Kasich calls for Occupy DC

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign, with the focus Saturday on Wisconsin, which holds its primaries Tuesday (all times Eastern Daylight Time):

4:30 p.m.

Republican presidential contender John Kasich says that to fix Social Security "people of this country need to start demanding leadership out of their leaders."

The comment at a town hall event in Janesville, Wisconsin, on Saturday afternoon comes after he told an audience earlier that those who want to make sure Social Security remains solvent should hold an Occupy-style protest with a tent city in the nation's capital.

After that event in Burlington, Wisconsin, Kasich told reporters, "It was a brilliant idea I came up with."

The Ohio governor said in Janesville — hometown of House Speaker Paul Ryan and former Sen. Russ Feingold — that another part of the solution involves wealthy people accepting less in benefits so people who rely on Social Security as income won't face cuts.

If you want to help social security, keep the republicans hands off it!!Nixon was the one that took the s.s. trust fund money and put it into the general fund. Social security is not in trouble right now.It just needs a little tweeking for the future.LEAVE OUR SOCIAL SECURITY ALONE!!

It needs more than a little tweaking, but a few tweaks would go a long way towards its long term survival.
They need to gradually up the retirement age. Three months for everyone over 50, six months for those over 40, nine months for those over 20 and a full year for everyone else. Eliminate the $255 Death Benefit to all but the most destitute and finally some ind of means testing. People with income over a certain high number- lets say $100,000 lose a dollar for every five dollars of income they have over that baseline. So someone earning $150,000 a year in retirement would lose $10,000 in Social Security. However, those funds stay in the persons account and if they ever stop earning the max each year, they are restored to them.
This isn't anything new, most of these changes have been around for years, its just no one has the balls to try and introduce them.
It's not a Republican problem, or a Democratic Problem. Its an American problem.

This is a common misconception.

It is so common that the Social Security Administration (SSA), an official organization within the United States Government (USG), debunks it on their own official USG web-site:

********quote********
There has never been any change in the way the Social Security program is financed or the way that Social Security payroll taxes are used by the federal government. The Social Security Trust Fund was created in 1939 as part of the Amendments enacted in that year. From its inception, the Trust Fund has always worked the same way. The Social Security Trust Fund has never been "put into the general fund of the government".
*****endquote********

Here's how Social Security works:
i. The USG collects everyone's Social Security (SS) taxes.
ii. The SS taxes are then "spent" on unique USG bonds which are "put into the SS Fund". (DonDiego does not know if there are physical bonds or just digital representations residing on memory devices; at one time there was an actual filing cabinet holding the bonds.)
iii. The money used to purchase the USG bonds is then spent by Congress, just like it spends all other tax money.
iv. The SSA beneficiaries' benefits payed each year comprise a.payroll taxes, b.interest on the Trust Fund (i.e. USG Bonds) balance, and c.repayment of borrowed Trust Fund dollars (i.e. cashed in USG Bonds).
v. The problem is that the taxes currently collected each year do not cover the benefits due every year, and eventually all the bonds will have been cashed-in and there'll be no fund left to draw from.

From: www.heritage.org :
********quote********
Social Security’s main program, also known as Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI), ran a $39 billion deficit in 2014, closing out five years of consecutive cash-flow deficits as the program’s unfunded obligations continue to grow. According to the 2015 annual Trustees’ Report, the 75-year unfunded obligation of the Social Security OASI Trust Fund is $9.43 trillion, a $70 billion increase from last year’s unfunded obligation of $9.36 trillion. After including federal debt obligations recorded as assets to the Social Security trust fund of $2.73 trillion, Social Security’s total 75-year unfunded obligation is nearly $12.2 trillion.

The Social Security OASI program is projected to reach insolvency in 2035. This means that the program is expected to have only enough revenue from payroll taxes, interest on the Trust Fund balance, and repayment of borrowed Trust Fund dollars to pay out scheduled benefits until 2035.
*****endquote********

* DonDiego requests the interested reader, especially the interested reader who may wish to discredit the above summary for partisan or personal reasons please cite some particular error, as opposed to, say, just belittling the source. In fact, one might look up the OASI 2015 annual Trustees’ Report, cited above, for the official presentation.

To address bbking's specific objection:
i. No one "took the s.s. trust fund money and put it into the general fund".
ii. OASI is running a deficit right now and for the foreseeable future.
iii. To retain current benefits OASI requires a tweaking to the tune of $9.43-trillion before 2035.