republicans wanting to cut social security disability

No, it doesn't, Iowa. (It used to be, but they changed that in 2001, when they set up a trust empowered to invest in other ways.)

"The sole purpose of the Trust is to manage and invest Railroad Retirement assets. The Act authorizes the Trust to invest the assets of the Railroad Retirement Account in a diversified investment portfolio in the same manner as those of private sector retirement plans."

From: http://www.rrb.gov/mep/nrrit.asp

By the way, George, it's conceivable that we could change our laws and do something similar with the Social Security trust fund. But that raises huge, huge issues, which are a whole other story for another day.

"They" are us. We are not a direct democracy, but, rather, a respresentative democracy. "They" have the power that we gave them when we elected them. Blame those among your fellow Americans who voted for war hawks and supply-sider tax cutters. Our real adversary is the ignorance of the American people.

Politics is all about exploiting people's ignorance.

Now, I'll have to read what did happen in 1983.

I've tried very hard to find out what happened in 1983 that is striking you as so nefarious. I've researched Moynihan and Reid, as to where they stood on the related issues. Maybe you can give me more specific information on the history, as you followed it.

What I learned is that, in the early '80s, Social Security was, indeed, facing a solvency crisis. Everyone agreed they had to either increase revenues or decrease benefits. What they did, through the Social Security Amendments of 1983, was to solve the immediately threarening cash flow problem and, also, to set revenues high enough - providing enough surplus funds - so that it would be a long time before this problem would come up again.

Yes, that did allow the Social Security trust fund to really bulk up. They could foresee that with the retirement sunami of baby-boomers coming, combined with the relative shrinking of the workforce, related to declining reproductive rate (my grandmother had 11 kids; my mother had 5; I've had none) there would be a very expectable imbalance, eventually, between money coming in and money going out. What they did forestalled that eventuality until the mid 2030s, much to the benefit of baby boomers and post-boomers, like you and me.

Moynihan wanted to only boost up revenue to Social Security just enough to keep it on a pay-as-you-go basis. That would have doomed people my age (age 63) to a horrible political battle with younger Americans over keeping the benefits my age cohort expected. Call me selfish, but I'm glad Moynihan's view did not prevail. He wanted working American's to keep more of their income, so they could invest it in privately held retirement funds. (Who else thinks along those lines?) He died in 2003 and didn't experience the great recession that depleted a lot of privately held wealth. That might have changed his view.

I'll let them speak for themselves as much as possible from congressional debates. The following is from the late 80s early 90s after the higher FICA taxes had brought in far more revenue than SSA needed and the excess had become a fund for other purposes.
“Of course, the most reprehensible fraud in this great jambalaya of frauds is the systematic and total ransacking of the Social Security trust fund in order to mask the true size of the deficit…The Treasury is siphoning off every dollar of the Social Security surplus to meet current operating expenses of the Government…The hard fact is that, in the next century, the Social Security system will find itself paying out vastly more in benefits than it is taking in through payroll taxes. And the American people will wake up to the reality that those IOU’s in the trust fund vault are a 21st century version of Confederate banknotes." Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) 10/13/89

“The discussion is are we as a country violating a trust by spending Social Security trust fund moneys for some purpose other than for which they were intended. The obvious answer is yes…
The trust funds resources are there for the well-being of those who have paid into the Social Security System. We should use those resources to see that Social Security recipients are treated well but also treated fairly and treated equitably.
It is time for Congress, I think, to take its hands—and I add the President in on that—off the Social Security surpluses. Stop hiding the horrible truth of the fiscal irresponsibility that we have talked about here the past 2 weeks. It is time to return those dollars to the hands of those who earned them—the Social Security beneficiaries and future beneficiaries…
I think that is a very good illustration of what I was talking about, embezzlement, thievery. Because that, Mr. President, is what we are talking about here…On that chart in emblazoned red letters is what has been taking place here, embezzlement. During the period of growth we have had during the past 10 years, the growth has been from two sources: One, a large credit card with no limits on it, and, two, we have been stealing money from the Social Security recipients of this country. I think that is a very good illustration of what I was talking about, embezzlement, thievery. Because that, Mr. President, is what we are talking about here…I publicly commend and applaud the vigorous activity generated by the Senator from New York because… on that chart in emblazoned red letters is what has been taking place here, embezzlement.” Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) 10/9/90

Moynihan did in fact want to cut FICA taxes for a "pay as you go" system. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it was for noble reasons... the main reason being that the excess SSA funds had become a slush fund... rather than cut spending or raise corporate and individual taxes. every penny of excess funds was going to the general fund to help run the government.
“Mr. President…If there is a problem of dissimulation, I would suggest that it resides with the present practice of using Social Security trust funds as general revenues. My distinguished friend, the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Heinz, has used a very direct word for this. He says it is called “embezzlement.”
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan 10/9/90
This article gives a little history of Moynihan's position.
THE BUDGET BATTLE - Senate Kills Moynihan's Proposal To Reduce Social Security Taxes - NYTimes.com

I'm not understanding what you said in another post about "real money." Why isn't this real money? Why isn't the excess SSA fund invested the way other trust funds are invested? I know you mentioned Treasury bonds but doesn't that seem a little odd? The government is in effect just skimming money from the SSA fund off the top into the general fund.
I don't understand complex economics but I think I can recognize a scam when I see one. When private funds are invested, a return is expected from profits made by whatever the investment is made in. Is the US government turning a profit?

