Mitt Romney's Closing Argument

This might be Mitt's best speech yet. . .



If there's any chance you're still undecided, first, what's wrong with your thought process? This is the future leader of the America we once knew and loved, not the pretender who sought to fundamentally transform America the way he has the last four years.

Mitt Romney is the best hope America has to fix the soaring debt and deficits, rehabilitate the underlying accuarial assumptions in Medicare and Social Security, and introduce the fundamentals back into addressing our budget and fiscal decision making.

There is no chance that four years of the same thing we've seen from the current administration is going to improve America. Four more years of THAT will sink America.

Time to Gore the Sacred Cows

In the financial world of Medicare and Social Security, things just got worse. There's plenty of denial to go around, and no one is willing, it seems, to step up and admit the obvious. There was a report released yesterday by the trustees, heightening the necessity for Congress to rejigger the massive entitlement programs.

The future, long deferred by lawmakers, has apparently arrived at the doorstep. The problems are us -- the baby-boomers. We're all retiring and the taxes collected to support the programs are in a prolonged pattern of weakness -- call it life support if you wish. The bad news couldn't come at a better time for serious reformers, and a worse time for the kick-the-can-down-the-road crowd.

The trustees of Medicare now project it will run out of money in 2024. That's been accelerated by five years earlier than last year's estimate. Social Security trust funds will be drained in 2036, one year earlier than the last estimate. Trust funds? More accurately IOUs to the Treasury, since there are no fungible assets left in the trust fund. The reality? When the trust fund balances finally reach zero, there's only one solution -- collect enough money in current payroll taxes to pay only partial benefits, the report said. Not a rosy future. Of course, not many of us are concerned today because we won't live that long. It's our children and grandchildren who will suffer.

I say "suffer" advisedly, since perhaps the alternative view is they will finally be freed from the obligation of funding entitlements in the welfare state.

Here's the projection in the report for next year: After going two years with no cost-of-living increase in Social Security payments, the trustees are projecting a 0.7 percent increase for next year. Big WHOOP. That will get nullified by higher Medicare Part B premiums.

Here's a comment from Captain Obvious: "There can no longer be any doubt or denial: Our nation's Medicare and Social Security programs are unsustainable and will run out of money sooner than expected," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. These guys are the geniuses who have supervised the debacle. McConnell is an echo chamber for Americans, who said when recently polled that 47 percent were opposed to raising the debt ceiling. Can he be trusted to lead the Senate in executing on the will of  the people? I have much more confidence in Speaker John Boehner on the House side if his rhetoric can be matched with deeds. Said Boehner: “I’ve talked to the President all year, privately-- about the fact that we were not going to increase the debt limit without serious changes. I mean, this conversation has been going on for quite a while. I’ve offered to the President, I’ve said, ‘Mr. President, come on, you and I, let’s lock arms and we’ll jump out of the boat together.’ I’m serious about dealing with this, and I hope he’s just as serious. No gimmicks. No automatic claw backs. I’ve had it with all of that. We know what needs to be done. Let’s just do it.” Even Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chair is sounding realistic: "Both parties messed this up. This is not a Republican-created problem or a Democrat-related problem. It's both parties and we've got to face up to that if we're going to get this situation under control." Now you're talking like men rather than boys. Keep it up, please.

The backdrop to this latest disclosure yesterday is the negotiation, more aptly, the political theater being played out between Congress and the Obama administration. They are "negotiating" proposals to change Medicare and other benefit programs as the looming request by the administration for an increase in the debt ceiling grows more urgent. That ceiling will be bumped up against sometime Monday. We're at $14.3 trillion in debt right now, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is claiming the sky is falling on the government's ability to service the debt on outstanding bonds.

Poppycock. The Treasury takes in 10 times what it needs to service the interest payments. Holders of the low-interest rate bonds for the moment still believe they will be paid. That could change if Congress doesn't begin acting like it is serious in cutting spending. It's a matter of prioritizing the spending, meaning making deep cutting decisions the lawmakers are so reluctant to do.

There may be time to put off sweeping changes in how we fund Social Security going forward, but Medicare seems for the moment to be in the cross hairs for reformers.

