Together for a Stronger Future
Steve Laffey believes that true progress comes from addressing the issues that matter to all of us as a united front. By focusing on solutions that bring us together, we can bridge divides, strengthen our communities, and create a future that reflects our shared values and aspirations. From economic growth and education reform to healthcare and social security, these are key issues that shape our nation - and the common ground where we can come together to make a lasting change.
A Steve Laffey Approach
Steve Laffey’s approach to key issues emphasizes practical, straightforward solutions to reform major systems. On topics such as Social Security, he advocates for a Personal Security System to ensure sustainability. For economic sustainability, he calls for limiting bank powers and reforming the Federal Reserve’s role. Additionally, Laffey promotes educational reform through parental choice, simplifies taxes with a flat tax system, and addresses corruption by enhancing government accountability.
Important Issues To Fix:
Fix Social Security
Limited Purpose Banking
Fix the Federal Reserve Protectors of Bankers & Enablers of Congress
Stop Transferring Wealth to China
Make the Tax Code Fair & Simple
Stop Corruption in the Federal Government
Fix Our Education System
1. Fix Social Security
Those already collecting Social Security are grandfathered.
Those scheduled to collect receive all benefits accrued under the current system.
There is no accrual of additional benefits; the old system is frozen.
The FICA tax is gradually phased out.
Adoption of the Personal Social Security System (PSS.)
Workers contribute 10 percent of pay to PSS accounts.
Half of married couples’ combined PSS contributions are allocated to each spouse’s account.
The government makes matching contributions on behalf of low earners, the disabled, and the unemployed.
All PSS balances are invested identically, by a computer, not Wall Street, in a weighted index of global stocks, bonds, and other traded financial securities.
The government guarantees at least a zero real (after-inflation) return. No one loses their contributions, adjusted for inflation.
Between 57 and 67, each birth cohort’s PSS balances are used to purchase Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS).
Each cohorts’ TIPS assets are used to pay cohort members inflation-indexed life annuities that begin at 62 and are fully phased in by 67. Your PSS annuities are based solely on your accumulated PSS contributions.
Die before 67? Your heirs inherit all PSS balances not yet converted to TIPS.
The PSS System
Is fully funded
Is progressive
Is fair to non-working or lower-earning spouses
Provides all participants the same annual returns on their PSS balances
Is run by a single laptop - no commissions/fees/spreads to Wall Street
Provides inflation-protected benefits that continue as long as you live
Is a modern version of Social Security
Maintains current disability
Will include real annuities paid to survivors of deceased workers
Phases out our outrageously complex and insolvent - $62 trillion in the red - current Social Security system
Social Security Background
America’s Most Cherished Public Policy
Social Security is America’s most cherished public policy. However, the system is in grave financial trouble that we can no longer ignore. Indeed, Social Security is in worse financial shape now than in 1983 when the Greenspan Commission “fixed” the system’s finances. According to the Social Security Trustees (see Table VIFI of the 2022 Trustees Report), the system is underfunded by $61 trillion! Covering the shortfall requires an immediate and permanent 4.5 percentage point increase in the current 12.4 percent employer-employee 12.4 percent payroll tax. That’s a 36 percent hike! Alternatively, benefits must be cut, immediately and permanently, by 27 percent.
Social Security’s problems extend far beyond its finances. The system is incredibly complex. It’s Handbook’s has 2728 complex rules, and its Program Operating Manual has thousands of even more complex rules to explain the Handbook’s rules. As a result, many of the system’s key features are virtually incomprehensible. In addition, these thousands of rules produce very major inequities are inefficiencies. Thanks to the system’s byzantine rules, millions of workers pay Social Security taxes year after year and end up with no extra benefits. Indeed, they can end up with lower benefits than people who never work. And when no one understands what they are getting back for their extra Social Security taxes, they can easily decide that working has a much smaller payoff than is actually the case. It is time to fix Social Security from the ground up without sacrificing its key objectives.
2.Limited Purpose Banking
Let’s make the banks smaller, better and take out the leverage!
We need to make the Banks less powerful
We need the financial system to stop blowing up the economy every 15 years
We need Limited Purpose Banking
A President Laffey will work to bring Limited Purpose Banking to the USA
3.Fix the Federal Reserve Protectors of Bankers & Enablers of Congress
Creators of great inequality of wealth - killing the middle class
The Federal Reserve’s mandate should be changed and limited to the sole task of managing the money supply to target inflation at 0%.
This will force Congress to operate within its budget, and it will no longer be able to depend on the Fed for bailouts.
Our national debt will finally be reigned in, and Congress’s habit of passing initiatives for which there is no money will stop.
“Change the Fed to be an ally of average Americans.”
4.Stop Transferring Wealth to China
“Never in history has a Communist country become a democracy by trading with them.”
America’s trade relationship with Communist China has hurt Americans’ wages. It has allowed China to build up its military as it works to supplant America as the world’s superpower. It has cost Americans millions of jobs. It has not led to democracy or respect for intellectual property or bestowed human rights on individuals in China, but instead, merely continued more Communist Chinese government oppression of its people. It has made America’s budget deficit worse.
Why are still trading with Communist China?
A New Tax System Hermain Cain’s “9•9•9” Plan - Why Do You Think It Was So Popular?
5.Make the Tax Code Fair and Simple
Because it works…”You know Steve, it’s really half a fair tax and half a flat tax.” - Herman Cain to Steve Laffey in Atlanta, 2013.
Why do you think they took my late friend, Herman Cain, out of the race?
The elites couldn’t have something so simple, so fair - partly a wealth tax, and doing away with 60,000 pages of nonsense their buddies take advantage of. Why is no one going to propose it now? It's too risky for the insiders and not popular with the elites. They saw what happened to Herman Cain!
6.Stop Corruption in Federal Government
“Biggest fraud in a generation: The looting of the Covid relief plan known as PPP”
The official in charge of Covid relief said “…programs like PPP were structured in ways that were an invitation to fraudsters.”
The SBA’s Inspector General and the Secret Service have identified between $80 and $100 billion in potentially fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
Those who truly needed the loans didn’t get them. Those who didn’t need them, bought Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Bentleys! Yet not a single Republican voted against it - NOT ONE SINGLE ONE!
“Federal officials trade stock in companies their agencies oversee!” - WSF
Federal agency officials wield “immense power and influence over things that impact the day-to-day lives of everyday Americans, such as public health and food safety, diplomatic relations and regulating trade.”
1 in 5 officials in the Treasury, the Fed, SEC, IRS, Defense Department, EPA, HHS, Interior, and others invested stocks of the very firms lobbying their agencies!
Some officials who traded just ahead of regulatory actions were significant big tech investors or made large and risky trades, including short selling and options trading.
An ethics lawyer at the US agency that oversees conflict-of-interest rules states, “These stock trades clearly violate the spirit behind the law, which is to maintain the public’s confidence and integrity of the government.
Let the parents decide
7.Fix Our Educational System
Public schools are broken beyond repair, they need to be replaced with a system of choice for parents.
We have to commit, right now, to getting every kid out of public schools. A check needs to be sent to every family so children can finally learn unencumbered by onerous, abysmal, misguided education standards.