Conservative Plan To Fix The VA Has Vets Hopping Mad

Why is a commission charged with fixing the problems hoping to close down its hospitals?

—By AJ Vicens

Veterans commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War on March 29 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Bruce R. Bennett/Zuma

 

Some members of the commission established by Congress to evaluate the Department of Veterans Health Administration have proposed drastically reducing the size of the VHA by closing its health facilities and transferring the care of the nation's millions of military veterans to the private sector.

But in a letter sent to the chair of the Commission on Care, leaders of eight of the country's most prominent veterans' advocacy organizations blasted the proposal.

"We are greatly alarmed by the content of [the proposal] that was developed and drafted outside the open Commission process by seven of the Commission's fifteen members—without the input or even knowledge of the other Commissioners," they wrote in a letter signed by senior leaders of the Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, AMVETS, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

The plan—known as the "Strawman Document"—was floated in March by seven members of the 15-member Commission on Care, an oversight group that was established by Congress in 2014 in the wake of the national scandal surrounding the lengthy wait times for healthcare at VA facilities. The commission is charged with evaluating veterans' access to health care and with offering proposals for how the Veterans Health Administration should be organized over the next 20 years.

The "Strawman" report, which echoes VA privatization efforts that have been backed by the Koch brothers, says "bold transformation" is needed for the VA to address the needs of its enrolled veterans, and that the system is "seriously broken" with "no efficient path to repair it." The plan calls for closing many "obsolete" VA facilities and moving toward a model where veterans can seek taxpayer-funded care at private health care facilities. A process similar to the Base Realignment and Closure system—used by the military since the end of the Cold War to decide which bases to close—would be used to evaluate which VA medical facilities would close. Under the plan, there would be no new facilities or major renovations of the existing VA facilities.

The plan also called for private doctors to be reimbursed at 5 to 10 percent higher than the Medicare rate, so they would have a greater incentive to participate.

The authors wrote that eventually the VA would become a broad-based payer system, "though it will continue to pay for the veteran care provided by the community system."

Those who opposed the plan agree the VA needs to be improved, but they argue that essentially privatizing it would force veterans to search for care at private facilities that might not be trained or equipped to serve veterans suffering from the long-range effects of combat, such as spinal cord injuries "and the Polytrauma System of Care." The authors add that the proposal ignores recent research, some commissioned by Congress itself, that found that VA care is often better than care in the private sector.

Louis Celli, the national director of veterans affairs and rehabilitation for the American Legion, told the Arizona Republic that he was "angered and insulted" by the "strawman" plan, and that the commission is now "absolutely divided" between those who want to privatize VA care and those who don't.

The plan lines up with ideas from Concerned Veterans for America, a group that's backed by the Koch brothers. The group has called for more choice for veterans seeking health care and for the VA and its health functions to be partly privatized. Suzanne Gordon, a health care writer who has covered the VA, notes in her personal blog and in the American Prospect that the supporters and drafters of the "strawman" proposal include conservatives and several hospital executives "who stand to benefit financially from [VA medical] privatization."

Dan Caldwell, a spokesman for the Koch-backed group, told the Arizona Republic that the "Strawman" proposal has been "completely distorted by opponents," and that there is no call to abolish the VA health care system. "We are not proposing to abolish the [VA health care system] or to end government funding of veterans' health care," Caldwell said.

According to the Arizona Republic, the commission will have two public meetings before issuing a report on its proposal June 30. The report was due in February, but the commission asked for and received an extension.

Daughter of Civil War vet still getting a pension

http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303603904579493830954152394

Why Reparations And Social Security Matter For African Americans In The Election

American history has not created wealth for most.

By Maya Rockeymoore / AlterNet

Photo Credit: Shutterstock, Copyright (c) Monkey Business Images

As Ta-Nehisi Coates and Steve Phillips become the latest in a lineage of black scholar/activists who have worked to push the boundaries of policy discourse about the feasibility of reparations for African Americans, it is important that we not lose sight of existing policies that affect the bottom line of black households.

Social Security is one such policy that has tremendous economic consequences for vulnerable families and provides a good litmus test for where the 2016 presidential candidates stand on the issue of black economic security.

It’s no secret that more than 150 years after the end of slavery, black people — along with Native Americans, Latinos and certain subgroups of Asian Americans — remain at the bottom of the economic ladder in America. 

African Americans and Latinos own only 6 and 7 cents respectively for every dollar of wealth owned by whites and earn only 67 cents for every dollar of income earned by whites (national data is not available for Native Americans and Asian American subgroups). 

These deep disparities in wealth and income are a legacy of discriminatory government policies and business practices that have benefited white households over households of color. It even marred Social Security’s beginning, which by barring coverage for agricultural and domestic workers effectively excluded approximately 65 percent of all black workers when the bill was signed into law in 1935.

This legacy of social and economic racial discrimination makes African Americans especially reliant on the program today. Social Security provides social insurance coverage to eligible individuals in the event of retirement, disability or the death of a worker with surviving dependents. It also has a progressive benefit structure that replaces a greater percentage of lower earners’ pre-Social Security wages compared to higher earners.

So, while we know African Americans are economically vulnerable, we also know that many could not make it through retirement, a disability or the death of a loved one, without Social Security. For example, 46 percent of African-American seniors ages 65 and over rely on Social Security for at least 90 percent of their income, compared to 35 percent of whites.

