By Pastor Roger Anghis
January 29, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

Over the last few years we have heard that the Republicans want to take Social Security away from the elderly and leave them with nothing. This is so far from the truth, but the media refuses to report the truth. Surprise, surprise! I, personally have always had a problem with the government taking my money away from for me when I get older and then telling me how much of my money I can have, if any. If I die before I have the opportunity to collect any of it, then none of my family is allowed all the monies that the government took from me for me when I got older. That is nothing less than outright legalized theft!

I don’t have a problem with taking a little out of my paycheck and stashing it away for my later years, but when the government is the one ‘keeping’ it I have a big problem. The government doesn’t pay interest on all of that money (The government collects interest on it, but they keep it.), which any bank would, and if it was in a personal bank account then my heirs would have access to all of the funds including the interest accumulated over the years. That’s what the government doesn’t like. You be allowed to keep your money. That does not set well with them, especially the Democrats. The majority of the Democrats in Congress believe that they have more of a right to your money than you do.

I would like to take a good look at the history of Social Security to see just which party has been the one that has decimated the program. The bill was introduced as the Economic Security Bill in January of 1935. While it was in the Ways and Means Committee the name was changed to the Social Security Act of 1935 and was signed into law in August of 1935. Recent comments from some pundits have claimed that Social Security passed without Republican support. That fact, which some Democrats seem to ignore, is not quite true. In 1935 there were 319 Democrats in Congress and 102 Republicans. Of those 284 Democrats voted for the bill and 81 Republicans. That is 80% Republican support. Sounds bipartisan to me. In the Senate there were 96 Democrats and 25 Republicans. 60 Democrats voted for the bill and 16 Republicans voted for the bill. That is 64% of the Republicans. That sounds bipartisan to me. Even though the total number of Democrats vs. Republicans was substantial, the vast majority of the Republicans supported the Social Security Act of 1935.

The rules of the Social Security Act of 1935 were simple but defined.

A. Participation in the program was required if you worked in a job that was covered by Social Security. At that time only about half of the jobs were covered by Social Security.
B. The tax rate in the original 1935 law was 1% each on the employer and the employee, on the first $3,000 of earnings. This rate was increased on a regular schedule in four steps so that by 1949 the rate would be 3% each on the first $3,000.
D. That the annuity payments to the retirees were not taxed at the beginning of the program.

Some changes have occurred to the program that has had an effect on the program. Some of the changes have been directly to the program and some had nothing directly to do with Social Security but has had a drastic effect on it.

Since a pair of 1938 Treasury Department Tax Rulings, and another in 1941, Social Security benefits have been explicitly excluded from federal income taxation. (A revision was issued in 1970, but it made no changes in the existing policy.) This changed for the first time with the passage of the 1983 Amendments to the Social Security Act. Beginning in 1984, a portion of Social Security benefits have been subject to federal income taxes.

Following the 1979 Advisory Council, the National Commission on Social Security Reform (informally known as the Greenspan Commission after its Chairman) was appointed by the Congress and the President in 1981 to study and make recommendations regarding the short-term financing crisis that Social Security faced at that time.

In its Report, the Commission recommended that Social Security benefits be taxable: “The National Commission recommends that, beginning with 1984, 50% of OASDI benefits should be considered as taxable income for income-tax purposes for persons with Adjusted Gross Income (before including therein any OASDI benefits) of $20,000 if single and $25,000 if married. The proceeds from such taxation, as estimated by the Treasury Department, would be credited to the OASDI Trust Funds under a permanent appropriation.”[1]

Even though this bill was originally passed with bipartisan support there were some concerns about the constitutionality of the bill:

When the Act was debated in Congress, leading Republicans in the House and Senate made attempts to delete the provisions creating the old-age pension system. They said they preferred to rely solely on the assistance (charity/ welfare) approach to help the aged. They argued that the payroll tax/insurance mechanism of the old-age benefits provisions might be unconstitutional and that, at any rate, it would impose such a heavy tax burden on businesses that it would retard economic development. The minority membership of the Ways and Means Committee (Republicans) stated, in the Committee’s report to the House, that the age benefits program (title II) and the method by which the money was to be raised to pay for the program (title VIII) established a “bureaucracy in the field of insurance in with private business.” They contended further that the program would “destroy old-age retirement systems set up by private industries, which in most instances provide more liberal benefits than are contemplated under title II.”[2]

