Yesterday I was talking to am off duty police officer from Federal Way. We started talking about retirement plans and he told me that some state and county workers, to include Federal Way PD, is exempt from social security payroll taxes due to the pension plans that are in place.

I find this very interesting seeing that the liberals are always against privatizing social security, yet these same liberals have decided that it would be better for the local or state government to opt out and get an exemption from the tax. This information never gets any MSM play, yet I feel that it is very relevant to the debate.

Of course you still have a government agency running the system, but it is my understanding that the employees have a bit of a say in how their share is invested. If this is the case then would it not make sense to give people the option whether or not to opt out of social security and instead have the taxes placed into a private account?

Of course there is the argument as to what to do with all the Seniors who are already on social security and those getting close and too late to start saving. Well here is my solution.

1) Create an account for everyone of working age under say 45. The account would be like a 401k or mutual fund account in non high risk funds and you cannot withdraw any funds until you reach a set retirement age like 65.

2) Only allow 50% of the current tax to go into a private account. Increase this amount as less people are collecting or near collecting social security until everyone left has a private account and then 100% of the tax goes to your personal account.

3) To make up the difference of the lost 50% of payroll taxes take it out of the pork barrel spending that Congress has been famous for. If we did this there would be more than enough money to cover the costs. I would rather spend the money fixing the social security problem then spending millions for spinach farmers.

As most people know the government is not in the business of making money; therefore the government should not be the one to try to make our "personal savings" grow.