While all 535 (+/-) members of Congress invest in the marketplace [stocks, bonds, mutual funds, treasuries, FMAs, etc.] they would deny the right of the working stiff to have 2% of worker FICA contributions invested in that very same marketplace. They would continue the investment of these funds in the worst place-U.S. government securities; even more bizarre, the Social Security "Trust" Fund receives only a bookkeeping IOU in return [try to collect on that?]
They would even exclude persons of unquestioned business savvy such as Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, etc. from the right of such investment. I guess these multimillionaires are not as savvy as the Congress, most of whom never will attain the moneyed status of these giants of industry.
Hypocrisy abounds in our Congress which recently passed HR 1140 that, among other things, allows for the"....investment of the railroad retirement trust fund balance in a diversified portfolio." Currently, investment of rail retirement assets is limited to U.S. government securities; the railroad unions, knowing the marketplace return was superior, lobbied our legislature for such a change.
When your legislature suggests that its constituents are not smart enough to invest in the marketplace, they fail to recognize that 25% of marketplace investors are the little guys/gals. For this lack of insight, we should return them to the jobs marketplace by voting them out of office for insisting that FICA contributions continue to be poorly invested, thus serious jeopardizing the system.
They might also ask the IRS what adverse impact might occur if the profits of the incompetent little guy/gal were excluded from Forms 1040; the loss of IRS income would be in the hundreds of billions of dollars!
And like the social security "trust" fund, the railroad retirement "trust" fund will be in the dumps by 2026. Our legislator plans to up employer contributions to railroad retirement by two percentage points in 2026 and by four percentage points in 2038. Shouldn't they consider such a fix for the social security system?
Frank X. Landrigan
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