Social Security is a Disaster Waiting to Happen

February 13, 2006 by Matt Heckman.

I can remember a couple of weeks ago during President Bush’s State of the Union address, when he addressed Congress regarding their obstruction of Social Security reform, the Democrats stood up and applauded. Now let face if folks, President Bush is correct. Social Security is on its death bed, and has been down this path for the past 15 years now; there is no reform on the face of the earth that would be economically sound to fix the problem once and for all. Most of my generation knows that Social Security will not be there for them regardless of whatever type of reform is presented on either side. The question we should all come together, and ask ourselves is how did we get into this problem?

As everybody knows Social Security was presented by FDR, as part of his new deal during the Great Depression. The original program was intended to provide something to fall back on for every citizen in their older years, but FDR said himself that the program should not and never be relied on for 100% of their retirement. I remember back in the days when I worked for Thrift Drug when I was in high school, I could remember when all the seniors would come in, and most of them would almost blow their entire Social Security check on prescriptions, and other health related necessities. I remember having talks with my late grandmother about this, and she told me how she could remember FDR saying the same thing that I mentioned above, about not relying on Social Security 100%. She told me that it was not until the Great Society programs of LBJ, and the growing baby boomer generation where the original intent of Social Security got perverted into its current nightmare. Too many empty promises, too many generations from the baby boomers on, by many Presidents on both sides. Now a couple of lesions can be learned by this, and how we can move forward with a sound plan.

First of all the most important lesion that can be learned about this is that no matter what party is in power, the federal government should never be entrusted with that kind of power. Our Founding Fathers had the Constitution in place not to detail what rights citizens have, but what Government can not do to its citizens. If the Constitution were to detail citizens rights then the first amendment would say something like “The Citizens of the Union are entitled to free speech”, but it is not like that is it? No it’s “Congress shall MAKE NO LAW in restricting free speech”. Those are the key words that put the fear of God into every big government politician.

Second matters like Social Security belong to the states to decide weather they want to enact such a program. Every state has a different population, and bigger is not always better. Social Security has been used as nothing but an issue to bring up at every election, and this needs to stop. Now we need to come up with a transition to have people less reliant on government, and at the same time secure the baby boomer generation for the things that were promised to them. Social Security as we know it has to be phased out after the baby boomer generation, and something new put into place, or its eventual destruction would be an economic disaster far greater then the Great Depression.

I closing I say this. We all can make mistakes, after all it is only natural, but we must learn from our mistakes, gain strength from it, and move forward boldly. FDR once said, “That the only thing to fear was fear itself”. Change in general has been a fear that people do not want to face, even if they know the current system is a failure. Change is never easy, or painless, and it’s time to confront that fear boldly, and proudly, and in the end we will all be better off, not just as Americans, but as human beings put forth on this earth by our creator.

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