And I agree that Gore's lockbox plan didn't make any sense.

This discussion has been stimlating, and I've learned so much over the past few days from reading and thinking and considering your point of view. There is an awful lot to be thought about. And the moral uprightness of developing huge reserves in the S.S. fund that became conveniently available to finance war and tax cuts for the rich deserves careful analysis that doesn't yield easy conclusions.

What I'm coming to conclude is that there is plenty of criticism one can make of everyone involved, and that includes the general public. This way of doing our nation's business has prevailed because we were all getting over . . . which can't go on forever.

To begin with, Social Security has been a sweet deal for the nation's elders and disabled and survivors of those with benefits. Even back when I was in high school, history teachers (mine were left leaning) told us that most people got way more in benefits than they put in. Anyone can verify that with a little on-line research. It kinda is a Ponzi scheme. That's not as ugly a truth as the Right tries to make it. My father's generation didn't mind all that much having some income redistributed from their incomes to those of my grandparents generation. My grandparents generation had suffered terribly during the depression. Many had fought in WWI and/or lost sons in WWII. Many had endured very tough working conditions, when they managed to have jobs. Women my grandmother's age got brown lung and TB working in textile mills. Often this generation started full-time work at the age of 14. It wasn't hard to sell the idea that the country kind of owed them something. Also, back then, the alternative for many would have been depending on support from their children. So there there was no hue and cry raised by the public when my grandparents' generation got back 14 times what they paid in. Besides, my parents' generation were slated to get back way more than they put in. And they did get it. I'll get back way more than I put in, given a normal life span.

Supporters of Social Security, back in the day, optimistically and sincerely believed that the value if the U.S. economy would keep on growing by leaps and bounds. Paying FICA taxes was sort of like buying stock in America. Someday it would pay off better than most stocks were likely to.

You correctly identify 1983 as a turning point. By then, it was impossible to ignore that Social Security couldn't keep paying out as generously as it had. It was facing insolvency. So there was a crisis. However, they more than fixed it. The motives were not dark, IMO. They didn't want to have to keep coming back to this issue every few years. So they made sure there would be enough of surplus accumulation to handle the baby boom retirement. At this point, it was also apparent that my generation was barely replacing itself with new kids. The economy certainly wasn't as robust in the 70s and early 80s as it had been in th 50s an 60s.

Moynihan, himself , said that young people were starting to realize that S.S. wouldn't be the eventual bonanza for them that it had been for their grandparents and parents. Meanwhile, they saw housing and stock values zooming up. So they wanted to keep more income to buy bigger houses and put more in their IRAs. Moynihan wanted to accomodate that. I do believe his motives were decent. So he wanted to stick with pay-as-you-go.

When we hear about Social Security fixing to go less than perfectly solvent in 2033, that's not to do with anyone stealing. That is expected to happen even if the Treasury makes good on paying every single one of those Treasury Bonds that are in the trust fund.

The surplus funds were invested - in Treasury securities, which do pay interest. That is how the law requires them to be invested. Sure, there is a chance that the Treasury will default on paying off the SSA when it goes to cash those bonds in. Maybe they won't pay the Chinese, either, who hold a lot of U.S. Treasury securities. But I don't see the Chinese worrying. So I'm not too worried either.

The Treasury has been paying interest on Treasury securities to the SSA, which is currently being used to help pay the benefits folks are currently receiving. When the time comes that the SSA has to start cashing in those bonds, it is entirely likely that the U.S. government will find the money to do so by selling more bonds to China and everyone else who likes to by U.S. Treasury bonds. When those people want to cash in their bonds, they will sell them to the Federal Reserve. Guess where the Federal Reserve will get the money. (?) It will come directly out of the thin air. Yup . . . they just turn on the printing presses.

I guess the whole thing kind of is a scam.

Thanks for the link above to the article about Moynihan's proposal. The more I think about it, I do see real shadiness going on toward a specific group of Americans. I am thinking of those 10 years, or more, younger than me. They'll pay more into S.S. than me and, most likely, get less out of it down the road. Moynihan's proposal was to avert that injustice.

They'll get less partly because they'll have to wait longer to collect full benefits. Also, benefits are likely to be cut.

One big reason why the stream of revenue into S.S. has slowed is that the portion of GDP paid to labor has gone down. Capital has been taking a bigger hunk of the pie. Real wages have been stagnant for so long, despite the fact that, as workers use newer, better technology, they are producing more and more. That increase flows to giant profits. Also, some of the money that could have increased wages - and thus gone toward fatter FICA revenue to the SSA - has been used, instead, to fund increasingly expensive health insurance paid for by employers. What the healthcare industry sucks out of the economy is ridiculous. (Considering that many Europeans get better healthcare for less money.)

Had those funds in the S.S. trust fund not been there, the massive tax cuts for the rich probably would have been politically impossible. I guess I would agree that there has been a kind of theft - in the massive transfer of wealth from the laboring classes to the capital owning richest class. That theft will have occurred despite even if the Treasury makes good on replacing every dime it took from the S.S. trust fund, which I expect they will do.

I've learned over the past few days that there is an awful lot to think about here.