Here's the deal: If Congress continues to wait and debate, the expiring clock forces America into higher taxes. The other choice is deep cuts to benefits, according to the report. Making critical decisions today on smaller baby steps to get the needed changes made today, gives a longer ramp to run on for future retirees in the next generation.

Who are these "trustees" you ask? Charles P. Blahous III and Robert D. Reischauer. No one you know, but they signed the report with this warning: "The financial shortfalls confronting both Social Security and Medicare are substantial and -- absent legislation to correct them -- quite certain. Elected officials will best serve the interests of the public if financial corrections are enacted at the earliest practicable time."

The only question remaining is this one: Are lawmakers inclined to act on these predictions, or blandly go about the people's business as usual as though there is no impending urgency? The weakened economy with more people out of work for a sustained period of time has added to the problem significantly. With fewer working bees in the hive, paying fewer payroll taxes to support the programs in the short term, the trustees warn the trajectory is quickly turning negative. Medicare is more critical because tax revenues continue to fall in the face of rising health care costs.

Here's their projected fix: Two choices, neither of which is attractive. To put Social Security on a sustainable path for the next 75 years, the trustees recommend an increase in the payroll tax of 2.15 percentage points, OR an immediate and permanent 14 percent cut in benefits. Even more stark are the projections needed to fix the Medicare hospital fund -- an increase in the payroll tax of nearly 1 percentage point, OR a 17 percent cut in benefits. These are not hard math problems. What is needed is the political will to act and act now.

We have a socialist welfare state in America today. The debate should end here and now about whether or not we do. Creeping socialism has nearly engulfed and strangled our national government and what used to be considered a free-market economy. Nearly 55 million retirees, disabled people and children who have lost parents receive Social Security benefits, which average $1,077 monthly. More than 46 million people are covered by Medicare. Just do the simple math. Who says we don't already have a "nanny state?" Both parties have contributed to his current state of affairs because of their willingness to compromise with each other over the years.

Compromise is what got us here. Now we need patriots who will stand on their correct principles of freedom and liberty to lead us out of the wilderness in which we have wandered aimlessly and recklessly in our generation.

The cost of medicine continues to escalate. Medicare has allowed physicians and hospitals to experiment endlessly without restriction on high-tech solutions. People are living longer, and receiving once-complicated procedures such as heart bypass surgery and hip replacements later in life. Those treatments are now routine. Three cheers for life-elongating medicine. But how do we pay for all that charity care? Higher taxes.

The political class has usurped their power and authority from the citizenry. In exchange for all the socialist goodies they have doled out, the electorate perpetuates their longevity in office and rewards them for their largess. Most conservative realists, however, argue the Social Security Trust Fund is nothing more than political myth.

"It is important to note that the actual future costs for Medicare are likely to exceed those shown by the current-law projections in this report," the trustees added. So much for the claims that Obamacare reduces medical costs. Can you say accounting hocus pocus?

Six trustees oversee Social Security and Medicare, in case you wondered. Besides Geithner, Blahous and Reischauer, the others are Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue.

Question: Are the trustees trustworthy?

Bigger Question: Are the elected representatives of the people awake and on task in overseeing the trustees?

The Illusory God of Government

Several years ago (1984) a successful ad campaign for Wendy's Hamburgers featured a little old lady played by actress Clara Peller, who immortalized the words, "Where's the beef?" when shown a competitor's product featuring a large fluffy and yummy bun with little or no hamburger patty.

Well might one ask today with regard to Social Security, "Where's the trust fund?" that was supposedly locked away in the "lock box" Bill Clinton used to talk about. In the category of lies politicians have told me, that one could only be called "The Whopper!" (with apologies to Burger King).

Like most political realities we face today, my fellow Americans, there IS no trust fund with fungible assets. That's what the meaning of the word "IS" is. What we have instead is a "bookkeeping adjustment" made with each year's budget. I will qualify that statement quickly, because it all depends on what your definition of "fungible" is. If you are satisified with an explanation that the trust fund is filled with IOUs from the Treasury to retirees, then you'll be happy to know the trust fund is full of that kind of asset. If you insist on something more tangible, however, you will be disappointed to learn there's no "beef" between the big fluffy, yummy political double-speak going on in Washington today.

