The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are leading the effort.
According to the article, as of mid 2009 there was 3.6 trillion dollars in IRAs and 401(k)s. Thats a tempting sum to the Obama Administration and the Democrats when they are pilling up an unsustanable level of debt. They want to sieze it and convert it to annuities so that retires will receive “steady payment streams.”
Let me tell you what this is - it is an attempt to prevent the collapse of the Treasury market!
Forcing people into Treasuries as an “annuity” is exactly what Social Security allegedly is. Except that Treasury stole the money that was collected in FICA taxes and spent it!
Guess what? They’ll do that here too - you’re going to “invest” in Treasuries which of course are effectively a CALL option on the future taxing ability of the government.
Let’s see if I understand this. The government takes your IRA / 401(k) and gives you an IOU. Then they pay you back in inflated dollars in equal monthly payments until you die. Haven’t they done this already with the generational ponzi scheme called Social Security? I wonder if they have hired Bernie Madoff as a consultant?
But Obama’s problems are more than a question of style. There is doubt aroused on substance. He sets deadlines and then lets too many pass. He announces a strategic review of Afghanistan, describing it as “a war of necessity,” only to become less sure to the point that he didn’t even seem committed to the policy that he finally announced. As for changing politics in Washington, he assigned the drafting of central legislative programs not to cabinet departments or White House staff but to the Democratic congressional leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the very people so mistrusted by the public. Who could be surprised that the critical bills—the stimulus program and healthcare—degenerated under a welter of pork and earmarks that had so outraged the American public in the past?
U.S. investors overwhelmingly see President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a Bloomberg survey.
The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and four-out-of-five are only somewhat confident or not confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency.
The poll also finds a decline in Obama’s overall favorability rating one year after taking office. He is viewed favorably by 27 percent of U.S. investors. In an October poll, 32 percent in the U.S. held a positive impression.
As the Obama administration marks its first birthday, there is no reason to shop around for the perfect present. What President Barack Obama needs most is obvious: a new political strategy
How’s that hope and change thing working out for ya?
Democrat leaders are now talking about actually bringing legislation that will raise our debt limit by $1.9 trillion. But we are told by the same Democratic leadership that they are going to get serious in 2010 about fiscal discipline. I guess along those lines, President Obama is expected to announce a bipartisan commission that will look for ways to reduce deficits in the future. Sounds like an appealing idea, but the devil’s always in the details in Washington, D.C.
The president’s commission, on close examination, actually looks like a guard dog with no bite. Looks like fiscal discipline but it could easily be ignored by Congress. Remarkably, the president’s proposal, as I have heard about it, is prohibited from recommending cuts in any discretionary spending. That will be about $1.4 trillion, and the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ that’s completely off limits. And as many of us know, with the partisan bias and the structure of it, as reported, it’s likely this commission would just be an excuse to raise taxes.
Rep. Mike Pence R-Indiana
Typical of the Obama Administration, a presidential commission to reduce future deficits but prohibited from recommending cuts in discretionary spending.
Obama, all talk and nothing to show for it. Typical! Just typical!
WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - The House of Representatives will vote on a short-term boost to the U.S. debt limit this week TO AVOID A GOVERNMENT DEFAULT and give lawmakers more time to try to cut the record federal deficit, House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer said on Tuesday.
READ - US GOVERNMENT ON VERGE OF DEFAULT ON IT’S DEBT
‘If we don’t pass it, here’s the guarantee….your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you,’ he said. ‘Potentially they’re going to drop your coverage, because they just can’t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year.’
‘Eventually You Run Out Of Other People’s Money’ - Thatcher
The president said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are on an ‘unsustainable’ trajectory and if there is no action taken to bring them down, ‘the federal government will go bankrupt.’
Mr. President, you are a fool! It is not health care that is the problem it is the insatiable appetite of the Democrat Party to SPEND! The bill is coming due and you can’t pay it. Now, today the United States Of America may not be able to pay their debt. It’s directly your fault. Actually it IS your fault!
