Here Is An Off Topic Everyone Can Talk About.

[atabuy]

2004 Election Issue!!


This must be an issue in "2004". Please! Keep it going.

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SOCIAL SECURITY:

(This is worth reading. It is short and to the point.)

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years.

Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it.
You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own

benefit plan.

In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan.

For all practical purposes their plan works like this:

When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until

they die.

Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments.

For example, former Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives.

This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries.

Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives.

Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA....ZILCH....

This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds;

"OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK"!

From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, -every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer)- we can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement.

Or, in other word s, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator Bill Bradley's

benefits!

Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.

That change would be to jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us ... then sit back and watch how fast they would fix it.

If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve.

 

[novaqt]

Much needed and long overdue.

Being a member of congress was never supposed to become a career. The original intent was for members of congress to serve one or two terms in public life and return to their businesses.

 

[DOA@Airport]

2004 Election Issue!!


This must be an issue in "2004". Please! Keep it going.

----------------------------------

SOCIAL SECURITY:

(If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve.

Not True--Press Here

 

[atabuy]

DOA@Airport

Thanks for the link. Now we have a tie. Who is right and who is wwwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrrongggg?

Of course I believe everything I read so I am starting to shake apart from the does not compute thingy.

I am way to lazy to check any of this out, so I will need help from other posters.

Thanks,

 

[DCAview]

Members of Congress do in fact pay into the Social Security system. Most also participate in the Federal Employees Retirement System, which is open to all federal employees and is similar to defined-contribution retirement packages at private companies.


Politicians Enjoy Sweet Retirement Package

Philadelphia Daily News - By Craig Linder - October 13, 2000

WASHINGTON - As politicians fight about the best way to repair Social Security, few members of Congress are looking to change their own retirement system.

Members of Congress enjoy a generous two-pronged retirement system that combines Social Security with another, corporate-style benefit. All told, pensions for senior lawmakers can easily reach six figures.

First of all, though, put to rest the rumor that your representative in Washington doesn't have to pay into Social Security.

They pay 6.2 percent of the first $76,200 of their salary, just like everyone else. And like every other employer, the federal government matches the members' contributions - with your tax dollars, of course.

But the real sweetener comes from the two additional benefit plans that members of Congress, like all federal employees, can choose to join.

The first, called the Civil Service Retirement System, is available to members of Congress who took office before 1984. Under this plan, lawmakers receive Social Security and an annual pension based on their length of service and their highest salary while they were in Congress.

Members of Congress who are part of CSRS pay 8.4 percent of their salaries to the plan and the government matches their contribution. A lawmaker who earned the base salary of $141,300 would pay a total of $16,592 to the system - $11,868 to CSRS and $4,724 in Social Security.

Lawmakers who participate in the CSRS can choose to have their contributions and benefits from Social Security deducted from their contributions and benefits to CSRS, allowing them to take home more of their salary, but giving them fewer benefits when they retire.

The second plan, which covers most current members of Congress, is the Federal Employees Retirement System. Roughly 2.8 million active federal employees, from senators to postal workers, participate in FERS, which pays $40 billion each year to 2.4 million retirees.

Like the older congressional retirement plan, FERS provides retiring lawmakers with Social Security and a pension, but it also offers a defined-contribution plan, which is similar to a 401(k).

Lawmakers who chose FERS receive a pension based on their years of federal employment and military duty and their highest salary level. They also enjoy an annual cost-of-living increase.

Members of Congress pay 1.3 percent of their salary into the defined benefit plan and the government contributes about 11 percent of their salary to the fund each year.

A member of Congress who earns the $141,300 base salary would pay $7,125 - $4,724 to Social Security and $2,401 to FERS.

The 401(k)-like plan allows members to contribute up to 10 percent of their pre-tax salary into one of three investment plans.

Both plans allow members of Congress to retire at age 50 if they have served the government for at least 20 years, or at age 62 after five years of service.

How does Congress' retirement plan compare to the average American's? Pretty well, it would seem.

The average pension income for a retiree in 1994, the most recent year for which data is available, was $3,500, James Delaplane, a vice president with the American Benefits Council, said.

Compare that to the $50,203 annual average pension income of a retired member of Congress in 1998, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Or to former President Gerald Ford, who receives $261,000 a year in presidential and congressional pensions, according to the National Taxpayers Union.

A 1998 report to Congress said that FERS is "generous" compared to retirement plans in the private sector. According to that report, only 8 percent of private plans offer the cost-of-living increase that federal employees enjoy, and only a few allow members to retire and receive a full benefit as early as the federal plan.

Critics of government spending like the National Taxpayers Union have chafed at the "generous" retirement plans for years and have called on Congress to overhaul its system.

"The best possible thing Congress could do would be to take a page from the evolving retirement plans of the private sector and eliminate the guaranteed pension," keeping only the Social Security benefit and the 401(k)-style plan, said Pete Sepp, the vice president for communications of the Alexandria, Va.-based nonprofit group.

But members of Congress have been loath to tinker with their own benefits. A drive to overhaul the system following the "Republican revolution" of 1994 quickly fizzled.