My Answer To Solving The Social Security Crisis

I would demand three things from the Congress to solve this problem:

1. Repeal the act that enabled Congress in 1968 to change the funds of the SS Sytem from being inviolate, as President Franklin Roosevelt demanded, to making them accessible to the Congress. By repealing that act, that would place the Funds under the real supervision of the Trust Fund trustees, and no longer at the mercy of an unbridled Congress.

2. Even though the Social Security Taxes would go into the Trust Fund, as they do now, we must require that the federal budget no longer include social security taxes as part of its income, since they are in fact, not income to the Federal Government but savings toward your retirement. This is a double protection of those assets in the fund because the Congress could not then use those taxes as paper income with which to borrow money from the private sector. This would force them into cutting spending and would garuntee low interest rates to further stimulate the economy, since the competition for private sector money would be lessened.

3. Reduce spending by 10 percent across the board each year until the problem is completely

resolved. Spending is the problem, NOT THE LACK OF INCOME. The more income you give the federal government, the more spending there will be. That has been true in the past, it is true today, and it will be true two weeks after eternity.
Americans are required to have two or three bread winners in the family to make ends meet, and now it's Congress' turn to tighten its belt, and I will veto any budget that comes across my desk that does not have that 10 percent across-the-board reduction built into it. Americans have been biting the bullet long enough. It's time for those wild spending Congressmen from both parties to shape up or ship out. You the American people can hold them accountable now, not when the bank robbers have left town and are splitting up the money at some island resort. Right now, there is no trust and there are no funds in the S.S. trust fund.

These three actions will restore the trust and the funds, but only if we act now.

To protect our citizens from potential fraud, -I would establish a committee of bank and stock market experts to see how we can implement laws that would completely protect investors from shady operations, such as fraudently inflating and manipulating stocks, and also to protect the banking industry by removing the causes of bank failures, such as undue risk taking in foreign markets and other extremely high risk investments. If American banks are going to squander their investments in bad foreign or domestic loans, then they should not ask the American people to bail them out when these loans or investments fail. By studying these problems, I hope to implement meaningful and fair legislation that would prevent banks from engaging in high risk investments, and will prevent banks from seeking federal bailouts because of their own mistakes and not the mistakes of the American taxpayers. Individuals are held accountable for their bad loans and bad investments, and so should the banking and financial institutions.

My Answers to Crime in the Streets and in the Country

Name one city, big or small, where you feel safe walking anywhere at 2 in the morning. People are murdered at highway rest areas, in our federal and state parks, in the cities, in the suburbs, in private buildings, in public buildings, and places too numerous to mention. We need to establish a new doctrine in the 21st century, the Freedom from Fear doctrine. If we cannot walk down our own streets in safety, we are nothing more than prisoners in our own homes, schools, hospitals and offices.

We are not doing enough to get more policemen into our city streets, we are not doing enough to crush the pervasive drug influences in our cities and schools. We must wage all-out war against crime and drugs, and not simply talk about it. We must do it sooner rather than later, because crime and drugs are taking over our cities and towns, and suicide rates among our children are reaching epidemic proportions ever since illicit drugs have entered our schools.

Burying our heads in the sand won't make these problems go away. Effective action will. I will support vigorous enforcement of existing laws, and I will support legislation that brings our children out of the mess they are in right now and into a 21st century that brings sparkle and life to a new generation, the generation of hope, the generation of brotherhood. We need an army of student volunteers to work with the police and teachers to patrol our schools and our school grounds so that they can be safe once again. The same must be done in our cities and in our suburbs, armies of volunteers working in conjunction with our local, state and federal law enforcement officers to eradicate this epidemic of crime and drugs. We need action, not talk.

Back to Carmen For President ** Next Page**Home