Although the formula for determining benefit levels is seemingly neutral with respect to race and ethnicity, the program does in fact affect racial and ethnic groups in different ways because of variances in demographic factors such as life expectancy, health status, years of work, level of earnings, number of dependents, and marital status. As a result, the distributional impact of the program and proposed changes to it can be estimated by variables such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, and marital status.

We know that African Americans are disadvantaged by the structure of Social Security’s retirement program because of shorter life spans. We also know that African Americans and other people of color disproportionately benefit from the disability and survivor portions of the programs, because of higher morbidity and mortality rates. The data shows that when all three parts of Social Security are taken as a whole, African Americans receive a slightly higher rate of return from the program compared to what they contribute in wages.

However, when taken alone, the retirement portion of the program is regressive for African Americans, since those who have shorter life expectancy effectively subsidize the retirement of those with longer life expectancy. Proposals to raise the retirement age, therefore, are not beneficial for African Americans since they would result in reduced benefit amounts, and depending on the specifics of the proposal, could make the benefit of Social Security to African Americans less valuable overall.

Enter the 2016 elections. While Senator Bernie Sanders’ dismissive response to the questioner who asked him about reparations at the Black and Brown debate in Iowa was both regretful and instructive about the intellectual boundaries of mainstream contemporary populism, he has taken a stand against all benefit cuts — including increasing the retirement age. He has also put forward a plan to expand benefits that has been estimated by the Social Security Administration’s Chief Actuary to increase benefits and extend the solvency of Social Security through the year 2074. By placing the burden of expansion on the wealthy, who would pay more by raising the earnings cap on Social Security payroll contributions, his plan would save middle, moderate and low-income Americans from economically harmful benefit cuts. This would be good for African Americans.

Although she has not yet put forward a detailed plan for expanding Social Security, Secretary Hillary Clinton has expressed support for expanding benefits for vulnerable groups, which would be good for African Americans. However, she has not ruled out instituting benefit cuts as a means for extending Social Security’s solvency and has said she is open to considering raising the retirement age “for people whose jobs allow them to work later in life.” This approach presumably targets higher income, white-collar workers but it represents little guarantee of protection for African Americans who experience life-threatening health disparities across the income spectrum.

On the Republican side of the race, businessman and presidential contender Donald Trump has shunned traditional conservative approaches to Social Security reform by ruling out raising the retirement age. His decision taps into a wealth of polling data that shows widespread, bipartisan support for Social Security. Both senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, on the other hand, have said they would increase the retirement age. Ted Cruz would seek to destabilize the program altogether by diverting Social Security funds into private accounts exposed to Wall Street, which brings a host of additional vulnerabilites for African Americans.

In sum, Social Security is not a replacement for a policy that compensates African Americans for lost wages, discrimination, dehumanization, and pain and suffering they experienced as result of slavery, Jim Crow and a host of additional discriminatory policies and practices that have undermined their socioeconomic standing. Given that precedent has been established for reparative policies for other wronged groups in the U.S., there should be no reason to exclude African Americans from policy considerations that have been afforded to others.

Nevertheless, Social Security remains an important pillar of progress that is essential for many black households to survive and thrive. For that reason alone, it too is worth fighting for.

Maya Rockeymoore is president and CEO of Global Policy Solutions LLC, a social change strategy firm, and president of the Center for Global Policy Solutions, a nonprofit think tank.

John Kasich Tells Audience To "Get Over It" Regarding Cuts To Social Security

By stuhunter2

John Kasich had quite a gaffe filled week. First, he demeaned, and then was condescending to female college voters in Richmond, Virginia.

Now, he's touched on reducing benefits for Social Security recipients, telling seniors to "get over it"....

What is it with the GOP candidates? "Get Over It".... "Stuff Happens" ....

John Kasich has just disqualified himself from being president of the United States. He wants to decrease taxes for corporations and the ultra wealthy while calling for a reduction to Social Security benefits.

(CNN)—Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Friday that a New Hampshire audience member would "get over" cuts to Social Security payments as a result of his reform plan -- and the left is already pouncing on the comment.

He asked audience members to raise their hands if they were far from receiving Social Security, asked them if they knew yet what their initial benefit would be and then asked them if they would be bothered if it were a little lower for the good of the country.

One person said it would be a problem.

"Well, you'd get over it, and you're going to have to get over it," Kasich joked.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/09/politics/john-kasich-get-over-it-social-security/index.html

 

What he considers funny and what I consider funny are two different things. Maybe he could supply our seniors with the dog and cat food they'll be eating with reduced benefits. The problem with these right wingers is they have started to believe their own propaganda.

Then he doubled down and went for cuts to Medicare/Medicaid as well:

"You're on Medicare and you want me to ignore the fact that its going broke, you're not going to like me," he told the audience, adding later, "I'd rather have people be in a position where they're aggravated with me so I can accomplish something, than have them love me and accomplish nothing, okay. I'm not there to run a popularity contest."

Social Security is paid from taxes that are only collected on the first $125k of income, if they got rid of the FICA tax cap so that all income paid FICA taxes, there would be NO social security issues at all.

So when Kasich bellows: "We can't balance a budget without entitlement reform. What are we, kidding?" It's just a complete lie. Getting rid of the FICA tax cap wouldn't affect anyone earning less than $125k (you're already paying it) and would make those who are earning more pay their fair share for living in this country and having access to the benefits of living in this country.

