Killing Social Security is the repug holy grail. Once the social program that allows workers disabled by destructive corporations and exhausted by decades of unpaid overtime to retire with dignity is dead, then the billionaires can force everyone who is not filthy rich to work literally to death without relief, and the New Gilded Age will be permanent.
Ddown with Tyranny:
The rich stopped paying yesterday. But they are still getting the max payout when they retire. When they retire on your taxes.
From Social Security Works:
This Thursday, millionaires and billionaires will stop paying into Social Security. To shine a spotlight on this unfair policy, Social Security Works is joining with Social Security Champion Bernie Sanders for a national day of action.Right now, the way we fund Social Security―a regressive practice that only applies to the first $127,200 of a wage earner’s income―contributes to wealth and income inequality in the U.S.A millionaire won’t pay anything into our Social Security system for at least the last ten and a half months of the year. This is because our Social Security system is primarily funded by payroll contributions (or FICA). Once the FICA cap of $127,200 is reached, millionaires and billionaires stop paying into the system, while the vast majority of Americans continue to pay in on all of their salary.Social Security benefits provide critical financial stability to seniors, children, surviving spouses and veterans. It is outrageous that Republicans―at the behest of their Wall Street backers―continue to call for cuts to Social Security based on a future projected shortfall to the trust fund when all we need is to ask millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share!
Call Senator Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul today: (202) 224-3121Suggested call script:My name is Lisa Aug and I live in Kentucky.I am calling because for the rest of the year, millionaires and billionaires won’t pay into Social Security.I urge the Senator to support legislation that lifts the Social Security payroll cap so that the wealthy pay their fair share into Social Security all year--just like the rest of us.Because when they do, we’ll be able to extend the lifespan of the Social Security Trust Fund and expand benefits for millions of Americans.I urge the Senator to “scrap the cap” on Social Security payroll contributions. Thank you.Thank you for standing with Social Security Works and Senator Bernie Sanders in our fight to protect and expand Social Security.
Thank you,Michael Phelan
Social Security Works
Even if the deportations manage to avoid immigrants here legally, which would be nearly impossible, the effect on our economy will be catastrophic. And that's not counting the enormous cost of rounding up and shipping out 11 million men, women and children.
Immigration briefly seized the podium at the Florida Democratic debate, with both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton trying to calibrate their message toward Latino voters by vowing to pursue a more humane immigration policy and critiquing President Obama’s record of mass deportations. Still, there was precious little discussion of undocumented immigrants as anything but a problem to be dealt with.Not to mention that undocumented immigrants still pay into the social security and medicare systems with no hope of being able to draw from them, thus funding the retirement and health care of all the white, repug,Trump-voting olds screaming for deportation.
The candidates could have looked at new economic data showing that in Florida, undocumented immigrants contributed some $588 million annually in state and local taxes. That revenue, which is paid by people who are powering the local economy like all other Floridians are, through their labor and consumption, is drawn from sales and excises taxes ($454 million) and property taxes ($134 million).
Altogether, according to the fiscal analysis—published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)—undocumented immigrants contribute about $11.6 billion to the economy annually, including nearly $7 billion in sales and excise taxes and $3.6 billion in property taxes. They are, in economic terms, productive citizens, and pay a higher effective tax rate than the top one percent income bracket. That alone is not the primary reason they should be embraced as neighbors and coworkers. But it dissolves the myth that immigrants do nothing but drain public coffers.
Think it's bad now? If Congress OK's this fascist power grab, corporations will be able to veto minimum wage, Social Security, affordable health care, clean water regulations and anything else - like the right to vote - that they can imagine hurts their profits by a single fucking penny.
Wave bye-bye to democracy, y'all; Exxon-Mobil will own your ass.
Apologies to Charlie Pierce for lifting his entire column, but This. Is. It. The hill we die on. Compared to TPP, the Keystone XL pipeline is an overturned trash can.
