Ron Johnson Pressed By Constituent For Calling Social Security A 'Ponzi Scheme'

During a teletownhall on Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was asked about Social Security.

Transcript

00:00next we'll go to i guess it's jan or john in green bay uh which is it here uh it's john

00:07it's john okay well thanks staying on let's what's your question uh have you ever made a

00:14statement calling ssi uh like a ponzi scheme and i i currently it's a big part of my income and

00:24you know i want to have that secured for the future and are you have you ever made a statement

00:33like that well first of all it is a legal ponzi scheme that's where i you know revised my remarks

00:41it's a legal ponzi scheme it is it's a pay-as-you-go system by the way ponzi scheme is an investment

00:46scheme where whoever's running it brings in investments from people and rather than actually

00:53investing the money they just pay out those dollars to earlier investors so at the very end

01:00the late investors get left holding the bag with nothing okay now that's not going to happen with

01:04social security uh when the trust fund runs out which is just an economic gimmick by the way

01:09um it's convention but when when those government bonds are no longer in the trust fund they've been

01:14exhausted to pay the benefits that are now exceeding the revenue coming in because it's a pay-as-you-go

01:20system uh we think what will end up happening is benefits will be reduced to match the revenue

01:25coming in should be somewhere between 75 and 80 percent in 20 i think now 33 uh so again it's it's

01:32been completely mismanaged uh pal you know previous politicians have really lied to the american public

01:39about what it is okay again when when the federal government takes your payroll tax and they spend it

01:46on other priorities including social security but again that money's gone in its place our u.s

01:51government bonds that have no value to the u.s government has a value to you outside the government

01:56but inside the government it's just a piece of paper and so those are worthless piece of paper to the

02:02the federal government when the trust fund issue you know sends that bond to the treasury to pay out

02:07benefits all the treasury what the treasury must do is issue another u.s government bond so again it's it's

02:14sleight of hand okay it's accounting convention so if you're concerned about social security benefits

02:19as i am and you want to save them we have to get our debt and deficit under control which is why i'm

02:25fighting for that if you've got 1.9 trillion dollar average deficit so the last four years now the average

02:31deficit projected is about two point it's well over two trillion dollars a year that's what i was fighting

02:37to preserve okay or try trying to fix um but again we're a long way from it because everybody's

02:44listening by the graveyard there just aren't that many people like me who are willing to dig in their

02:47heels but no i'm absolutely supportive of social security uh i understand why the government did it

02:54people weren't saving for retirement but when it's set up understand that there were dozens of workers

02:59supporting one beneficiary and the retirement age was set at 65 back then when life expectancy was a

03:05little bit more than 61 years old now there's a retirement scheme that's going to work but now

03:10that life expectancy thank god is closer to 80 and we haven't done much in terms of retirement age it's

03:16completely unsustainable and we have less than three workers supporting every person on social security

03:22so it's it's it's a program in trouble and unfortunately nobody's willing to to uh fix it and

03:30way too many people are stealing are willing to incur and be satisfied with these massive deficits i'm not

03:38that's what i'm trying to fight to reduce but john thanks stay online appreciate your question next go to

03:43and

03:48you

03:50you