For reference, a 2012 article where getting rid of the tax cap would bring in $100 Billion per YEAR and make Social Security solvent for 75 years. 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/what-impact-would-eliminating/

A gaffe is when a politician accidentally says what they are really thinking...and that is what is truly scary about all 16 Republican clowns that are running for the highest office in the land.

Most 2016 GOP Presidential Candidates Would Push Seniors Into Poverty By Cutting Social Security

Meanwhile, Democratic candidates favor expansion.

 

By Nancy Altman

 

In the first nationally televised 2016 presidential debate, Americans got a glimpse at what their economic future might hold if one of the Republican candidates becomes president -- and the picture wasn't pretty.

Social Security is essential for workers and their families who want to retire with dignity and independence and want to be protected in the event of death or a disabling illness or accident. Given the Social Security views of those who took the debate stage Thursday night, Americans should be very worried.

Governor CHRIS CHRISTIE doubled down on his destructive proposal to turn Social Security into a means-tested welfare program. On top of that, he proposed raising Social Security's full retirement age to 69, a thirteen percent, across-the-board benefit cut. Like President George W. Bush before him, Governor Christie will, if elected president, seek to destroy Social Security, while claiming to be just "saving" it.

Christie's views on Social Security are extreme, fringe and totally out of touch with the American people. Polling released last week by Social Security Works shows that Americans across the board-- including majorities of Republicans and Independents-- oppose cuts to Social Security and say they are less likely to vote for candidates who support cuts to the program.

To his credit, MIKE HUCKABEE stands firmly against benefit cuts, and with the American people. He wrongly seems to believe that Social Security contributions have been stolen, not merely lent and so must be paid back. But he is light years ahead of all the other Republican candidates on this issue, with the exception of DONALD TRUMP, who in April remarked, "Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And it's not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut." He made clear, "I'm not gonna do that!"

Since the others did not offer their views last night, here they are (with the exceptions of Ben Carson and Jim Gilmore who haven't made their views known.)

PRIME TIME DEBATE

JEB BUSH: Privatize Social Security, Raise the Retirement Age As High as 70,End Medicare

SCOTT WALKER: Raise the Retirement Age

TED CRUZ: Privatize Social Security, Raise the Retirement Age, Cut Benefits

MARCO RUBIO: Raise the Retirement Age, May Cut Benefits, Privatize Medicare

RAND PAUL: Raise the Retirement Age to 70, Means-Test Social Security

JOHN KASICH:Privatize Social Security, Cut benefits

SECOND TIER DEBATE

RICK PERRY: Social Security is a "Ponzi Scheme," "Monstrous Lie"

RICK SANTORUM: Raise Retirement Age,Means Test Social Security, May cut cost of living adjustments for current and future beneficiaries

BOBBY JINDAL: Privatize Social Security

CARLY FIORINA: May Raise Retirement Age

LINDSEY GRAHAM: Cut Social Security Benefits for People who are unmarried and have no children.

GEORGE PATAKI: Raise Retirement Age, Shift More Medicare Cost to Seniors and People With Disabilities

With a looming retirement income crisis and growing wealth and income inequality, expanding Social Security, not cutting it, is the right policy. It is also what the overwhelming majority of Americans want. It sounds like everyone but Huckabee and Trump are taking their Social Security advice from their billionaire donors.

Last election, voters didn't realize that they had a choice, since President Obama, inexplicably and inaccurately, asserted in a presidential debate against Mitt Romney, "I suspect that, on Social Security, we've got a somewhat similar position," This time around, with Democratic Presidential frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both advocating expansion, voters are likely to have a clear choice. For the sake of their families' economic security, they should exercise it wisely.

Nancy Altman is author of The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision to Bush's Gamble (John Wiley & Sons, 2005) is president of Social Security Works and Chair of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition. She is co-author, with Eric R. Kingson, of Social Security Works! Why Social Security Isn't Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All (The New Press, 2015), and has written the forward to a new release of Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice.

Jeb Bush Is Flirting With Disaster: Why His Latest Anti-Medicare Fearmongering Could Sink His Campaign

Much of the GOP base loves medicare. Bush should tread lightly.

By Heather Digby Parton / Salon

 

It’s been a good week for economic reports. For example, we heard that the jobless claims for June were lower than they’ve been in 40 years. Take it from someone who remembers 1975 — it was a long time ago. The job market is finally looking up. And we also found out that Medicare is on stronger footing than anyone could have imagined just a few years ago. Kevin Drum at Mother Jones wrote it up:

Ten years ago, Medicare was a runaway freight train. Spending was projected to increase indefinitely, rising to 13 percent of GDP by 2080. This year, spending is projected to slow down around 2040, and reaches only 6 percent of GDP by 2090.

Six percent! That’s half what we thought a mere decade ago. If that isn’t spectacular, I don’t know what is.

Drum points out that this is largely being driven by the fact that medical costs overall have slowed dramatically. This is due to a number of factors, but one of the most significant has to be the Affordable Care Act’s cuts to provider payments, which you will certainly recall had the Republicans whirling like tops with claims that President Obama was planning to turn the elderly into Soylent Green — or submit them to ghoulish “death panels” at the very least. It was one of the primary motivating factors that drove the white elderly Republican base to invade town hall meetings by the hundreds and storm the voting booths in November of 2010 to decimate the Democratic congressional majority.