There probably is no more (occasionally overly) judicious voice on the world economy than Jeffrey Sachs. He has taken a look at the soft spots in the monstrous Trans-Pacific Partnership and he has found them to be bad enough to vote down the bill as a whole.The third is a set of regulations governing investor rights, intellectual property, and regulations in key service sectors, including financial services, telecommunications, e-commerce, and pharmaceuticals. These chapters are a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Their common denominator is that they enshrine the power of corporate capital above all other parts of society, including labor and even governments. The fourth is a set of standards on labor and the environment that purport to advance the cause of social fairness and environmental sustainability. But the agreements are thin, unenforceable, and generally unimaginative. For example, climate change is not even mentioned, much less addressed boldly and creatively.That sounds really bad. But, according to Sachs, there is worse to come.The most egregious parts of the agreement are the exorbitant investor powers implicit in the Investor-State Dispute Settlement system as well as the unjustified expansion of copyright and patent coverage. We've seen this show before. Corporations are already using ISDS provisions in existing trade and investment agreements to harass governments in order to frustrate regulations and judicial decisions that negatively impact the companies' interests. The system proposed in the TPP is a dangerous and unnecessary grant of power to investors and a blow to the judicial systems of all the signatory countries. And, as in earlier trade agreements, the United States has pushed through overly strong intellectual property rights that strengthen the aggressive pricing practices of big pharma and unnecessarily extend the copyright protections far beyond their social usefulness.From the start, this thing has reeked of being an investment protection act. This thought has occurred to Senator Professor Warren as well.Because of how costly these awards can be, ISDS creates enormous pressure on governments to avoid actions that might offend corporate interests. Corporations have brought ISDS cases against countries that have raised their minimum wage, attempted to cut smoking rates, or prohibited dumping toxic chemicals. Just last month, a foreign corporation successfully challenged Canada's decision to deny a blasting permit because of concerns about the environmental impact on nearby fishing grounds, and now the company could get up to $300 million from Canadian taxpayers. Will Canada's environmental regulators hesitate before they say no to the next foreign corporation that wants to dump, blast, or drill? The president's devotion to this deal is surpassed in its everlasting mystery to his implacable demand that Congress fast-track a measure that contains uncounted numbers of land mines for ordinary people and the countries in which they live. Sachs seems curious about this as well.Perhaps most disappointing is the lack of creativity in the development, labor, and environmental chapters. Yes, they rhetorically defend global economic development, labor standards, and environmental sustainability, but they do so without specific enforcement powers. Why is it that companies can force arbitration tribunals to defend their investor rights, but workers have no such power? Why is climate change not even considered in the draft, despite the fact that it represents the most important environmental threat of the 21st century, and may have strong implications for future trade rules? Outside of his education policies, the headlong rush into the TPP is going to be one of the only acts of his presidency with which the president justifies the criticisms levelled at him from the left. That's not a bad batting average, but this is an awful exception to the rule.
Authorities are investigating the deaths of three people in Eastern Kentucky who might have committed suicide after receiving letters telling them their federal disability benefits were being suspended, according to a lawyer involved in the issue.Prestonsburg attorney Ned Pillersdorf said a state police detective told him about the cases late Tuesday.The detective said police think the three deaths were "related to the suspension letters," Pillersdorf said. He declined to release the detective's name.About 900 former clients of Floyd County lawyer Eric C. Conn recently received notices from the Social Security Administration that their payments had been suspended because of suspicion that the cases Conn submitted for them included fraudulent information from four doctors.Most of the people who received suspension letters live in Eastern Kentucky or West Virginia.Many of the people have no other income, so the loss of their benefits has caused tremendous concern in the area.U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican who represents Eastern and southern Kentucky, said he told officials at the Social Security Administration about the suspected suicides during a meeting Wednesday, making the point that the agency was dealing literally with a life-and-death situation."You could tell it made an impact," Rogers said.Rogers said he asked Social Security officials to restore benefits to people while going through the process of re-determining their eligibility.It was improper for the agency to cut payments to people before giving them a chance to make the case for continued benefits, Rogers said."It's not the American way to treat people as convicted before giving them a chance to be heard," he said.Rogers said agency officials committed to giving him an answer soon on whether the commissioner would lift the benefit suspensions.
First, in the Tribble-Toupeed One's Disturbing World, the notoriously suspicious and chintzy SSI program, which rejects 60 percent of all claims and which pays an average of $1,100 per month on claims it does approve, is actually sending millions of dollars every month to every person who fakes a bad back or wakes up one morning feeling a little blue.
Steven M:
Steve Benen notes that government monitors don't see all the fraud Rand Paul claims to see:
Digby:Not too long ago the Inspector General of Social Security Administration did a thorough investigation of fraud in the disability-insurance program. The result was striking: less than 0.3% of disability payments were improper. (Or put another way, about 99.8% of the payments were legit.) When the Government Accountability Office went looking for disability fraud, it came up with similar findings.
