACT America plan--and I'm not trying to promote that; I'm just saying that you need some sort of plan where you can get money coming in in the form of these government bonds. But unless we can get that, you know, the government itself is facing insolvency.
Social Security for the most part will be fine. There will be a need for slight changes to be made. However, the government itself has all of this money in the national debt, all of these bonds that are financing the national debt, but some of these are going to need to be paid back. And if they can't get the money to pay back these bonds, then the government is going to be insolvent. You know, it's called going bankrupt.
Now, I mean the government is not going to allow itself to go bankrupt, number one. So that either means cutting spending other programs, other important programs, or it means cutting benefits. You know, if it's the choice between paying you your fully entitled benefits or having the government face bankruptcy, what do you think they're going to do? They're going to cut your benefits, or they're going to raise the retirement age or a whole bunch of other things. But I mean, that's the problem here, and that's the problem whether it's Social Security or corporate pensions.
People have paid into the system for years, and you know, they were counting on this--this is like the contract that was made with them. And now at the last moment, you know, they're just going to change the rules on you. And I don't think that's right.
You know, and you really can't just trust the government to handle it on its own.
And that's one of the reasons why I got started with this whole project is because I wanted to say, “Hey, wait a minute! This is my money; this is something that is going to be affecting me. And bottom line is I don't trust the government; I don't trust you politicians! I don't trust you elected officials! That's the bottom line.”
So I'm going to take matters into my own hands. I'm going to crunch the numbers. I'm going to do whatever it takes, but I'm going to make sure that me and my money and everything is going to be looked after, you know? You can't trust anybody to look after you--you've got to do it yourself.
But hopefully I can help America too.
(laughter)
Because by this point, I've spent enough on this project where it's like, “Well, I don't know how much I'm going to be saving through my Social Security benefits anyway.” But that's another story.
So yeah, I think we just need to exercise some common sense here, get things under control, start to inform people about the true issues--the real issues, and start to work in the right direction.
So this is Adam Florzak keeping it real.