The Social Security Amendments of 1954 ex-tended (1) mandatory coverage to, among others, some self-employed farmers, self-employed engineers, architects, accountants, and funeral directors, all Federal employees not covered by government pension plans, farm and domestic service workers not covered by the 1950 amendments, and (2) voluntary coverage to ministers, and certain State and local government employees already covered by staff retirement systems. The bill also raised the wage base for the OASI tax from $3,600 a year to $4,200; raised the tax rate to 3.5 percent each for employer and employees beginning in 1970, and to 4.0 percent each beginning in 1975, with the tax rate for the self-employed continuing at 1.5 times the employee rate (or 75 percent of the combined employee-employer rate).[3]

Amendments, which that are hundreds of them, continued to occur to Social Security that would include more workers, larger percentages taken from our checks and the matching figure from the employer. What we begin to see is that this system, devised from communist mindset that government can take care of the people, will not work. The 1983 Amendments to the Social Security Act were done because the fund was running out of money and steps had to be made to keep the system afloat.

The Senate Report thus acknowledged that one motivating factor in introducing this change was to raise revenue for the Trust Funds. This was part of a much larger package of program changes designed to address the financial solvency of the program. One might fairly say that cutting benefits and raising revenues was the purpose of the 1983 Amendments, and the adoption of Social Security benefit taxation was simply one provision among many to facilitate these aims.[4]

From 1979 to 1983 the problem of funding was addressed almost yearly. It was both parties and with bipartisan support that has made all the changes made to social security. The Democrats take credit for the good things and blame the Republicans for the bad things. The problem with the program is it can never do what it was designed to do. The entire program is faulty. Even though it was only designed from the start to be a supplement, it can’t even do that. Government is not supposed to be our source. There was a study done by the Wall Street Journal in the late 80’s, I have not been able to relocate it, that determined that if someone retiring in 1987 had taken that very same money that had been taken out of his paycheck all his working years for Social Security and put it into a simple passbook savings account, and never took anything out, he would be able to withdraw ten (10) times what Social Security was paying because there would be ten times more there. This is what the American people need to do and Bush tried to point the program in that direction in his first term but the Democrats went crazy.

Our Founders would have never envisioned the entitlements that we have today. Let the people and churches direct charity that is needed. They can do a much better job. Remember that when you are spending your money on you, you will have better quality and a much lower cost.We can’t drop it completely immediately but we can begin to go in the right direction. Giving total control of those funds over to the individual people. The basis of Social Security is found in communism. The free market does not operate well under communistic direction. In fact, it can’t operate un communistic direction. We need to let the people control their retirement not the government. The government has failed in all of its endeavors, Medicaid, Medicare, Amtrack, USPS. None are profitable. Never will be.

Footnotes:

1. Research Note #12:
2. Major Decisions in the House and Senate Chambers on Social Security: 19354985
3. ID. Pg. 41
4. Research Note #12:

© 2012 Roger Anghis – All Rights ReservedPastor Roger Anghis is the Founder of RestoreFreeSpeech.org, an organization designed to draw attention to the need of returning free speech rights to churches that was restricted in 1954.

President of The Damascus Project, TheDamascusProject.org, which has a stated purpose of teaching pastors and lay people the need of the churches involvement in the political arena and to teach the historical role of Christianity in the politics of the United States. Married-37 years, 3 children, three grandchildren.

Web site: RestoreFreeSpeech.org

E-Mail: editor@restorefreespeech.org

European and American perfidy in dealing with Iran’s nuclear weapons program apparently has no end. This week we were subject to banner headlines announcing that the EU has decided to place an oil embargo on Iran. It was only when we got past the bombast that we discovered that the embargo is only set to come into force on July 1.