Ads like these ran all over the nation:

Republicans have run similar ads in every election since. Indeed, it’s their most potent argument against Obamacare. And there’s been every reason to believe that the Republicans would use this message again in 2016. After all, the Medicare constituency is their bread and butter, and they are, quite reasonably, protective of the program. They may selfishly not want anyone else to have health care but they damned sure want to make sure that seniors have the program. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, the elderly have a lot of health problems. It has always made perfect sense for the GOP to demagogue any and all changes to the program.

This represented a very dramatic change in the demographic make-up of the two parties. Since their inception in the New Deal and Great Societies, Social Security and Medicare had made loyal Democratic voters out of the elderly. They were fiercely protective of the programs and the Republicans were caught by the trap their ideology forced them into. Ronald Reagan’s GOP may have looked congenial to many older people — but they knew that he wanted to end the programs that made it possible for them to live with dignity in their old age. So when they heard his famous recording railing against Medicare — in which he said,”one of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project, most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it” — it sounded abstract and irrelevant to their very practical needs. (Not to mention obtuse; a medical program is a humanitarian project.) It’s likely that many of them were just as staunchly anti-communist and anti-statist as Reagan, but few were willing to die prematurely to make that particular political point.

In the late 1980's, when a virulent strain of deficit fever invaded the swamps around the nation’s capital, the government raised premiums on Medicare to provide some new coverage that many people didn’t need and which didn’t cover the one thing they need need, long term care. Seniors rebelled and they rebelled vociferously:

This summer’s bitter struggle over the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 has damaged the credibility of one of the nation`s largest lobbies, both in Congress and among the 28 million members of the American Association of Retired Persons.
From his retirement home in Las Vegas, Daniel Hawley, a 64-year-old former airline pilot, has helped organize the stunning grass-roots protest that has shaken AARP and pushed this largest expansion of Medicare benefits to the brink of congressional repeal.
“They thought retired people were sitting around doing their ceramics and their little aerobics classes in senior centers and wouldn’t give any fight,” said Hawley. “Well, they found out differently.”

Indeed they did. This infamous (and hilarious) video of seniors chasing the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means committee perfectly captures the power the medicare constituency has over the U.S. Government:

They repealed the law in November 1989.

For a lot of reasons, older people began to vote for Republicans over the ensuing couple of decades. But the “Mediscare” campaigns continued to have potency for the Democrats. It wasn’t until they came up with the Obamacare scare ads that the Republicans were able to turn the argument back on the Democrats. And it worked beautifully. It was a strong motivation for seniors to turn out in both recent mid-term elections, and while it wasn’t enough to offset the Obama coalition’s turn out in presidential years, it undoubtedly helped keep elderly white people in the Republican column. It’s a darned good strategy.

So, what in the world is Jeb Bush up to? Has he been asleep for the past three election cycles? Did somebody forget to tell him that old white people are the GOP’s most loyal voters and the new scheme is to say you’re saving Medicare? He must not have gotten the memo because he’s just spent the last couple of days telling audiences that Medicare is on its last legs and will have to be killed in favor of some new program, which will probably be along the lines of Paul Ryan’s “shop for health care ’til you drop” voucher proposal.

Get a load of this commentary he made at a Koch Brothers sponsored Americans for Prosperity event on Wednesday:

“The left needs to join the conversation, but they haven’t. I mean, when [Rep. Paul Ryan] came up with, one of his proposals as it relates to Medicare, the first thing I saw was a TV ad of a guy that looked just like Paul Ryan … that was pushing an elderly person off the cliff in a wheelchair. That’s their response.

“And I think we need to be vigilant about this and persuade people that our, when your volunteers go door to door, and they talk to people, people understand this. They know, and I think a lot of people recognize that we need to make sure we fulfill the commitment to people that have already received the benefits, that are receiving the benefits. But that we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something – because they’re not going to have anything.”

That’s the kind of braindead doofus “policy” talk you might expect from Donald Trump, not one of the front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination. Sure, he uses some weasel words about fulfilling the commitment to people “who’ve already received benefits, are receiving the benefits,” but he apparently didn’t get the other memo that says seniors don’t buy that line when Republicans say it about Social Security, and they aren’t going to buy it when they say it about Medicare.

The idea of telling anyone that the program “must be phased out” for something “new” because they’re not going to have anything is just daft. Even Paul Ryan’s privatization plans never said that he planned to phase out the most popular health care program in America (even though he did plan exactly that). Even more daft is the idea that Bush would say this at a time when the projections for Medicare solvency are, as Kevin Drum said, “spectacular.”

But Jeb didn’t misspeak. He meant it.  He actually doubled down on that claim in New Hampshire yesterday, saying “we have a Medicare program that’s not going to be around 30 years from now in form that is.” Apparently, the last time he looked at the numbers was back when  he was stumping for his brother in 2004. Somebody needs to fill him in on what’s been happening in the last decade.

Once again, you see the Republicans stuck in their ideological corner. Medicare costs are leveling out and there is no crisis in funding it. The people who have Medicare love it. In fact, they love it so much that they irrationally oppose anyone else having something like it to prevent their beloved program from somehow being diluted. Republicans have struggled with this problem for a long time: They just do not believe in government health care, no matter how well it works.

But they had, for a time, found a way to finesse that by saying the Democrats were threatening their program by giving similar health care to other people. It was a sweet obfuscation that played into everyone’s worst instincts. It was conservative perfection. Jeb, however, seems to be stuck in 2005, when George W. made his kamikaze attempt to destroy Social Security. And we know what happened in 2006. 