It was startling to see physician and Senator Rand Paul claim the other day that people on disability were faking bad backs and anxiety to get on the dole and cheat the taxpayers. These are real ailments, sometimes totally debilitating, as anyone who has suffered from either can tell you. Severe back pain can make it impossible to work at any job, even those which only require sitting. Anxiety disorder is a terrible condition that can even make some people unable to even leave their house. What kind of medical doctor would deny such a thing? (If you answered, “one who will willingly trade his professional integrity for political points” you’d be right.)Rand Paul also thinks vaccines cause "profound mental disorders." But does he think people brain-damaged from vaccines should receive disability benefits? Of course not.
But this is actually part of the GOP’s ongoing quest to degrade “entitlements” and make America’s health care system the worst in the world for anyone who isn’t wealthy. Their ongoing attack on Obamacare opened up a window to their underlying philosophy about affordable health care. (They’re not for it.) And now they are taking legislative aim at the Supplemental Security Income portion of the Social Security System. This is the program that makes it possible for people with disabilities to live without begging on the streets. Despite the fact that the congress has always routinely pushed money back and forth between the retirement and disability portions of the program as the need occurred, the Republicans in congress have decided that they no longer support doing such a thing. The result, if they have their way, would be to cut the meager stipends of millions of disable Americans within the next year.
I am sure Bruce Braley would be happy to let her steal it.
And equally sure she wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
Because it might just get her repug-lite ass elected.
David Atkins at Hullabaloo:
Greg Sargent has an underreported bit of Social Security news that should please progressives who long been arguing for similar measures:There's not a single Democratic voter in Kentucky who would not be thrilled to vote for a candidate who supported Brown on this. In fact, the only Kentuckians who would not be so thrilled would be the very repug voters Alison is courting despite there being less than zero chance that they will ever, ever, vote for her or any other Democratic candidate.
Dem Senator Sherrod Brown, a member of the Finance Committee, tells me that GOP Senators have requested hearings into Social Security Disability Insurance this summer. Dems expect Republicans to attack the program as wasteful and fraudulent, in part because conservative media have already done so, and in part because at least one GOP proposal in recent days took aim at the program.
Brown says Dems should seize this occasion to get behind a proposal that would lift or change the payroll tax cap, meaning higher earners would pay more, while adopting a new measure for inflation that would increase benefits for all seniors. Instead of getting drawn into debates about “Chained CPI” and other entitlement cuts, Brown says, Dems should make the case that stagnating wages and declining pensions and savings demand an expansion of social insurance.“We should stop playing defense on Social Security, and instead talk about why Social Security is a public pension that we should be proud of, that has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty,” Brown tells me. “The three-legged stool — Social Security, pensions, private savings — has seen two of the legs sawed off for a large number of people. It’s time to look at expanding Social Security as an issue of retirement security.”
Brown said he expects Republicans to renew attacks on disability insurance (as opposed to the retirement security portion) to divide supporters of Social Security and renew the push for structural changes to the program, and said Dems could use that to draw an effective contrast. SSDI’s trust fund is set to be depleted soon, but that could be solved by a reallocation fix that’s been done before, rather than a deep benefits cut, which Republicans may press for.“They want to separate ‘good’ Social Security (retirement security) from ‘bad’ Social Security (disability insurance), to win support for structural reform,” said Brown, who is holding a Senate Finance sub-committee hearing tomorrow on the overall program. “The attacks on disability insurance will accelerate. This is how they will try to back-door the dismantling of social insurance. But the public is with us on social insurance.”
Brown noted that such an issue could play well in the midterms. “The electorate is older, so the field is fertile for Democrats to talk about this,” he said. “We should turn up the volume.”
Yet they still get the maximum benefit when they "retire" from sitting on their asses coming up with new ways to steal the last dime from the middle class.
There's an easy solution that doesn't involve violence or even means testing: just lift the Social Security income cap.