Following its European colleagues, the Obama administration announced it is also ratcheting up its sanctions against Iran… in two months. Sometime in late March, the US will begin sanctioning Iran’s third largest bank.

At the same time as the Europeans and the Americans announced their phony sanctions, they reportedly dispatched their Turkish colleagues to Tehran to set up a new round of nuclear talks with the ayatollahs. If the past is any guide, we can expect for the Iranians to agree to sit down and talk just before the oil embargo is scheduled to be enforced. And the Europeans – with US support – will use the existence of talks to postpone indefinitely the implementation of the embargo.

There is nothing new in this game of fake sanctions. And what it shows more than anything is that the Europeans and the Americans are more concerned with pressuring Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations than they are in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Obama has a second target audience – American Jews. He is using his fake sanctions as a means of convincing American Jews that he is a pro-Israel president and that in the current election season, not only should they cast their votes in his favor, they should sign their checks for his campaign.

Both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were quick this week to make clear that these moves are insufficient. They will not force Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. More is needed.

As to American Jewry, the jury is still out.

In truth, American Jewry’s diffidence towards taking a stand on Iran, or recognizing Obama’s dishonesty on this issue specifically and his dishonesty regarding his position on US-Israel ties generally is not rooted primarily in American Jews’ devotion to Obama. It isn’t even specifically related to American Jewry’s devotion to the political Left. Rather it has to do with American Jewish ambivalence to Israel.

The roots of that ambivalence – which is shared by other Western Jewish communities to varying degrees – predate Obama’s presidency.

Indeed, they predate the establishment of the State of Israel. And now, as the US and the EU have given Iran at least another six months to a year to develop its nuclear bombs unchecked, it is worth considering the nature and influence of this ambivalence.

Today’s principal form of Jew-hatred is anti- Zionism. Anti-Zionism is similar to previous dominant forms of Jew hatred such as Christian anti-Judaism, xenophobic and racist anti- Semitism, and Communist anti-Jewish cosmopolitanism in the sense that it takes dominant, popular social trends and turns them against the Jews. Anti-Zionism’s current predominance owes to the convergence of several popular social trends which include Western post-nationalism, and anti-colonialism.

The problem that anti-Zionism poses for American Jewry is that it forces them to pay a price for supporting Israel. This is problematic because Zionism has never been fully embraced by American Jewry. Since the dawn of modern Zionism, the cause of Jewish self-determination placed American Jewish leaders in an uncomfortable dilemma.

UNLIKE EVERY other Diaspora Jewish community, the American Jewish community has always perceived itself as a permanent community rather than an exilic community. American Jews have always viewed the United States as the new Promised Land.

With the formation of the modern Zionist movement in the late 19th century, American Jews found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Clearly, the state of world Jewry was such that national self-determination had become an existential necessity for non-American Jews.

But while supporting Jewish refugees and a scrappy little country was okay, support for the Zionist cause of Jewish national liberation involved an acceptance of the fact that Israel – not the US – is the Jewish homeland. Moreover, it involved accepting that there are Jewish interests that are independent of – if not necessarily in contradiction with – American interests. For instance, irrespective of the prevailing winds in Washington, and regardless of whether the US supports Israel or not, it is a Jewish interest that Israel exists, thrives and survives.

In a recent op-ed in Haaretz, Hebrew University political science professor Shlomo Avineri contrasted world Jewry’s massive mobilization on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and 1980s and their relative silence today in the face of Iran’s Holocaust denial and open calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Avineri is apparently confounded by the disparity between Western Jewry’s behavior in the two cases.

But the cause of the disparity is clear. Supporting the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate was easy. Unlike Israel, Soviet Jews were powerless. As such, they were pure victims and supporting them cost Diaspora Jews nothing in terms of their position in their societies.

Just as important, the cause of freedom for Soviet Jewry was perfectly aligned with the West’s Cold War policies against the Soviet Union. The frequent Jewish demonstrations outside Soviet legations provided Western leaders with another tool to fight the Cold War.