The Social Security Ponzi Scheme

That's why Alan Simpson called it a "Ponzi scheme" the other day in his Senate testimony. The original "inventor" was not a man named Charles Ponzi, but when he deployed its tactics his name was forever associated with it and he went to prison for his crimes.

In a nutshell, here's the way Social Security works today:  Paid-in contributions that exceed the amount required to fully fund current payments to beneficiaries are invested in securities issued by the federal government. The securities issued under this scheme constitute the assets of the Social Security Trust Fund. Because under current federal law these securities represent future obligations that must be repaid, the federal government includes these securities within the overall national debt. When politicians wrangle over the budget, it's more than mere political posturing. Nobody really wants to declare the Emperor has no clothes for fear of incurring the wrath of a growing segment of the voting public -- we baby boomers who actually believed there would be something there for us when we retired.

The portion of the national debt that is not considered "publicly held" represents the obligations incurred by the government to itself, the bulk of which consists of the government's obligations to the Social Security Trust Fund.

So what we really have is a "promise to pay," from our government. The actual assets of the fund were consumed long ago.

The trust fund contains the securities that will be redeemed to make benefit payments in the future when contributions derived from payroll taxes and self-employment contributions no longer are sufficient to fully fund then-current benefit payments. (Here's the rub: Whether or not this is a meaningful topic for discussion depends upon one's belief in the sustainability of the unified Federal budget).

Freshmen Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY)

My position, of course, is that the day of reckoning has arrived and our current course is unsustainable. It's the case Mike Lee and Rand Paul, two young freshmen senators are now trying to make to their esteemed establishment colleagues. If we fail to choose now as free men, our freedom of choice will be overtaken by the immutable law of financial gravity and we will land hard.

The number of contributors to the trust fund has been in gradual decline since the average life expectancy of a retiree was 63 years of age. Now average life expectancy is 77, still a little higher for women than for men.

The first POTUS to bring up the nature of what's really going on inside the trust fund was George W. Bush. On February 2, 2005, he made Social Security a prominent theme of his State of the Union Address. The public debate over this issue has never been quite the same since. The fund holds non-negotiable (the opposite of "fungible") United States Treasury bonds and U.S. securities backed "by the full faith and credit of the government."

The OMB and the Empty Cupboard

In an effort to clarify, the bi-partisan and apolitical body, the Office of Management and Budget, describes it this way:

"These [Trust Fund] balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other Trust Fund expenditures – but only in a bookkeeping sense. . . They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims [nothing more than IOUs] on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures. The existence of large Trust Fund balances, therefore, does not, by itself, have any impact on the Government’s ability to pay benefits." (From FY 2000 Budget, Analytical Perspectives, p. 337, emphasis mine).

It took me awhile to wrap my pea-sized brain around that admission, but here it is: "You let me take some periodic payments (as in a FICA deduction out of every single paycheck you earn over your lifetime), and I will promise to pay you an annuity someday when you retire. Oh, and don't worry, I'm the U.S. Treasury and I'm good for it."

That's it, my friends. GWB was pilloried for even suggesting U.S citizens might do a better job of managing their own retirement funds better than the U.S. Treasury -- remember "private accounts?" -- and now six years later we're still having the same debate. It centers on one simple feature -- who will choose and make decisions, the individual or the federal government? Nothing has changed much since the original war in heaven where the question was first posed. We're here today because we chose agency, leaving us free to choose. Are these IOUs claims against real resources? Or are they worthless pieces of paper backed by nothing but "good faith and credit?" Shall we be self-determining free Americans like our ancestors, or will we bow to the misrepresentations and fraud of the federal government? For me, the answers to the questions are distilling rapidly.

Krauthammer the Truth Teller

Appearing in his weekly column today is this analysis by Charles Krauthammer:

"The new line from the White House is: no need to fix it because there is no problem. As Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew wrote in USA Today just a few weeks ago, the trust fund is solvent until 2037. Therefore, Social Security is now off the table in debt-reduction talks.
"This claim is a breathtaking fraud.
"The pretense is that a flush trust fund will pay retirees for the next 26 years. Lovely, except for one thing: The Social Security trust fund is a fiction." (Italics in original).

