Where the cut really comes from

Working as a payroll bookkeeper in January of this year, our accountant informed me of a Social Security contribution cut, for employees only, approved by the president and Congress for 2011. For months we were hearing moaning and groaning from D.C. about the bankrupt state of S.S. therefore it was baffling to me why a 2 percent cut, from 6 percent to 4 percent in Social Security revenues, was put into place. I questioned the authenticity of such a cut because all we have heard for the past year or so is how desperate the S.S. fund is. This little fiasco, another in a long series of mistakes, cost the S.S. trust account about $111 billion in revenue for 2011.

Additionally no one seems to have noticed the pay increase in their paychecks because it is a small amount; everyone I have asked didn't know they had a cut in their S.S. contribution or that they had an increase in their take home pay. Most Americans do not know what this payroll tax cut really is. The president is using every venue he can to talk about it as if it were an actual tax cut as in the Bush tax cuts. NOT! That is what baffled everyone who doesn't, didn't or still don't realize what he is talking about. And we shouldn't be naive enough to fall in front of this bulldozing way of feeding the public this misconception. WHY isn't the news media making clear that this payroll tax cut is not a payroll tax cut? It is a reduction in employee contributions to Social Security. $111 billion is a lot to take out of Social Security funding.

As a bookkeeper, I know how to add and subtract numbers; evidently Obama doesn't seem to understand a payroll tax cut out of S.S. takes money out of the S.S. account. I can only surmise that he is deliberately trying to add to the S.S. bankruptcy because of his big government policies. Some would say socialistic inclinations. It is only another step that will bring our country to its knees. Along with other mistakes such as cancellation of the anti-missile missiles program in order to pacify the Russians that leaves Europe and everyone else in the free world more vulnerable. It gave us no concessions from Russia; now our secretary of Defense is talking with foreign diplomats about a new International Arms Control Treaty that would take away our rights to bear arms or at the least our own say in how we control guns in this country.

The country should rise up in protest against a president that will not only veto jobs as in the pipeline from Canada that will bring thousands of jobs, but wants to continue to lower the revenue coming into the Social Security fund. I can figure out the pipeline veto he is threatening because he is bound and determined to reduce our oil production that would further raise his profits and investments in green energy. He is against using and producing our own oil or exploring our assets in Alaska which would help keep us independent from on foreign suppliers. If Canada does not get the pipeline production started which they are enthusiastic about, they will sell their oil to China through trucking into Washington state and shipping overseas. What a tragic loss for this country under the auspices of our stubborn and misguided leadership.

Why is he implementing these anti-American policies unless his leadership is bent on total government takeover of all our economy? I do not understand why our young people cannot see that it is the White House that is ruining our economy. By the way, the president is a friend of Wall Street, not the enemy that he tries to present to our younger generation. He is the problem not the problem solver he tries to convey in his expensive campaign tours all around the country. His rhetoric resonates with a certain college crowd of uninformed students. He seems like a rock star to them. Do they not understand that Wall Street, bankers, and unions are big contributors to his campaign?

His many hired czars are spending at least 210 hours per day (27 czars times 8 hour days) writing regulations against all manner of business, expansions and other crazy agency directives to stifle our natural growth and job creations. That is their employment responsibility and why Obama hired them. Over-regulation, high taxes and too much government spending is what happened in California. Just as California goes, so goes the nation. Californians can move out and go somewhere else to live but where does this nation go in these disastrous circumstances.

Another question, why do the Democrats preach helping the poor and then deliberately cut Social Security revenues that directly affect our seniors, disabled, widows and needy children? And why did he not explain what he did when he was threatening to stop printing Social Security checks in August if he didn't get the debt ceiling raised. That was a lie; he couldn't have stopped the S.S. checks from going out because of the way the system operates. I am a senior and I want seniors to know the truth about what is happening to S.S., Medicare and Medicaid. The last two years of no COLA raises in S.S. checks is because the money from this resource went to funding computer programming for the health care system which doctors are now responsible to input and update the medical records of every person in the United States. To top this, the president stole 500 billion from Medicare this past session.

This is not the fault of the people who are either collecting their pension checks or the people who are paying into it. A private company who only took a certain profit for handling S.S. monies would be rolling in money now with the fund intact and billions of surplus dollars in the account. Think about that as new government controls are being put into place as fast as the czars can write and get an executive order signature to implement. The new agency for Consumer Protection, that the president is advocating and criticizing Congress because they are resisting, will give the agency extreme power to control and regulate the economy of this country with no accountability to any other government branch. What havoc could that independent director/agency bring in a short period of time?

Delphine Kenney is a Post Falls resident.