Calling Dodd ‘the single-most gifted legislator in Congress, now that Teddy Kennedy’s gone,’ Biden praised him for chairing two committees in a national crisis. Biden said the consequences would have been ‘dire’ had Dodd failed.
Hey Joe, the consequences for our economy are “dire” because of Senator Dodd’s choice to look the other way. The industry he was supposed to regulate gave and recived special favors from Senator Dodd.
Examples from CBS;
close connections to leading bankers…. One such connection is to former Bear Stearns director Edward Downe Jr., who once shared a condo with Dodd. After Downe’s conviction for insider trading, Dodd leaned on President Clinton to pardon Downe at the end of his presidency.
Countrywide gave him “VIP” treatment in refinancing his home.
his role in the payment of bonuses to executives at AIG, the troubled firm that received a massive federal bailout.
Those are just examples given by CBS. If his role in the Mortgage and Banking crisis was properly investigated the list would be long, very long.
Term Limits
No worries! The people of Connecticut will be judge and jury in November.
Term limits from the ballot box, it’s a beautiful thing.
The ads all feature a doctored image of a current world leader - so that they look about ten years older - apologising from the future (2020 to be precise) saying, ‘I’m sorry. We could have stopped catastrophic climate change… We didn’t.’
‘It’s an apology from the future aimed at putting pressure on- and just maybe making these world leaders think twice about the consequences of their action or inaction now,’ explains the writer of the ads Toby Cotton of new agency Arc Communications.
‘The brief from Greenpeace International was simple,’ he continues, ‘to put pressure on world leaders to create a fair and binding agreement at Copenhagen.’
In regard to your support of ‘Health Care Reform.’ Of course, thats what you Democrats are calling it. Do you know what it should be called? How about “The Destruction Of Health Care In America Act?’ Thats a more honest title. Don’t you think?
Go ahead,
Vote for the destruction of the best health care available in the world.
Go ahead,
Vote for massive taxes on the American People. We are already taxed beyond anything our Founding Fathers would have ever imagined. Why not more? What’s a Trillion dollars to you anyway? What’s wrong with a 12 Trillion debt, or future debt obligations of 56 Trillion dollars? Apparently it doesn’t bother you a bit.
Go ahead,
Vote for Death Panels.
Vote for criminal charges for not buying health care coverage.
Vote to have the IRS enforce your will upon the American People.
Vote against the Senior Citizens of the State of Florida.
Vote for the economic destruction of our economy.
Vote for massive unemployment.
The tyranny of King George would be more preferable to what you and your party are forcing on the American People.
Here’s a Prediction! If you vote for this bill, you will be fired on November 6, 2012
All House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants for Christmas is healthcare reform.
The speaker told constituents yesterday that she wants to finish health reform as a “Christmas present” for the country.
“I’m hopeful that we will have a bill as a Christmas present for the American people,” Pelosi said, according to KCBS. “But we will have a bill and it will be soon.”
Hey Pelosi! The best Christmas present you could give the American People would be to resign.
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann explain the payoff to supporters of the Health Care Bill.
The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians’ reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5 percent to 6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21 percent. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill…or else!
The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.
The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected cost over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.
Retaliation
According to the article,
The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle and wouldn’t go along with Obama’s blackmail. So the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements of healthcare.
Morris and McGann coin the phrase “suicidal Democratic congressmen” - You Bet! I’m stealing that for a new category. Sure hope we can reverse the damage to our nation wrought by the Democrats. We just received another nail in America’s coffin.
The Democrat and Republicans In Name Only, (RINO)s, have lost touch with the American People. They have become the political elite and We the People have become "fly-over country." I am not a Nazi, a terrorist, a member of the KKK, a racist, or a member of an angry mob. I'm not a birther, teabagger, truther or astroturfer. I do, however believe in the original intent of the Founding Fathers, the United States Constituton and the rule of law. I believe that Government should serve the People, not the other way around. I’m an American and conservative to my very core.
