Obama's "Sneak Attack" on Senior Citizens

Obama's "Sneak Attack" on Senior Citizens

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There are a lot of senior citizens in the US now. The number is increasing by 10,000 every day as Baby Boomers turn 65—and start applying for Medicare and then shortly after that, for SocialSecurity. These are the folks who once thought this would be the “Golden Years” when their years of hard work and savings and pension plans would let them live the good life, in places that are sunny and warm.

Then came the financial crisis and the stock market crash, the recession, and the “non-recovery.” Whatever “nest egg” they thought they had suddenly was mostly gone. Panicked, they sold their portfolio of securities on the way down, and then fearful of what came next, they didn’t buy back in on the way up. Thus they missed out on the stock market growth over the past 18-24 months. They are left with a much smaller “nest egg,” or none at all, and their pensions are either broke or being discontinued too.

As bad as that sounds, it’s not the “worst news.” The “worst news” is that President Barack Obamaplans and policies constitute a multi-faceted “sneak attack on seniors.” Obama cleverly conceals this “sneak attack” while he assures seniors citizens he’s going to take care of them—and “nothing will change” for them. Nonsense!

Consider these actions, all planned or already created by Barack Obama and his minions:

1. Depress Interest Income: Interest rates have been held unnaturally low (by the Fed) for a very, very long time. Thus any money that senior citizens have in safe places like savings accounts, money market funds, and even most bonds, earns very, very little interest—between 0.3% and 2%.

2. Draining Remaining Social Security Funds: In his desire to show some economic growth and “buy votes” Obama created the “Payroll Tax Holiday,” which was supposed to be for a short time—like 6 months—because reducing the employee’s portion of payroll taxes by 2% takes that money directly out of what is used to fund Social Security. And now he has “gallantly” decided to do it again—for a year this time. This further drains a Social Security System which the president has refused to “fix and fund,” and continues to ignore as it becomes more and more insolvent.

But that’s not all. There’s more. Of course these are all part of the President’s grand plan to keep the (lukewarm) recovery going artificially until he can be reelected to a second term.

3. Dry Up Dividends, Gut Capital Gains: Obama’s latest tax proposal includes doubling the tax rate on dividends and capital gains, which is his way of paying for the irresponsible spending that is creating $5 trillion in deficits just four years. Every year Obama has been in office spending has exceeded revenue by more than a trillion dollars. The only way to over that is with tax increases, and while he talks about taxing the rich—a part of the taxes involved doubling the tax rate on dividends and capital gains. These two of the primary sources of retirement income for seniors, will be taxed more heavily and thus less desirable for companies to pay dividends.

4. New Taxes Hidden in Obamacare: There are hidden surprises in Obamacare—the massive health care bill that was supposed to fix everything—but doesn’t. The most notable one is a 3.8% tax on “unearned income,” which includes dividends, interest, and proceeds from the sale of a home (which many seniors are downsizing, and would use as a source of assets for retirement income.

5. Reduced Funding in Medicare and Rationing Health Care: This one might help seniors by shortening the time they’d have to endure the others, because part of the economic justification of Obamacare was to cut Medicare benefits by $500 billion over a period of years. How? By rationing health care—and refusing to pay for medical expenses incurred by people whose lives were nearing the end anyway. Medicare is already insolvent, and President Obama has not done anything to try fixing it—except take more money away from it.

After all, it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot on medical needs for really old people does it? Not to Barack OBAMA and his minions it doesn’t. They will do a “cost benefit analysis,” and if the medical costs are too high, their appointed commissioners will simply refuse to pay the benefits and let the older, more infirm senior citizens die (sooner). After all, seniors incur more than70% of their lifetime health care expenses in the last few years of their lives.

What the heck, Obama’s got a plan for everything. Save on interest rates, collect more taxes, depress dividend payments and capital gains, and sneak a few more hidden taxes in the 2000+-page Obamacare bill. If rationing health care reduces the number of people who live long enough to need that extra retirement income, it doesn’t matter that the first four steps in the Obama Economic Plan cuts the income of seniors so much their lives wouldn’t be very pleasant anyway.

To top things off, Obama keeps wasting money on high risk “green energy” projects like Solyndra, meanwhile blocking oil and gas exploration, stopping drilling and development of delivery projects like the Keystone pipeline. So what if America sends billions over to the Middle East for oil? So what if the cost of gas goes over $5/gallon. Seniors on reduced fixed incomes, with untreated medial conditions (under rationing) don’t need to be driving around anyway.

What a wonderful country full of HOPE and CHANGE that Barack Obama has planned for us senior citizens. Now hee wants four more years, so he can “finish the job”—or “finish us off”—or both.

I am not making this stuff up. It comes right off the reports about Obama’s plans. You might want to share this with all your senior citizen friends, to make sure they know who and what they will be voting for in 2012.

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John Mariotti is an internationally known executive and an award-winning author. His newest book, co-authored with D. M. Lukas, Hope is NOT a Strategy: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency will be available early in March 2012 at www.amazon.com . Mariotti’s 2008 book, The Complexity Crisis was named one of 2008’s Best Business Books.