Digby:
The real lucky duckies
.... have already maxed out on their SS contributions for the year. I'm sure they'll be followed by quite a few more in the next month or so:
While almost all working Americans will pay into Social Security through their paychecks throughout the year, the 900 wealthiest people in the country won’t. That’s because the highest-earning 0.0001 percent of the U.S. — many of them corporate CEOs — made $117,000 in the first two days of the year, which is the maximum annual income that is subject to Social Security taxes under federal law.There is no real danger of Social Security being unable to pay its recipients, of course. Ever. It's just a matter of the government making the decision to write the checks. (They don't have to go down to Fort Knox and redeem the IOUs, honestly.) But considering that our understanding of how this whole thing works is so distorted by politics and an inability to recognize that the government does not make spending choices based upon family accounting logic that I think raising the cap is one of the very best ways to "solve" the crisis. The wealthy should be paying more in taxes for a variety of reasons anyway and this is an excellent way for them to "contribute" to the greater good. After all, if these so-called job creators were creating more jobs and paying people more perhaps they could save more money in their earning years. But seeing as these same people are perfectly content with allowing the Masters of the Universe to use virtually every investment vehicle for normal people like their own personal slot machines, we need to change the deal: everyone, the rich included, must pay exactly the same percentage of their wages toward Social Security and Medicare.
It’s tough to say for certain who will be a part of this group in 2014, since the most recent available data on Americans’ earnings is from 2012. In that year, 894 individuals nationwide made enough to qualify for membership in this club, according to the Los Angeles Times. Economist Teresa Ghilarducci came up with the calculation, and points out that Forbes data on top earners enables analysts and the public to see some of the members of this group. There were nearly 70 corporate CEOs who made enough to qualify in 2012, including the top officers at companies like Philip Morris, NewsCorp, Starbucks, ComCast, and Pfizer.
They get to live the year free from Social Security taxes because the law says that only the first $117,000 earned in a year can be taxed to fund the retirement program that kept more than 15 million people out of poverty in 2011. Democrats have pushed to raise the cap in recent years from $106,800 in 2009 to the current level. Eliminating the cap entirely could make the program solvent for the next 75 years without cutting a dime from anyone’s benefits — and doing so wouldn’t touch the earnings of 94.2 percent of all American workers.
That's called fairness. And it's as American as jazz and trans-fats.
On the principle that the best defense is a good offense, the way to save Social Security from the Austerity Hysterics demanding benefit cuts is to counter with demands to increase benefits and make billionaires pay for it.
Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly:
The idea has been kicking around think tanks (notably the Economic Policy Institute) and the blogosphere (particularly Atrios, who’s made this a personal crusade) for a while, but now is getting some serious buzz in the Senate: it’s time not to trim but to expand Social Security benefits.Raising benefits and eliminating the income cap is the morally correct thing to do. It's the economically sound thing to do. And it's the politically smart thing to do.
Unions and progressive activists are uniting around Tom Harkin’s bill to boost benefits by $70 a month for all Social Security recipients (and more for those heavily dependent on benefits for retirement security), increase (rather than decrease, as the “chained CPI” tentatively accepted by the White House as part of a not-going-to-happen “grand bargain” would do) the cost-of-living adjustment formula, and pay for it all by eliminating the regressive payroll tax cap for the program.
It’s obviously a good move for progressives to insist on looking at Social Security not as a part of the “entitlement problem,” but as a crucial part of a system of retirement security that’s been deeply eroded by recession-decimated assets and the shift in private-sector pensions from defined benefit to defined contribution plans.
But there’s a more purely political angle that’s now being emphasized by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), as discussed today by Greg Sargent:
Brown argues that if Republicans push for Social Security benefits cuts as part of any deal, Dems should counter with the Harkin proposal to shift the terms of the debate in a Democratic direction. Democratic priorities, he said, should be centered on the idea that declining pensions and wages (and savings) are undermining retirement security, and added that the public strongly opposed gutting social insurance.“The situation for seniors is only going to get worse, because the assault on pensions and wages is making it more and more difficult for a worker to save for the future,” Brown said. “Why are we having a debate over how much we are going to hurt seniors? The debate should be over how we should structure a pension for seniors that will help them. Why would we play on their playing field? Democrats need to play offense here. Force Republicans to say what it is they really want to do. Republicans just don’t like social insurance.”
Our priorities, Mr. President, include not sacrificing Social Security and Medicare to an unnecessary Grand Bargain in exchange for pocket change from billionaires.
Full transcript here.
If the worst-case scenario in the current D.C. clusterfuck is a default and resulting economic meltdown, the second-worst is a deal - Obama's long-sought "grand bargain" - that avoids default but requires cuts in Social Security.
