Discussion for article #230128
“A bipartisan group of lawmakers will introduce legislation Thursday to strip SUSPECTED Nazi war criminals of their Social Security benefits”
Next it will be a a bipartisan group of lawmakers will introduce legislation to strip SUSPECTED old people of SS benefits.
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Suspected? Not proven. Well, I’ve got to hand it to Rep. Maloney, that’s one way to shore up the Pro-Israel vote without having to address any actual issues of the day.
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Wow, talk about a waste of resources and time for returns. Why? The Allies made a decision long ago to punish the leaders and the direct war criminals. It would not have been possible to charge every soldier. If these people have lived in the US for ages and have paid into the system their whole lives than I see no reason to strip it from them for past mistakes.
Granted, horrible ones, but in historical context it is easy to understand why people would have supported the Nazi’s as it was a lash out at the unfair terms of the initial WW1 ending. Not saying it was right, but it is understandable. Add to that, not every german soldier was involved in things other than being a soldier.
this is a waste of time.
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“This is a matter of principle,” Chaffetz said. “Taxpayers should not be funding the retirement of war criminals.”
By that metric, can we expect Dick Cheney and George W. Bush to lose their government retirement benefits as well?
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We hanged apprx 900 Japanese war criminals.
Not enough Nazi war criminals. We let too many get away.
Is it too late to hang this one?
Nazi eventually stripped “suspect” people of their benefits too . . . a great precedent for these legislators to follow.
I thought it was to pick up some pointers on how to govern.
ZING!
I think that former members of the National Socialist Party of South Africa who were involved in the apartheid regime should also be included in this.
I heard that Reagan was actively involved in supporting former Nazis in the United States. Not surprisingly, Pat Buchanan was handpicked by Reagan to act as the intermediary between the US-settled Nazis and Reagan’s administration.
Not to mention that life in Germany during the Nazi regime could be very hard if you weren’t a member of the Nazi party.
Of course, there were immigration restrictions preventing former Nazis from coming to this country; if they lied on their immigration documents, then they were here illegally from the beginning. But if part of the deal that the federal government cut with them was for them to leave without contesting the issue and they’d get their Social Security, then it hardly seems right to renege on that deal now.
And even the youngest of them must be well into their 80s by now anyway. Are we really so hard up for funds that we have to take money from the very elderly?
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We made heroes out of some Nazis, like Werner Von Braun. We needed the skills he used in crating terror weapons like the V2 to help in the cold war.
There are many thousands of Nazis who were helped by the US and other nations.
This is a great idea …
According to the article it looks like it is dealing specifically with those who have lost their US citizenship and been “forced out” of the country due to their involvement with the Nazi party.
[quote]The Nazi Social Security Benefits Termination Act comes in response to an Associated Press investigation published in October that revealed millions of dollars in benefits have been paid to dozens of former Nazis who were forced out of the United States.
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The legislation would end benefits for Nazi suspects who have lost their American citizenship, a step called denaturalization. U.S. law currently requires a higher threshold — a final order of deportation — before benefits can be terminated.[/quote]Although given that bit about deportation, I’m not sure what they mean by “forced out.” Either way it is not quite as simple/broad as just being “suspected,” it seems that it requires some sort of previous legal action to have been taken and it looks like it is at least suppose to be targeted at people who couldn’t be described as having “lived in the US for ages” since it seems to want to target individuals who have been removed from the country.
edit: Hmm, I missed the bit about how the DoJ was using their being able to keep Social Security benefits as a bargaining chip to get them to self-deport/not fight deportation that puts a bit of a different twist on things.
Next, the GOTP Congress will strip benefits from Democrats and Liberals. You know they want to.
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