The Seniors Center

Updates

Posted on Jun 9, 2018

Sen. Arthur Vandenberg worried that the $47 Billion the Roosevelt Administration wanted to save in the Social Security Trust Fund would lead to socialism. He should have worried it would lead to theft.

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Posted on Feb 10, 2018

The Seniors Center President Dan Perrin Answers on Quora: What Happened To the Money In Our Social Security Trust Fund?

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Posted on Feb 9, 2018

If you fly American Airlines, get ready to give up even more of your personal space. Showing that our health and comfort aren't important to them, American Airlines is retrofitting their narrow body planes to squeeze in 172 people.

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Posted on Feb 6, 2018

Visit The Seniors Center on Facebook. Help us save our Social Security Trust Fund.

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Posted on Feb 4, 2018

Court appointed "guardians" force senior citizens into assisted living, selling belongings and taking control of assets.

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Posted on Jan 28, 2018

Quora Questioner Asks: "Did The US Government Borrow From Social Security?"
Dan Perrin Answers: "Borrow? They took Almost $3 Billion"

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Posted on Nov 7, 2017

People at Quora want to know "Has Congress Really Borrowed Trillions of Dollars from the Social Security Trust Fund?"

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Posted on Oct 16, 2017

Congresswoman Carolyn Kilpatrick was a lonely voice when she stood on the floor of Congress and begged her colleagues to keep their hands off of our Social Security Trust Fund.

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Social Security Administration Announcement About COLAs

Oct 13, 2017 – Oct 13, 2017

The Social Security Administration announced today that the annual COLA for Social Security would be 2%.
When applied to the average monthly benefit, this factors out to around $25 extra per month.

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Advocating for Senior Citizens

Visit our Social Security & Seniors Policy site at www.TheSeniors.Center or our blog that alerts seniors to scams, schemes, and frauds at www.TheSeniorsCenter.blog.

The Seniors Center creates constructive solutions to the issues that are most critical to our senior citizens. We are a non-partisan nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, representing more than 450,000 voters in 48 states covering 412 congressional districts.

Our most impactful work is in securing the retirement of America’s seniors by mobilizing the grassroots community to interact directly with our lawmakers.. Every year we help citizens draft thousands of documents that convey our concerns directly to Congress.

In 2017, we facilitated over 1.9 million direct contacts between policymakers and the citizens they represent – our grassroots campaigns include petition drives, letter-writing campaigns, advertisements, emails, social media programs, and surveys.

At the core of The Seniors Center’s campaigns to increase public awareness and influence lawmakers is our belief a secure retirement for America’s seniors begins with protecting the Social Security they’ve earned.

The Social Security Act was formally passed as a law in 1935. It was a comprehensive piece of legislation seeking to ensure old age benefits, unemployment insurance, help for dependent mothers and children, support for persons with disabilities, and benefits to victims of industrial accidents.

As the American activist, Noam Chomsky said, “Social Security is based on a principle. It's based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat.”

It was an All-American solution to an epidemic problem: fighting retirement insecurity with earned benefits--not government funds--and creating a self-funded Trust that truly belongs to retirees. Today, more than 15 million Americans over the age of 65 depend on Social Security during retirement.

Yet despite the resounding success of what is now one of our most beloved federal programs, many of us fear for Social Security’s present--and near future.

But why?

The problems began in the 1980s when the Government saw in Social Security an easy source of money to overcome its deficits. Funds began to be diverted from the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund (OASI) and used for different general spending projects.

What started as occasional borrowing from the Social Security Trust Funds has snowballed into standard procedure for successive governments--and Congress has shown no willingness to stop this practice.

In three decades almost $3 trillion in surplus reserves has been spent from the Social Security Trust Fund. Annual benefits are set to exceed the annual income collected in payroll taxes from 2019 onwards.

Our government would need to fall back on surplus reserves to continue to pay full scheduled benefits after this point. These reserves are only estimated to last another 15 years before they run out completely.