Kathleen Geier at Political Animal:
Today’s New York Times features an important, and frightening, editorial about the alarming growth in extreme poverty among the elderly. According to the Times:
In analyzing the recent Census Bureau report on poverty, researchers at the National Women’s Law Center found that from 2011 to 2012, the rate of extreme poverty rose by a statistically significant amount among those 65 and older, meaning that a growing number of them were living at or below 50 percent of the poverty line. In 2012, this was $11,011 a year for an older person living alone.$11,011 a year is “extreme,” all right — how can a person survive on such a miserably low income? Women, as usual, are disproportionately represented among the extremely poor in this age group. The Times also mentions that another report, The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, shows an increase among the elderly poor as well, “from 9.0 percent in 2010 to 9.3 percent in 2011 and 9.5 percent in 2012.”
This is a horrifying trend. It’s clear that our retirement system is a mess. The 401(k), which a lot of people never even had access to in the first place, was an experiment that has utterly failed us. Social Security has long been a bulwark against poverty among the elderly, but clearly it’s not enough, and it needs to be increased — dramatically. So that’s exactly what the Times is going to tell us, right?
Except — no. Here’s what they say the richest country in the history of the world should do in response to this impending cat food dystopia: nothing. No, really. This is what the editorial says, in its entirety, about how we as a society should react to the specter of growing numbers of old people eating out garbage cans:
For now, the best policy response is to do no harm. For example, budget proposals to cut Social Security’s cost-of-living benefit, ill advised in any case, would be especially unwise and untimely.I’m happy that the Times covered this issue, at least — it’s an important one, and I’m afraid it will not be going away. But “do no harm” hardly cuts it as an effective response to this problem, policy-wise, politically, rhetorically, or morally.
The problem is simple: the Social Security is too damned low. Progressives must keep hammering this message ad infinitum. If we do, maybe even out-of-touch elites like the New York Times will get it. If we don’t, we can almost certainly look forward to a whole lot of Meow Mix in our not-so-golden years.
Of course you can make changes [that are not benefit cuts] to the program, and then make the program better. I'd like to see Medicare cover eyewear. I'd like to see it cover hearing aids. I'd like to see it cover dental work. As far as I know, most seniors have eyes, ears and teeth. [Laughs.] I think these things should be covered. I'd like to move in that direction. That would improve these programs. But in terms of cutting benefits, no - that's not fair.
There is no shaming some motherfuckers.
Trudy Lieberman at The Nation:
Home-delivered meal programs are emblematic of others born during the Great Society, victims of a relentless campaign in recent decades to malign government aid, cut spending and allow all responsibility for even the most basic needs to fall to the private sector. Meal program directors continue to plead their case to members of Congress, taking them on deliveries and demonstrating that meals are cost-effective and necessary for good health, but funding never really increases. In some ways the programs are victims of their own success: they’re so good at what they do that few pay attention to the growing need for their services. Kathy Pontin says the politicians in her service area, Representative Rosa DeLauro and Senator Richard Blumenthal, are supportive, but they tell her there’s not much they can do in a deadlocked Congress.Read the whole amazing tribute to American Exceptionalism.
The idea of giving a little bit more of the nation’s vast wealth to the elderly, especially those in dire need, has suffered in the drive by conservative think tanks to demonize old people—the “greedy geezer” meme. Last winter on the CBS Evening News, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who earned $26 million last year, said, “You’re going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people’s expectations—the entitlements and what people think they’re going to get. Because they’re not going to get it.” He was talking about Social Security and Medicare, but home-delivered meals are entitlements too; smaller Social Security checks and paying more for medical care means less money for food.
Meanwhile, when Michelle McDonald of the Central Maryland meals program checked back with the Eisenharts in July, she learned that the couple still could not pay privately for the one meal a day that was feeding both of them. “It’s pretty rough around here,” Arlan Eisenhart told her. McDonald asked what they were eating. “We’re not eating much of anything at all,” Arlan replied. “It’s pretty hard for me to stand up and make anything. I try the best I can. Sometimes the best isn’t good enough.”
Social Security payments - like food stamps and unemployment compensation and non-corporate welfare and EITC and every other government program that provides money to the working class - makes the economy grow.
That's because when the working class gets money, they spend it. That helps businesses, who then expand and hire more people, who spend the money they earn and ad infinitum in an endless virtuous loop of prosperity.
