No program which requires both the employer and the employee to pay taxes to receive an "earned benefit" provides a "free handout". It might be cheap, but its not free. Anticipating lower costs through attrition and higher revenues as the result of higher birth rates is lousy actuarial analysis, whether it is the result of stupidity of cupidity. Raiding the trust fund through the Unified Federal Budget was cupidity of the highest order. Medicare apparently never rose to the level of a Ponzi scheme, since revenues never exceeded benefits. And then, there's Obamacare! "Those who cannot learn from history are bound to repeat it."

It would apear that Rep. Paul Ryan stuck his neck out far enough that several liberals, including the President, have attempted to "lop it off", fortunately without success, so far.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.", Animal Farm, George Orwell

"Both are in huge financial trouble about which nobody wants to do anything until, at last, there will be nothing about their fiscal failure that anyone can do." CORRECTION: "NOBODY" SHOULD READ "NO LIBERAL". There are conservatives who would love to be able to do something about them: and, have tried to do so.

One can only experience "cognitive dissonance" if one is cognitive. I wouldn't worry about Jon Stewart.

Socialism, in all of its various forms, is a Ponzi scheme. As Margaret Thatcher so aptly observed: "The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." Obamacare, as we are discovering since it has been passed and we "can find out what's in it", is Medicare "writ large". It will almost certainly become the "greatest" Ponzi scheme ever, collapsing upon itself bigger and faster than SS and Medicare. Then what happens? "Enquiring minds want to know."

That would be one way to "reduce the surplus population".

The purpose of the CAGW alarmists is the creation of a global vegan commune with a "sustainable" population of ~1 billion, "ruled" by themselves as "benevolent despots", probably through the current feckless pretenders to that role in the "funhouse" at Turtle Bay. Heaven forfend!

Tea. Yes.

Since they don't even read the legislation they vote on.