Krauthammer continues:

"Here's why. When your FICA tax is taken out of your paycheck, it does not get squirreled away in some lockbox in West Virginia where it's kept until you and your contemporaries retire. Most goes out immediately to pay current retirees, and the rest (say, $100) goes to the U.S. Treasury — and is spent. On roads, bridges, national defense, public television, whatever — spent, gone.
"In return for that $100, the Treasury sends the Social Security Administration a piece of paper that says: IOU $100. There are countless such pieces of paper in the lockbox. They are called 'special issue' bonds.
"Special they are: They are worthless. As the OMB explained, they are nothing more than 'claims on the Treasury (i.e., promises) that, when redeemed (when you retire and are awaiting your check), will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures.' That's what it means to have a so-called trust fund with no 'real economic assets.' When you retire, the 'trust fund' will have to go to the Treasury for the money for your Social Security check."

I got into a exchange on the forum board the other day in a local newspaper over this very topic. Is there money in the bank, or is this a fraud? You be the judge. It's not a fraud, I guess, if we can all collectively continue to muster and believe the myth the government is being well-run. If we don't believe in the government's ability to pay its obligations, after all, then our money is also worthless, because that's what our money is based upon -- that same promise. It's called "fiat money," "cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-I'm-good-for-it" money. They used to say, "Don't take any wooden nickels," but now they all appear to be wooden.

Krauthammer puts the final nail in the coffin:

"Why is this a problem? Because as of 2010, the pay-as-you-go Social Security system is in the red. For decades it had been in the black, taking in more in FICA taxes than it sent out in Social Security benefits. The surplus, scooped up by the Treasury, reduced the federal debt by tens of billions. But demography is destiny. The ratio of workers to retirees is shrinking year by year. Instead of Social Security producing annual surpluses that reduce the federal deficit, it is now producing shortfalls that increase the federal deficit — $37 billion in 2010. It will only get worse as the baby boomers retire." (Emphasis mine).

So basically, there aren't many accounting tricks left to invent -- they've all been employed -- and the average American Joe, whom the government elitists always figured was just too dumb to figure all this out, is finally awake and on task. He and his buddies are tossing out the bums who are running this scheme and choosing self-determination instead. Meanwhile, Obama thinks he's got enough people dumbed down and content now that he'll blame the enemy and ride his high horse to re-election in 2012. We have this reality before us, however. Our "watchmen on the tower" have seen the enemy coming from afar off, and the enemy is us unless (and until) we wake up.

True Prophets Always Get it Right


Joseph Smith the Prophet

I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it again and again. My belief is anchored in this declaration from Joseph Smith: "We . . . must be under [God's] guidance if we are prospered, preserved and sustained. Our only confidence can be in God; our only wisdom obtained from Him: and He alone must be our protector and safeguard, spiritually and temporally, or we fall." (HC, 5:64).

There is no salvation in the collective salvation being offered by the federal government. If you thought there was, better make other plans and find the real God in your life. The United States of America still has a vital role to play in preparing the world for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. I still believe it, but now after watching Barak Obama and his minions at work for two years I've had to add some "qualifiers." Those include "if" we wake up before it's too late.

President Harold B. Lee, 1973

If you click the link in that last paragraph, you'll find the source for this prophetic statement by President Harold B. Lee:  "Men may fail in this country. Earthquakes may come, seas may heave themselves beyond their bounds, there may be great drought and disaster and hardship, as we may call it, but this nation, founded as it was on a foundation of principles laid down by men whom God raised up, will never fail."

He could have added, "If we hold fast to that foundation of principles." If we do, we will not be deceived into accepting this government we now see as our God. It is illusory, anti-Christ and delusional. What you can see and touch (government) is imaginary at best, and what you can't see and touch (the real God of heaven) ironically "has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's." (D&C 130:22-23).