Has anyone told Jeb that when he left office his brother had a 25 percent approval rating?  It’s probably not a great idea to remind people of why that happened.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as "Digby," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

Chris Hayes Beats Down Ex-Senator's ACA Lies With Facts

By Karoli

I've handed Chris Hayes a lot of grief on this site for interviews where he gets filibustered by right-wing screechers, but he did it exactly right on his show tonight.

Former Senator and Governor Judd Gregg was the guest. The topic was the Affordable Care Act, and Judd Gregg was serving up the usual nonsensical talking points in a particularly vitriolic way. From his claim that the ACA was a mess that helped no one, to his mockery of Hayes' claim that the ACA has gotten health coverage to millions, Gregg was mean, nasty, and rude.

Hayes was having none of it, and he used that good old fashioned fallback to debunk Gregg: Facts, with a touch of math for good measure.

Gregg scoffed at Hayes' use of the word "plummeted" to describe the uninsured rate in this country. But in fact, it has plummeted.

Chris Hayes uses math to rebut incorrect statements of former Senator Judd Gregg on #inners http://t.co/xJ5EqwwYf7

— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) June 16, 2015

I was taken aback by the nastiness and disrespect Gregg showed Chris Hayes, but Hayes persisted in simply using facts and math to contradict his claims.

Watch it, because a transcript won't do it justice.



Aside to Chris Hayes: This is one that your colleagues (particularly Chuck Todd), should study to understand how to use facts to stop these talking points dead in their tracks. It's what we expect from our so-called liberal media, and you delivered.

The other thing you'll notice is that Gregg never answered the question.

Bernie Sanders Tells Jeb Bush To Go And Pound Sand

By Tool

Today Senator and Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders told Jeb Bush to go pound sand on social security.  In no uncertain terms Sanders reiterated his stance that "NO we will not cut Social Security."  This has been Sanders stance that payments from Social Security should be increased by raising the FICA cap.

What that means is that if you are making 118,000 dollars a year, you are paying into the system at the same rate as a guy making 10,000,000 a year.  It bears repeating that Social Security is not in crisis and that merely raising the FICA cap for individuals making 1,000,000 or even 250,000 a year then the program that has lifted generations out of poverty in their old age will be solvent for future generations.

I have a hard time understanding what world Gov. Bush and his billionaire backers live in,” Bernie said after Jeb Bush told an interviewer that he thought the Social Security retirement age should be raised.

“We need to look over the horizon and begin to phase in (an increase in the retirement age over an extended period of time),” said Bush, “going from 65 to 68 or 70.” With those words, Bush seemed to suggest that the current retirement age is 65. It is currently 66, and is scheduled to rise to 67 for people born in 1959 and afterwards.

“It is unacceptable to ask construction workers, truck drivers, nurses and other working-class Americans to work until they are 68 to 70 years old before qualifying for full Social Security benefits,” Bernie said in response this week, adding:

“At a time when more than half of the American people have less than $10,000 in savings, it would be a disaster to cut Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age.”

“Jeb Bush’s plan to raise the retirement age is just a continuation of the war that is being waged by the Republicans against working-class Americans in order to reward billionaires on Wall Street,” Bernie said, noting:

“When the average Social Security benefit is just $1,328 a month, and more than one-third of our senior citizens rely on Social Security for virtually all of their income, our job must be to expand benefits, not cut them.”

So who else wants to deliver a House and Senate that will allow Senator Bernie Sanders to raise social security payouts to seniors who live on starvation wages? I do. Jeb Bush can go pound sand.

Sun Jun 07, 2015 at  7:34 PM PT: Forgot to include: Bernie said...

“I have introduced legislation to do just that,” he concluded.
(raise SS payments)

America Will Die Old And Broke: The Systematic Right Wing Plot To Ransack The Middle Class

Despite what conservatives say, the safety net works—which is why the 1 percent wants to stage a hostile takeover.

By Edwin Lyngar

Through a quirk in state term limits combined with a terrible midterm election, the Nevada legislature has been taken over by amateurs and extremists. The legislature is now debating whether to dismantle the Nevada public employee pension system (PERS), a system that has gotten consistently high marks for transparency, responsibility and stewardship.

This attack on retirement benefits follows a very familiar pattern of fabricating data to destroy retirements that work and that people really like. It’s the same nonsense and lies used to destroy private pensions two decades ago, but this time it’s being done as part of a partisan wet dream of “limited government.” It’s a strategy as American as fast food and crumbling infrastructure.
This latest skirmish in the retirement wars perpetuates the biggest lie ever foisted on America—that we cannot afford retirement benefits.

Private pensions have indeed been systematically destroyed in recent decades, and replaced by “defined contribution” 401k plans. The conventional wisdom is that pensions are “too expensive,” but this is the heart of the lie. A great many private pensions were once over-funded, but a change in law allowed companies to “invest” the “excess” funding in other parts of their business. Once businessmen could legally raid the pension fund, the idea of private pensions was over. Many books have been written about the great pension theft. I recommend, for one, reading “Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers.“ Spoiler alert: you will feel rage.

I’m no bystander in all this, because I’m a member of the Nevada pension system through my day job.  Even when I considered myself a Republican, I supported the pension system, just as my conservative friends and colleagues still do. But a lot has changed in a few years. Public pensions used to have bipartisan support, but the dysfunction and extremism that has turned Washington D.C .into a shit-show has spread to states like mine.