The economy is not growing the way it should because we are giving money to corporations and billionaires, who are not spending it the way the rest of us do. They are stashing it away in overseas bank accounts while ten million Americans remain unemployed and underemployed.
What's the solution? Increase payments to the working class. Start by expanding Social Security.
Digby:
Social Security works is out with this:
Happy Birthday, Social Security – Now Let’s Finally Give You A Raise
This Wednesday, August 14th, Social Security will celebrate 78 years of never missing a single payment and helping millions of Americans live with dignity and honor. This birthday, we have a unique opportunity to give Social Security a real raise for it’s birthday, expanding benefits and paying for it by ensuring billionaires pay the same rate as the rest of us.
That’s why we’re working with Social Security Works to help you tell your Member of Congress that you stand for expanding Social Security benefits at a time of great need, and scrapping the cap on Social Security funding.
In other words, sign our birthday card alongside thousands of others:
I can't tell you how happy I am that institutional and grassroots progressives have finally come around to the idea that we need to raise benefits on Social Security. It's going to take a while to get the usual suspects to stop thinking of this as taboo because "entitlements" are the boogeyman that's going to kill us in our beds. But it can be done if everyone sticks to the message and they don't run off to chase the next shiny object the first chance they get.
This is a really good and necessary idea and we need to just keep hammering it until it happens.
Trans people are about where gay people were 30 years ago: still stigmatized with an "ick" factor, still often in the closet, still discriminated against, still unacknowledged by family, friends and coworkers.
Good on the Social Security Administration for doing the simply humane thing.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is implementing a policy change to make it easier for the transgender community to update their gender designation in records kept by the agency.Yes, you do too know trans people: open your eyes.
Transgender people can make the modification by submitting government-issued documents reflecting the new gender, or by presenting the SSA with “a medical certification of appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition,” according to the new rules.
Previously, the SSA required documentation of specific surgeries.
"Most people may not see this as a big deal, but transgender people know that this seemingly small technical change will protect their privacy and give them more control over their own lives," said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Now is the time to expand Social Security:
Petition Background
The American people know that our Social Security system works, and during the economic collapse of 2008 they saw that while their home equity, 401k’s and savings were devastated, Social Security was the one source of retirement security that people could rely on.
With so much uncertainty about the future, we will rely more than ever on our Social Security benefits. That’s why now is the time to build upon the one retirement security system that we know we can count on.
We can expand Social Security benefits. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) has a proposal that will do just that: The Strengthening Social Security Act of 2013.
According to Senator Harkin's office, The Strengthening Social Security Act of 2013 (S. 567) would:
• Strengthen Benefits by Reforming the Social Security Benefit Formula: To improve benefits for current and future Social Security beneficiaries, the Act changes the method by which the Social Security Administration calculates Social Security benefits. This change will boost benefits for all Social Security beneficiaries by approximately $70 per month, but is targeted to help those in the low and middle of the income distribution, for whom Social Security has become an ever greater share of their retirement income.
• Ensure that Cost of Living Adjustments Adequately Reflect the Living Expenses of Retirees: The Act changes the way the Social Security Administration calculates the Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA). To ensure that benefits better reflect cost increases facing seniors, future COLAs will be based on the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E). Making this change to Social Security is expected to result in higher COLAs, ensuring that seniors are able to better keep up with the rising costs of essential items, like health care.
• Improve the Long Term Financial Condition of the Trust Fund: Social Security is not in crisis, but does face a long-term deficit. To help extend the life of the trust fund the Act phases out the current taxable cap of $113,700 so that payroll taxes apply fairly to every dollar of wages.
Combined, these changes will increase benefits for current and future beneficiaries while making Social Security stronger for future generations by extending the life of the Trust Fund through 2049.
By making millionaires and billionaires pay the same rate as the rest of our do, we can expand Social Security for all Americans. That is what we must do.
We need every single member of Congress to hear from their constituents. Tell them you are sick and tired of these conversations about how much to cut from our earned benefits, tell them now is the time to expand Social Security.
Tell them to sponsor The Strengthening Social Security Act of 2013 (S. 567) or its companion in the House.
If you're at work, take a little break and go sign this petition. This is a meme that we need to start spreading. Our safety net is ragged and weak. We need to shore it up.
Remember and repeat this every time you hear somebody who's not working class talk about "balance" or "the deficit" or "shared sacrifice" or "skin in the game."