The so-called "Christian world’s" definition of God is founded on fiction not unlike the Social Security Trust Fund. When the scholars at Nicea defined Him as being "three in one and one in three without any body parts or passions," Christianity went astray. It took a magnificent latter-day theophany of the Father and the Son in a personal appearance to the boy Joseph Smith to put Christianity back on track again. The only problem in the world is it's hard for most to salute a fourteen-year-old's testimony as authentic. But then again, why would he lie? I testify he didn't.

Whenever we allow ourselves to be misled by sophistry, one has only to observe how benighted, deceived and darkened we subsequently become as a human family. Wanting to believe a fiction, cannot, worlds without end, make that fiction into an abiding absolute truth with merit.

Join me in putting your faith in the only living and real God there is -- the one you can't see and touch just yet -- the one that is sending back His Son to clean up the mess we've made. By the power of the Holy Ghost, however, you can feel Him in your heart of hearts where the absolute truth always resides.

I conclude with one further insight from Joseph Smith:

“. . . other attempts to promote the unusual peace and happiness in the human family have proved abortive; every effort has failed; every plan and design has fallen to the ground; it needs the wisdom of God, the intelligence of God, and the power of God to accomplish this. The world has had a fair trial for 6000 years; the Lord will try the seventh thousand himself.” (TPJS, 252).

Planning on government to give you cradle-to-grave security and collective salvation? Better make other plans.

Baby Boomers, Entitled?

Having arrived at early stage "geezerhood," this cartoon made me smile the other day. Our generation has made waves ever since the end of World War II, because there were so many babies made after the fathers returned from war.

New elementary schools were built to contain us. Then middle schools and high schools burst their seams to accommodate our burgeoning numbers. A draft was instituted to fight a war in a country nobody had ever heard of -- Vietnam -- because there was an ample supply of young Americans. It was easily the most hated and wasteful war (aren't they all?) ever waged. Those of us with a modicum of intelligence found ways to avoid that war altogether.

We protested against authority. We lived through the sixties with abandon and self-indulgence. We rebelled, we wore flowers in our hair (well, some did, not all of us), and our generation was responsible for assassinating John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, Martin Luther King, and we grew to love murder and violence more than our own mothers' milk it seemed.

We initiated bloated budgets for colleges and universities. We prompted government education financing plans, then we defaulted in record numbers in faux gratitude to a giving welfare state that made it possible for us to be well taught.

We launched industrial waves and bubbles throughout our illustrious careers as baby boomers. We lived way beyond our means. Savings became passe. Easy money and debt financing was the norm of the day. More homes were needed as we grew into young adulthood. but instead of filling those homes with a new and responsible generation of replacement Americans, we filled them instead with "stuff." We forgot the most valuable things aren't things.

We didn't reproduce enough children to keep the grist mill of greed turning and thriving. We self-sabotaged by reducing the numbers of taxpayers who could support us in our old age.

We've now reached a point where the birth rate has dropped off the edge of the table, barely high enough to replace a mother and a father. There just aren't as many people paying into the Social Security Trust Fund as there are people now receiving (or soon to receive) benefits out of the system. The trends for the future do not look promising. In Russia today there are cash incentives for those willing to reproduce more children, because they realize (too late probably) that zero population growth was not a wise fiscal policy after all.

This is one of the hot potato political issues no one wants to take on. Fact is, no one even wants to define whether Social Security is "an entitlement program" or not.

We baby boomers paid good tax money into the system for decades in anticipation of having something there for us when we approached retirement age. The current rules state you are eligible to begin drawing benefits on your 62nd birthday if you paid in enough to the system to qualify. All you need to do is register on line.

Because we're living longer than ever before (thanks to the generosity of our fellow Americans who have funded Medicare through their payroll deductions), we will likely outlive the old actuarial probabilities under which benefits were structured and our "guaranteed" government Social Security checks that can be electronically deposited like magic every month until death will go far beyond what most of us paid in.

I'm at least willing to acknowledge the problem in simple terms, more than most politicians will admit.

Most in my generation will tell you they are "entitled" to receive their government sponsored retirement check, because, dag nabit, we were taxed to qualify for it and, dad burnit by golly, we're entitled to collect it when we reach geezerhood status.