But thanks to Congress spending the surplus -- intentionally collected over time with this nearing shortfall in mind -- there isn’t actually a single dime of money left over after benefits are paid. There is no “account” where our payroll taxes are kept. All that exists of the Trust Fund is a file cabinet housing the government’s IOUs to Social Security.

The government issues a special obligation Treasury bond for each chunk of money it borrows from Social Security. Unlike other Treasury bonds, these special obligation bonds are not marketable: they can’t be sold, they can’t be traded or invested, and they can’t be immediately flipped into money. They strictly represent the federal government’s debt to Social Security.

In other words, these bonds have no cash value. They are federal IOUs.

A lot of this irresponsible spending is because of the influence specific lobbying groups have in the corridors of power. Our goal is to provide a counterpoint to such lobbies and motivate the citizens most affected by this spending to directly influence their lawmakers.

The Seniors Center was among the first to blow the lid off this massive misuse of Social Security funds and we continue to educate our citizens so they can effectively demand the repayment of these huge loans. We want to ensure the insolvency of the Social Security Trust Funds remains never transitions from a nightmare into a harsh reality.

So if someone is set to retire in another ten to 15 years, would a retirement without full Social Security be a real possibility? Is it true without intervention that Social Security payments will be reduced by nearly a quarter?

That is the scenario we can foresee clearly. And given the unchanging estimates and reports from the Social Security Trustees and other financial experts, there’s no question Congress needs to act NOW to preserve full scheduled benefits for American retirees.

We believe that our citizens spend their lifetimes earning an honest living while putting away part of their paychecks for their retirement--those funds should never be hijacked by myopic Congressmen only interested in using these funds for their short-term problems, refusing to look at the long-term financial security of the very people whose wages have contributed to those funds.

Not all Congressmen are like that, though. We do receive solid support from several elected representatives who are as concerned about the rights and privileges of senior citizens as we are.

We are so grateful that we have some voices of support in Washington, but our real strength comes from our thousands of dedicated members who share our view about what the challenge is and what should be done to fix it. This massive movement to secure a critical right of senior citizens has been gathering steam and we now have the critical mass necessary for Washington to sit up and take notice.

Every battle needs an army of dedicated soldiers, but victory rarely comes without an astute general who can lead the troops with vision and courage, and also rally them around when things look difficult.

We are very lucky to have the leadership of our President, Dan Perrin, as we navigate these troubled waters towards a world where our senior citizens do not need to worry about their old age funds.

Dan studied at Carleton University, and then went on to study political science at the University of Massachusetts. He has been a staff member in the U.S. Senate, from where he moved on to become a registered lobbyist.

Now a resident of Washington, DC, Dan has six beautiful children, and he is a keen enthusiast of children’s sports, particularly soccer and lacrosse. He is the author of a seminal work on our health care crisis. He answers questions directly from the public through Quora, where in January 2018, he was ranked the most-read expert on both Social Security and Government. He has been tirelessly leading our movement since 2012, and he describes himself as President of a group dedicated to representing the interests of both Baby Boomers as well as The Greatest Generation.

Although the Social Security funds are what keep us most occupied, we also try and lend a hand in other issues concerning our retired elders, through our website, articles, and blogs. We believe that people who have given their lives working for a better future for the next generation deserve support when they need help.

If you are retired or are soon to retire, we urge you to join The Seniors Center in our mission to finally protect Social Security for seniors. Even if you are too young for that now but just interested in helping, we invite you to join our movement to help secure the future of our seniors.

The Seniors Center regularly publishes news and commentary about the Social Security Trust Fund and other issues of interest to senior citizens at our website www.TheSeniors.Center.

We also maintain a blog to help alert and educate senior citizens about scams and frauds against seniors at www.TheSeniorsCenter.blog.

Our extensive social media community includes our Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/theseniorscent1, our Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/theseniorscentersite, and our YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChFGYWmiEgvCE8vZbHNAJzw. Our President, Dan Perrin, answers questions from the public about Social Security and other issues at Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Dan-Perrin-3.

Finally, we maintain a portal at www.TheSeniorsCenter.info to help our friends and members navigate The Seniors Center community.