From Firedoglake:
Between 2009-11, “the richest 8 million families . . . saw their wealth rise from $1.7 million to $2.5 million each. Meanwhile the bottom 93% (that’s 111 million families) suffered an average . . . decline of $6,000 each.” In grand totals that’s a $5.6 trillion gain for them and a $669bn loss for us.The rich have been stealing our work, our productivity, our profit, our share of this economy for more than 30 years. They have to pay it back with interest and penalties before we even agree to start thinking about discussing cuts to programs that benefit the working class and poor.
Now this is how you deal with entitlements: make the rich pay their share and make the benefit worthwhile.
From Firedoglake:
Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) plans to introduce a bill this week that will lift the cap on the payroll tax and “keep Social Security solvent for the next 75 years.” Also includes the CPI-E, which will increase benefits.
The sole Democratic member of the Kentucky Congressional Delegation, a self-proclaimed progressive, yet on the single most critical Democratic and Progressive issue of literally the century, "Congressman Awesome" runs and hides.
For shame.
Yeah, yeah, the DCCC has
issued orders to dems to keep quiet about Obama's plan to destroy the
New Deal, but not everybody is electorally stupid enough to obey.
Down with Tyranny:
Who Will Protect Us From The Boehner-Obama Plan To Wreck Social Security?
Wondering who signed the Grayson Takano No Cuts letter, the one that says "We will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits-- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need?" As of today, here's a list of signers:
Hey, Kentucky repugs: if Obama's budget plays out the way it looks now, with dems taking the blame for killing Social Security and losing 50 seats in 2014 because of it,Yarmuth's Louisville district might be easy pickings.• Alan Grayson (D-FL) • Mark Takano (D-CA) • Joyce Beatty (D-OH) • Corrine Brown (D-FL) • Tony Cárdenas (D-CA) • Matt Cartwright (D-PA) • Kathy Castor (D-FL) • David Cicilline (D-RI) • William Lacy Clay (D-MO) • Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) • John Conyers (D-MI) • Elijah Cummings (D-MD) • Peter DeFazio (D-OR) • Keith Ellison (D-MN) • Marcia Fudge (D-OH) • Gene Green (D-TX) • Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) • Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) • Alcee Hastings (D-FL) • Michael Honda (D-CA) • Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) • Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) • Barbara Lee (D-CA) • Stephen Lynch (D-MA) • Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) • Ed Markey (D-MA) • Jim McGovern (D-MA) • Jerry Nadler (D-NY) • Grace Napolitano (D-CA) • Rick Nolan (D-MN) • José Serrano (D-NY) • Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) • Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Never thought I'd have to say it to this administration, but:
How stupid do you think we are?
Charles Pierce:
Now, we have a Democratic administration, empowered by a solid re-election, that is proposing to its most loyal supporters that they support at least a partial sellout of the Democratic party's greatest legacy because, some day, a Republican president might do something much worse. (As though said imaginary Republican president won't go ahead and do much worse anyway, and claim a national mandate for it while he's at it, and eventually find a way to blame "a Democratic president" for having launched the process in the first place.) I literally never have heard this argument made in any political context. I certainly never have heard it from anyone in an incumbent administration. If this is your rationale for making policy, what in the name of god is the point of running for office in the first place? Nobody's president forever. You get elected. You enact the policies on which you ran, and of which the voters evidently approve. If, one day down the line, the voters decide to approve someone else, and someone else's policy, that's just the way it has to go. Caveat emptor, and all that. You certainly don't decide to enact policies based on their being the most palatable variation of something an imaginary future president might do. That's just nuts. On the national ecomony, we've abandoned Keynes, and Greenspan, and Laffer, and we've decided to cast our lot with Nostradamus.
We will be told — and already have been — that this is simply the president's positioning the Republicans into a corner. But that's not consonant with the quote above. That quote isn't about what's happening now. It's about telling people that they have to accept some pain now because, otherwise, they'll face agony later at some unspecified time and the hands of some unspecified president. There is only one reason for anyone in the White House to adopt this rationale, and there is only one reason for anyone in the White House to float this rationale in public. The only plausible reason for adopting this rationale, or for floating it in public, is because this is what you really want to do in the first place and you are groping for a plausible alibi. The only plausible reason for it is that you've bought the deficit-hysteria to the point where you believe that you have to do this thing right now. Nothing else makes sense, unless the White House mess has changed where it shops for its mushrooms.
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