The attacks on benefits are always underhanded and dishonest, an effort to keep critics quiet, and this latest attempt is no exception, because it only targets future members of the pension system. It’s the same tactic used in the constant assault on Social Security — just take it from people who don’t have it yet. My favorite visual is the conservative who collects Social Security month after month (after month after month) then votes for politicians who will destroy those very modest benefits for his children — all while reciting the false narrative of “not saddling” those same children with debt.

A better idea (rather than stealing from our own children) would be to pay the reasonable levels of taxes necessary to fund the programs we all use. But “family values” conservatives are always delighted to burn the crops and salt the earth behind them, children be damned.

It’s understandable that people without pensions resent those who still have them. It’s much easier to rage about a schoolteacher’s pension than it is to understand the systemic greed of high finance, and that’s by design. The rich and powerful who looted private pensions have managed to set the members of the middle class upon one another. At the same time, the purveyors of 401k plans get rich off of fees from individual accounts. Millions of people are shuffled into the market to be preyed upon by the vultures of high finance, who get paid no matter how much money you win or lose in the grand casino.

I admit that there are reasonable criticisms of pensions. There are always a few people, an overpaid manager or administrator perhaps, who manage to game the system through overtime pay or inflated salaries. Critics can point to the handful of people with six-figure pensions with understandable fury, but to extrapolate it to everyone is plain hogwash. In my own pension system, the average monthly benefit for regular retirees is around 2,200 a month, and retirees are not eligible for Social Security.

For those who think pensions should all be abolished, I’d draw your attention to the constant attacks on Social Security. “Serious” right wing presidential candidates, and even some Democrats, have proposed upping the retirement age, cutting benefits and in general making life a little less pleasant for retirees.  The hope is that many of us will die before we can collect what we’ve earned through decades of work. Even though the “trust fund” has a balance of trillions of dollars, the money has been used to fund everyday government spending. Politicians would rather loot your retirement rather than fund government spending with honest taxation.

I’m not even saying that we have to sacrifice other spending priorities to fund retirements, because there’s enough wealth in this country to do both.

But the very question of affordability is moot, because the attack on retirement has nothing at all to do with money. The real goal of conservatives is to break government, so that Wall Street and the well-connected can feast upon the carcass, gorging themselves on ill-conceived privatization schemes. America has become epitome of a failing company, and politicians are acting as the investment banker, breaking what’s left into pieces to sell off for quick cash.

As a member of Generation X, I’ve spent my adult life riding waves of bubbles, watching housing values implode, retirement accounts halved and job prospects evaporate. With each subsequent crisis, I and my cohort are asked to “give up a little more” to help the country “recover,” even as a tiny fraction of people and corporations reach unprecedented, unimaginable levels of wealth. This disparity is unsustainable.

I can almost sympathize with the Tea Party, a group built on similar feelings of frustration and anger.

Their only mistake is that they do not see who is really picking their pockets. It’s not immigrants, “the gays” or liberals. Tea Partiers have tragically bought into the total nonsense that “poor people” are somehow responsible for the malaise of the middle class. It would be almost amusing if it weren’t so tragic. Today’s Tea Party voter is willing to sell out the future of his own child, because he can’t see through bullshit shouted at him by Fox News every day.

We cannot afford pensions or health care or food stamps, but, by god, we can afford $1.5 trillion for a plane that doesn’t fly. 

Like so many workers, I’ve watched my benefits erode year after year, with frozen salaries, forced unpaid days off and ever more stingy medical benefits.  I take heart that the latest attempt to destroy the pension system seems doomed, if only because it will cost more money to wreck it than to leave it alone. But the greater war on pensions and Social Security is not over.

Libertarians and conservatives will not rest until they have unmade the last century of progress and the entire New Deal.  They will destroy and dismantle, vilify and divide, because it’s easier to make people resent one another than to make society better. They want to not only halt progress, but to turn back the hands of time. It’s not just pensions, but overtime pay, weekends and the forty-hour workweek that are all in danger. It’s an act of self-destruction and stupidity. They drill holes in a leaky boat in which we are all riding, somehow unaware that when the boat sinks, they will also drown.

Hands Off Social Security

On Nov. 17th 2011 roughly 200 people packed the Senate Budget Committee room and hallway to hear Sens. Bernie Sanders, Barbara A. Mikulski, Ben Cardin and Rosa DeLauro urge the super committee to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Social Security In Far Worse Shape Than Official Numbers Show

By Janet Novack, Forbes Staff

Over the last 15 years, the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Chief Actuary has consistently underestimated retirees’ life expectancy and made other errors that make the finances of the retirement system look significantly better than they are, a new study by two Harvard and one Dartmouth academics concludes. The report, being published today by the Journal of Economic Perspectives, is the first, the authors say, to compare the government agency’s past demographic and financial forecasts with actual results.

In a second paper appearing today in Political Analysis, the three researchers offer their theory of why the Actuary Office’s predictions have apparently grown less reliable since 2000: The civil servants who run it have responded to increased political polarization surrounding Social Security “by hunkering down” and resisting outside pressures—not only from the politicians, but also from outside technical experts.

“While they’re insulating themselves from the politics, they also insulate themselves from the data and this big change in the world –people started living longer lives,’’ coauthor Gary King, a leading political scientist and director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, said in an interview Thursday. “They need to take that into account and change the forecast as a result of that.”

