THE SOCIAL SECURITY SCAM

The sad thing is, this is a scam being perpetrated by the most villainous of scammers, the US government. Having reached the age where I could apply for retirement benefits, I duly logged in to the Social Security Administration (SSA) portal and filled in the requisite data. Months passed and I received a letter from the SSA telling they'd reviewed my case (?--I didn't know getting the benefits promised over decades of paying social security taxes was a CASE). Good news: I qualified for payments. Bad news: the SSA said, "However we cannot pay you at this time."

Huh? Had the government gone bankrupt or only had confederate money on hand? As best I could determine, that was not the case. So I wrote (four times), called (six times), visited my local SSA office (two times)--no one could give an answer. I then filed an appeal for a hearing, which the SSA website says is within my rights. Seven months--still no hearing, no word, no money. Finally I called my senator's office, and about a month later received word payments would commence.

Query: if I withheld making payments for FICA (i.e., social security) while working, I suspect the SSA would have found me AND TAKEN SEVERE ACTION in far less than eight months. So why shouldn't the SSA be held similarly accountable? I may be wrong, but the government had use of MY money for close to a year, making money on the float. Either that, or the SSA is grossly incompetent. Either way, an unconscionable situation.

So I have a simple proposal: Congress should pass a law that states: "All SSA administrators' salaries will be suspended, until such time as the SSA can prove that all beneficiaries entitled to remunerations have been timely paid." I suspect whatever the logjam is at the upper levels of the SSA, it will be cleared up at light speed.