Medicare

This is a digression however, I recived it by e-mail this AM. I ask if anyone can verify it's accuracy.

This must be an issue in "04." !!!

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years. Our Senators and Congressmen/women 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.

Their cost for this excellent plan is $00.00. 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 $1,000 per month after retirement. Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000. monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal a 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.

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Frank, I think you made a boo-boo on this one. "The General Welfare" didn't mean to fill their own pockets while the citizenry suffers from lack. c.i.

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Don't bother scrat with any correctness. It doesn't seem to go down palatably.

So sorry, teach, but I did "my homework" on this many years ago and shoveling in more brown stuff to wade through is not convincing.

BTW, reading and comprehending are two distinctly different things. I suggest cognitive therepy.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Frank, I think you made a boo-boo on this one. "The General Welfare" didn't mean to fill their own pockets while the citizenry suffers from lack. c.i.

I'm not sure what you are talking about here, ci, but on the off-shoot chance you are referring to what I wrote about Scrat's comment, I will go over it again.

Scrat wrote:

Quote:

If you had done your homework, you would know that the framers explained exactly what "provide for the general welfare" meant: that the powers with which the federal government was to do so were enumerated EXPLICITLY within the Constitution.

That is simply not correct.

The fact that that is not correct does not mean that I am saying that anyone can "fill their own pockets while the citizenry suffers from lack."

If you were referring to something else, just give me a reference and I will respond.

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Criticism of Drug Benefit Is Simple: It's Bewildering

By ROBERT PEAR and ROBIN TONER

[]WASHINGTON, June 21 — With both houses of Congress poised to pass a Medicare drug bill next week, lawmakers are increasingly anxious about the complexity of the legislation and its reliance on new and largely untested arrangements to deliver drug benefits to the elderly.
This complexity, they say, may be daunting and confusing to beneficiaries, and even to insurance companies, which are supposed to manage the new benefits. Many lawmakers say they have just begun to examine the bill's intricate details and the web of political compromises behind those provisions.
Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, lamented the bill's "high level of complexity and prescriptiveness." Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, said it would create "a Medicare maze, a whole new bureaucracy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/politics/22MEDI.html?pagewanted=2&th

I find this incredible. Congress is ready to pass legislation that they do not understand and have no idea what the consequences will be.
We complain about Bush when congress is no better, check that, worse.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Scrat, The only problem is that our government seems to ignore those documents. c.i.

CI - Amen. And much of the time the most we can do is debate the best ways to work with things given that fact, but it is a fact nonetheless.

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Lightwizard wrote:

Don't bother scrat with any correctness. It doesn't seem to go down palatably.

So sorry, teach, but I did "my homework" on this many years ago and shoveling in more brown stuff to wade through is not convincing.

BTW, reading and comprehending are two distinctly different things. I suggest cognitive therepy.

Aside from turning immediately to personal insults, can you debate the issue or not. If you disagree, prove me wrong. What the framers intended is written in black and white, in simple language. It's not a secret. The only way to infer the things you do is by intending to ignore their intent, because it is inconvenient to your desired ends. IF you have done the reading and IF you have comprehended then it begs belief that you would claim that their intent was something other than what they specifically wrote that it was.

This does not require divination, interpretation or anything beyond the ability to read English and understand what you have read. The Constitution gives specific ENUMERATED powers to the federal government. The government is to use those specific ENUMERATED powers to provide for the general welfare (and a few other things).

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Frank, I think I'm partly right. Here's a link that explains the Constitution's "welfare clause." http://www.reagan2000.com/generalwelfare.asp
I doubt very much the framers allowed free reign of the congress to enrich themselves with better benefits at the expense of the citizenry. In that respect, they have failed miserably - IMHO. c.i.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Here's a link that explains the Constitution's "welfare clause." http://www.reagan2000.com/generalwelfare.asp

CI - An excellent link. This source makes my argument far more concisely than do I, and cites some of the specific language that I have not had time to look up just now.

(Of course, I suspect some will deny the accuracy or logic of the citation simply because they see the name "Reagan" in the link. Rolling Eyes

)

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Frank, I think I'm partly right. Here's a link that explains the Constitution's "welfare clause." http://www.reagan2000.com/generalwelfare.asp
I doubt very much the framers allowed free reign of the congress to enrich themselves with better benefits at the expense of the citizenry. In that respect, they have failed miserably - IMHO. c.i.