In contrast, supporting Israel, and the cause of Jewish freedom and self-determination embodied by Zionism, is not cost-free for Diaspora Jews. At root, to support Israel and Zionism involves accepting that Jews have inherent rights as Jews. To be a Zionist Jew in the Diaspora means that you embrace and defend the notion that the Jews have the right to their own interests and that those interests may be distinct from other nations’ interests. That is, to be a Zionist involves rejecting Jewish assimilation and embracing the fact that Jews require national independence and power to guarantee our survival. And this can be unpleasant.

PRO-ISRAEL AMERICAN Jews have historically tried to tie their support for Israel to larger, more universal themes, in order to extricate themselves from the need to admit that as Jews and supporters of Israel they have a right and a duty to support Jewish freedom even if it isn’t always pretty. Again, for Israel’s first several decades, it was about helping poor Jews and refugees. In recent years, the predominant defense has been that Israel deserves support because it is a democracy.

Certainly, these are both reasonable reasons for supporting Israel. But neither support for Israel because it was poor nor support for Israel because it is free is a specifically Zionist reason for supporting Israel. You don’t have to be a Zionist to support poor Jewish refugees and you don’t have to be a Zionist to support democracy.

You do have to be a Zionist however, to defend the Jews in Israel and throughout the world in a coherent manner when the predominant form of Jew-hatred is anti-Zionism.

You have to be willing to accept and defend the right of the Jewish people to freedom and self-determination in our national homeland against those who deny that right. You have to be a Zionist to defend Israel’s right to survive and thrive even though it is no longer poor and its democratically elected government is not liked by the Obama administration.

And you have to be a Zionist to realize that since Jewish survival is dependent on Jewish power, and anti-Zionists reject the right of Jews to have power, that anti-Zionists seek to bring about a situation where Jewish survival is imperiled.

The weakness of American Jewry’s response to Iran’s genocidal intentions towards Israel is of a piece with its weak response to the forces of anti-Zionism generally and to Jewish anti- Zionists particularly. Since 2007, the US government has effectively ruled out the use of force against Iran’s nuclear weapons program and embraced a policy of pursuing negotiations with ayatollahs while enacting impotent sanctions to quell congressional pressure. At least in part, this policy is due to the US’s assessment that a nuclear Iran does not pose a high-level threat to US national security.

Both then-president George W. Bush and later Barack Obama determined that an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear weapons program does pose a high-level threat to the US. As a consequence, both administrations have taken concerted steps to prevent Israel from attacking Iran.

On the merits, both of these policies are easily discredited. But the fact that they continue to be implemented shows that they are supported by a large and powerful constituency in Washington.

To oppose Iran’s nuclear program effectively, American Jews are required to oppose these strongly supported US policies. And at some point, this may require them to announce they support Israel’s right to survive and thrive even if that paramount right conflicts with how the US government perceives US national interests.

That is, it may require them to embrace Zionism unconditionally.

No doubt, if they do so, their own conditions will improve. They will finally be able to speak coherently against the gathering forces of anti-Zionism – both from within the Jewish community and from without. This in turn will act as a lightning rod for inspiring American Jews to embrace their Judaism.

With their leaders having abjectly failed to contend with the most powerful form of Jew-hatred, it is no wonder that so many Diaspora Jews are leaving the fold. If they reverse course and go after their attackers, American Jewish leaders will give community members a meaningful reason to proudly embrace their identity.

In a speech this week at the Knesset, Netanyahu explained the different lessons the Holocaust teaches the international community on the one hand, and the Jews on the other.

As far as its universal lessons are concerned, Netanyahu said, “The lesson is that the countries of the world must be woken up, as much as possible, so that they can organize against such crimes.

The lesson is that the broadest possible alliances must be forged in order to act against this threat before it is too late.”

As for the Jews, Netanyahu embraced Zionism’s core principle: “With regard to threats to our very existence, we cannot abandon our future to the hands of others.

“With regard to our fate, our duty is to rely on ourselves alone.”

We must hope that world Jewry will recognize today that the fate of the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world is indivisible and rally to Israel’s side whatever the social cost of doing so. But even if they do not recognize this basic truth, the imperatives of Zionism, of the Jewish people, remain in place.

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