In its annual report last July, Social Security predicted its old age and disability trust funds, combined, would be exhausted in 2033 and that after that point the government will have enough payroll tax revenues coming in to pay only about three quarters of  promised benefits. King said his team hasn’t estimated how much sooner the fund might run out, but described it as in “significantly worse shape” than official forecasts indicate.

In addition to underestimating recent declines in mortality (i.e. increases in life expectancy) for those 65 and older, the Actuary has overestimated the birth rate—meaning the number of new workers who will be available to pay baby boomers their benefits 20 years from now , the researchers assert.

Before 2000, the Actuary also made errors, but they went in both directions and the Actuary was readier to adjust the forecasts from year to year as new evidence came in, King said. Since 2000, he added, the errors “all are biased in the direction of making the system seem healthier than it really is.’’

A Social Security spokesman said today that Chief Actuary Stephen Goss couldn’t comment on the papers because he wasn’t provided them in advance and is tied up today in meeting with the Social Security Advisory Board Technical Panel. But he pointed to an Actuarial Note Goss and three colleagues published in 2013 in response to a New York Times op-ed by King and one of his current coauthors,  Samir Soneji, an assistant professor at Dartmouth’s Institute for HealthPolicy & Clinical Practice.

In that op-ed, they attacked the Actuary’s methods of projecting mortality rates and predicted the trust fund would be depleted two years earlier than predicted. In their response, Goss and his colleagues called Kind and Soneji’s methods of predicting death rates “highly questionable” and noted that the Actuary’s methods have been audited since 2006 by an independent accounting firm and received unqualified opinions.

The dust-up might be ignored as bickering by the pointy heads, if it weren’t so consequential.  In a recent Gallup survey, 36% of workers said they were counting on Social Security as a major source of retirement income. Differences over the estimates are important, King observed, because they affect “basically half of the spending of the U.S. government,’’ including Medicare.  Moreover, the forecasting assumptions affect the projected impact of any proposed changes to the program.

In their political paper, King, Soneji and Konstantin Kashin, a PhD candidate at King’s institute, recount how partisan fighting over Social Security intensified in the late 1990s, when conservatives began arguing the program was unsustainable and should be partially privatized, with younger workers offered individual savings accounts. In 2001, newly elected President George W. Bush appointed a commission intended to support such a change, but he put the issue aside after the September 11 terrorist attacks. After his reelection in 2005, however, Bush started pushing for changes in a series of town halls and speeches that, the paper notes, put the Social Security actuaries under “an extreme form of political pressure.’’

Democrats and news reports pointed to changes in the language used by the Social Security Administration that seemed (in line with White House policy) to emphasize that the program was not financially sustainable. Goss openly clashed with a Republican Social Security Commissioner.
Bush’s privatization push flopped and during recent elections Republicans have attempted to cast themselves as the protectors of Social Security, which enjoys strong support from voters across the political spectrum. In 2013, after President Obama proposed a deficit reduction deal that, along with raising taxes on the rich, would have chipped away at inflation adjustments in Social Security, the idea was attacked by politicians from both parties.

But the problem of how to solve the system’s long term funding deficit has hardly gone away and the partisan divide seems to be widening again. Democrats have slammed a provision adopted by the new Republican Congress that they would block a transfer of money from the Social Security old age fund to the Social Security disability fund, which will be depleted next year. They say such transfers have been routine in the past and that it is a ploy by Republicans to force cuts tor retirement program too. Last month, Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a possible Presidential candidate, proposed that the age for receiving full Social Security benefits be raised gradually to 69 and that benefits be limited for individuals with more than $80,000 in other income and ended completely for those earning more than $200,000.

King emphasized that there is “no evidence whatsoever,” that Goss and his actuaries are bending to political pressure from either Democrats or Republicans.  On the contrary, he said, while resisting such pressure, they’ve put too high a value on remaining consistent in their forecasts, in part because they don’t want to “panic” the public.  “They’re trying to show the numbers don’t change because they think it will inspire confidence. Maybe in the very short run it will inspire confidence by not changing the numbers. But having the numbers be wrong doesn’t  inspire confidence at all,’’ King said.

The political paper asserts that  Goss has resisted changes in forecasting assumptions suggested by the  Social Security Advisory Board’s Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods—a panel of actuaries and economists that meets once every four years and is in session now. In some cases, the paper claims, the Actuary has made some  suggested change in an assumption, but then changed another, unrelated assumption in the opposite direction “to counterbalance the first and keep the ultimate solvency forecasts largely unchanged.”

In their 2013 Actuarial Note, however, Goss and his colleagues say that while the 2011 Panel did push for faster changes in mortality assumptions, the panel’s recommendations, if adopted in full, would have actually resulted in a projection that the Social Security trust funds would run out a year later.

King, who presented his own findings to the Technical Panel yesterday, is pushing for one big change in the Actuary’s practices that he says the Panel has also favored: making all the Actuary’s data and methods open for scrutiny by others. 

“This is a period of big data. When you let other people have access to data, things like Money Ball happen,’’ King said. In addition to new algorithms, he said, the government actuaries need to take note of recent findings about unconscious bias by researchers and apply new methods social scientists have developed to guard against such bias.

