77-24-B1
- Main Page \ Reagan Radio Commentaries \ 1977
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Social Security[edit]
Transcript[edit]Talking about Social Security is a little like being the messenger to the king in ancient times. If the message you carried was bad news, your head was lopped off. I'll be right back. Ready for a little nostalgia? I've just come across a copy of the 1936 notice announcing the beginning of Social Security. It is entitled “Security in Your Old Age” and is addressed "To Employees of Industrial and Business Establishments", "factories, shops, mines, mills, stores, offices and other places of business." Then it proclaims, “Beginning November 24, 1936, the U.S. government will set up a Social Security account for you, if you are eligible.” It explains how employee and employer will pay one cent for each dollar of earnings up to $3000 for three years. At that point, their contributions will increase to one and a half cents for another three years. Then two cents, two and a half, and finally three cents. This final figure is in the form of a flat out promise which stated "beginning 1949, 12 years from now, you and your employer will each pay three cents on each dollar you earn up to three thousand dollars a year. That is the most you will ever pay." The pamphlet concludes with the guarantee that your money will go into a fund where it will draw three percent interest, thus adding three cents to every dollar in each year, and it makes this promise what you get from the government plan will always be more than you've paid in taxes and usually more than you can get for yourself by putting away the same amount of money each week in some other way. None of these promises has been kept. Your Social Security tax is not in a fund earning additional money, it is instead going directly to those receiving benefits, and it is insufficient to do even that. The rate of tax has long since gone beyond three percent and the amount of your earnings being taxed has risen way above the promised ceiling of three thousand dollars. The amount you get back is not more than you paid in, nor is it more than you could get by putting your money in some other plan. Most of you paying the present tax could buy in the open insurance market a retirement policy with life protection paying far more than present Social Security benefits. Now, the administration proposes tripling your tax over the next 10 years and the employer's tax over the next two and this is a temporary expedient, only postponing for a brief time a day of reckoning. During the ‘76 campaign, I called attention to the fact that actuarial experts had estimated Social Security was out of balance by from two to four trillion dollars. This was vehemently denied. Two well-known columnists, Jules Whitcover and Jack Germond have recently accused me of gross exaggeration. The governing board of Social Security consisting of the secretaries of Treasury, H.E.W. and Labor and the Director of Social Security have just released the 1977 report. Projected outlays will exceed income, even with the huge increases in the tax, every year for the next 75 years and Whitcover and Germand are right. The projected deficit is not two or four trillion, it is 17 trillion dollars. Increased taxes are no answer, they only add to inflation and further impoverish our people. It is time to totally reform the Social Security system if we're to prevent its total collapse. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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