I don't just DOUBT the framers intended to allow free rein to congress to enrich themselves at the expense of the citiczenry -- I know damn well that they didn't!

But that certainly was not what I was arguing -- and if I may do this with all the respect in the world, it is disingenuous to use that argument against what I was saying.

I will go over what I said again -- because it is obvious Scrat is not going to actually address this issue.

Scrat wrote:

Quote:

If you had done your homework, you would know that the framers explained exactly what "provide for the general welfare" meant: that the powers with which the federal government was to do so were enumerated EXPLICITLY within the Constitution.

That simply is not correct.

I notice, by the way, that Scrat has been changing her wording as she comments tangentally on this.

If she were correct, she would post the wording from the Constitution which EXPLICITLY (her emphasis) enumerate how the federal government is to "provide for the general welfare."

The wording is not there -- and that is the reason she is not citing it.

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au1929 wrote:

This is a digression however, I recived it by e-mail this AM. I ask if anyone can verify it's accuracy.

This must be an issue in "04." !!!

The E-mail you posted has been debunked numerous times. It's probably one of the most reviewed items at Snopes.com

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/pensions.htm

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fishin' wrote:

au1929 wrote:
This is a digression however, I recived it by e-mail this AM. I ask if anyone can verify it's accuracy.

This must be an issue in "04." !!!

The E-mail you posted has been debunked numerous times. It's probably one of the most reviewed items at Snopes.com

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/pensions.htm

Fishin' - Thanks for debunking this.

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Fishin
Thanks, I thought it was just another ,shall I call it an urban legend, but was not sure.

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The Bush administration's top Medicare accountant has calculated how millions of senior citizens would be affected by bringing private managed care into the program, but the administration won't release the information. An earlier analysis suggested that a Republican plan to inject market forces into Medicare could increase premiums for those who stay in traditional programs by as much as 25 percent. If that's still the case, it could help Democrats who argue that the GOP plan is risky for those who want to stay in traditional Medicare, where they can pick any doctor, rather than move to a managed care plan.

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I also think it's going to be a shell game, but we won't know until we see the fine print. c.i.

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All I know is that anyone who sticks by the absolute word of any Constitution is in fact ignoring the idea that a Constitution was meant to be flexible, especially in a democratic society. The moment the Constitution becomes dogma is the moment it ceases to represent the people for whom it was written.

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cavfancier wrote:

All I know is that anyone who sticks by the absolute word of any Constitution is in fact ignoring the idea that a Constitution was meant to be flexible...

And all I know is that the flexibility of the Constitution lies in the ability to amend it, and not in some fictional right to ignore the current law of the land as written therein.

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Yeah, I wanna see the Amendment before any changes. c.i.

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Scrat
As you suggested previously the constitution may not be interpreted since it is frozen in time. The only way to settle a question is through amendment. If that were true knowing the amendment process we would either have a constitution with a 1000 amendments or the government would be tied up in continuous litigation.
I should also note that although the framers of the constitution formulated a wonderful document it was however over 200 years ago and they could not foresee conditions and developments that would occur in the next 200 years. The constitution is a living document and must be subject to interpretation. In fact the framers must have known that since they established the USCC for that eventuality

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au1929 wrote:

As you suggested previously the constitution may not be interpreted since it is frozen in time. The only way to settle a question is through amendment. If that were true knowing the amendment process we would either have a constitution with a 1000 amendments or the government would be tied up in continuous litigation.

Would we have more amendments if the government were to legitimately add the power to do everything it is doing now? Definitely. Would that be bad? Definitely not.

You pretend that the government would need an amendment to do anything new, but that is not the case at all. Any new thing the government needed to do in furtherance of one of the existing enumerated powers would be covered and allowed by the "reasonable and proper" clause. Any new power not enumerated does not exist until added by amendment, and is hence unconstitutional absent that change.

And I've addressed this "living document" crap before. Madison and Hamilton disagree with you. Tell them they are wrong.

Law either means something or it means nothing.

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