So, if we classify Social Security as an "entitlement" so be it, but truthfully it's not "something for nothing" until our benefits go beyond what we paid in plus interest. At least that's how I do the calculations.

There's a lot of talk about socialism these days. Let me say this about that. If you for one minute think we are not already a socialist country, having adopted the socialist agenda one bite at a time for the last century, then my friend, I have a lovely bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you (dirt cheap, I might add).

Speaking of Medicare and Medicaid (not to mention Obamacare), all these "entitlements" are bought and paid for by a massive government sponsored redistribution of taxes extracted from the pocketbooks of hard-working Americans so the less fortunate among us may be blessed by the largess of the taxpayers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administers Medicare, the nation's largest health insurance program, which covers nearly 40 million Americans! And Obamacare insures those ranks will grow, attempting to mandate coverage (ruled unconstitutional, but pending a final SCOTUS ruling). Medicare is a Health Insurance Program for people age 65 or older, some disabled people under age 65, and people of all ages with End-Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure treated with dialysis or a transplant).

I have no idea what Obamacare is really going to cost on top of what Medicare and Medicaid is already costing, but I have a feeling it's going to be a very big number. As I stated, we baby boomers are always making waves whenever we move through the demographic nozzle.

Am I "entitled" to have those generous subsidy programs because I am part of the entitled "landed gentry" of baby boomers? Does the younger generation of Americans owe me anything because of my newly attained "geezerhood" status? Do I deserve to be treated with dignity and respect in my old age because I live in America and I've worked hard and paid my way without complaint? Do my children and grandchildren and unborn great-grandchildren owe me adulation and adoration because I've left the world a better place for them than the one I inherited? Do they owe me one red cent for my existence?

Our parents would have said, "Hell, no!" That's who they were.

And we would say, "Hell, yes!" Especially if we live in Wisconsin and we're part of a public employee union.

My generation is an embarrassment compared to the "Greatest Generation" of my parents. They saved the world from Nazism and fascism. They fought bravely and sacrificed much as the children of the Great Depression. When there was nowhere else for the world to turn for help, American G.I.s invaded Europe on D-Day to put down the persistent oppression of Hitler and other dictators of their day. Fearlessly, they answered the call. Their wives and children remained behind to work three shifts day and night in factories to build the implements of war. The government offered debt then, "war bonds," to finance the war, but the bonds were bought by Americans. When the war was over they came home, rebuilt their lives on the knowledge that freedom would be vouched safe for their children who could live an existence without the threat of the loss of freedom in this land.

And my generation? What of us? What will be our claim to greatness? That we recklessly spent our inheritance? That we ran up unsustainable deficits and debt that will never if ever be repaid? That we lived as though there were no tomorrow, and never a day of reckoning? That we lived in homes we did not build with our own hands, ate from the abundance of harvests we neither sowed nor nurtured, that we drank from wells we never drilled, that we drove chariots filled with refined crude oil we purchased from the house of Saud and other dictators who despised us with borrowed money from the Chinese when our own resources laid untapped beneath our feet because we were determined to generate wind, solar and other "green energy" resources to fight a fictitious political global warming boogieman?

Let me answer all those questions this way: When Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, they left without a Social Security card clutched tightly in their fists and without demanding their entitlements from a government sponsored retirement safety net complete with the finest medical care delivery system the world has ever known.

Naked and penniless came I into the world, and I'm likely to leave the same way. Everything in between is just detail, most of which will be unheralded by those my generation leaves behind. Too pessimistic, you say?

My faith resides in much more certain outcomes beyond all the entitlement programs to which I feel anything but entitled. The sooner my generation awakens to that reality, the sooner we'll be able to grapple with the task before us. We need to stop being spoiled brats whining about what we think we are entitled to receive but never will because we have taxed ourselves into oblivion without an extrication plan.

We are guilty of generational theft. We live on borrowed light, borrowed money and borrowed time. . .

My generation is entitled to reap the whirlwind of our poor choices. And we will. May God have mercy upon us, and may we never receive that to which we are entitled.