“Four hundred years ago you had people sitting in a monastery and thinking they thought great thoughts and that was their entire life,’’ King said. “Now we check on each other. If they would leave things open they’d have so much help and they’d be better off politically because their forecasts would be better.”

How Privatization Rips Us All Off

Average Americans are the products, and few of us see any profits.

By Paul Buchheit

The Project on Government Oversight found that in 33 of 35 cases the federal government spent more on private contractors than on public employees for the same services. The authors of the report summarized, "Our findings were shocking."

Yet our elected leaders persist in their belief that free-market capitalism works best. Here are a few fact-based examples that say otherwise.

Health Care: Markups of 100%....1,000%....100,000%

Broadcast Journalist Edward R. Murrow in 1955: Who owns the patent on this vaccine?
Polio Researcher Jonas Salk: Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?

We don't hear much of that anymore. The public-minded sentiment of the 1950's, with the sense of wartime cooperation still in the minds of researchers and innovators, has yielded to the neoliberal winner-take-all business model.

In his most recent exposé of the health care industry in the U.S., Steve Brill notes that it's "the only industry in which technological advances have increased costs instead of lowering them." An investigation of fourteen private hospitals by National Nurses United found that they realized a 1,000% markup on their total costs, four times that of public hospitals. Other sources have found that private health insurance administrative costs are 5 to 6 times higher than Medicare administrative costs.

Markup reached 100,000% for the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, which grabbed a patent for a new hepatitis drug and set the pricing to take whatever they could get from desperate American patients.

Housing: Big Profits, Once the Minorities Are Squeezed Out

A report by a coalition of housing rights groups concluded that "public housing is a vital national resource that provides decent and affordable homes to over a million families across the country."

But, according to the report, a privatization program started during the Clinton administration resulted in "the wholesale destruction of communities" and "the displacement of very large numbers of low-income households of color."

It's gotten even worse since then, as Blackstone and Goldman Sachs have figured out how to take money from former homeowners, with three deviously effective strategies:

1. Buy houses and hold them to force prices up
2. Meanwhile, charge high rents (with little or no maintenance)
3. Package the deals as rental-backed securities with artificially high-grade ratings

Private Banks: Giving Them Half Our Retirement Money

The public bank of North Dakota had an equity return of 23.4% before the state's oil boom. The normally privatization-minded Wall Street Journal admits that "The BND's costs are extremely low: no exorbitantly-paid executives; no bonuses, fees, or commissions; only one branch office; very low borrowing costs.."

But thanks to private banks, interest claims one out of every three dollars that we spend, and by the time we retire with a 401(k), over half of our money is lost to the banks.

Internet: The Fastest Download in the U.S. (is on a Public Network)

That's in Chattanooga, a rapidly growing city, named by Nerdwallet as one of the "most improved cities since the recession," and offering its residents Internet speeds 50 times faster than the American average.

Elsewhere, 61 percent of Americans are left with a single private company, often Comcast or Time Warner, to provide cable service. Now those two companies, both high on the most hated list, are trying to merge into one.

The Post Office: Private Companies Depend on it to Handle the Unprofitable Routes

It costs less than 50 cents to send a letter to any remote location in the United States. For an envelope with a two-day guarantee, this is how the U.S. Postal Service recently matched up against competitors:

• U.S. Post Office 2-Day $5.68
• Federal Express 2-Day $19.28
• United Parcel Service 2 Day $24.09

USPS is so inexpensive, in fact, that Fedex actually uses the U.S. Post Office for about 30 percent of its ground shipments. As Ralph Nader notes, the USPS has not taken any taxpayer money since 1971, and if it weren't required by an inexplicable requirement to pre-fund employee benefits for 75 years, it would be making a profit. Instead, this national institution has been forced to cut jobs and routes and mailing centers.

Paul Buchheit teaches economic inequality at DePaul University. He is the founder and developer of the Web sites UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org and RappingHistory.org, and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

Why the Right’s Free-Market Health Philosophy Is Ludicrous

 They claim that the SSDI program is rife with fraud and that far too many people just refuse to work.

 

By Heather Digby Parton / Salon

 

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.)

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 The Affordable Health Care Act 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.

They claim that the program is rife with fraud and that far too many people are able bodied and just refuse to work. (They haven’t used the term “disability queen”  in public yet, but you can be sure they’ve thought it.) Representative Tom Price, another erstwhile medical professional committed to proving that trusting a Republican doctor to treat you is like asking a convicted robber to house sit, said:

“There are a number of studies that demonstrate that a lot of people who are on the program are no longer eligible. People get well, people do other things and other opportunities become available from a medical standpoint to treating whatever disability they have to make it so that they can contribute to a greater degree.”

That’s a convenient story but it’s just not true:

About 8.9 million people receive disability benefits from the fund and its eligibility guidelines are stringent. Beneficiaries must have worked at least one-quarter of their adult life and five of the last 10 years. They must be unable to work because of a severe medical issue that has lasted five months and is expected to last at least another year.

Roughly a quarter of recipients have a mental impairment, some have muscular or skeletal problems and others have diseases like diabetes, Lou Gehrig’s disease, congestive heart failure and cancer. A majority of them are 55 or older and many die within a few years of first receiving the insurance, according to CBPP.

Think Progress noted that the reports of disability fraud are actually extremely low and noted:

The severity of the disabilities of those who get benefits is underscored by the fact that one in five men and nearly one in six women die within five years of being approved.

Once on the rolls, payments are far from cushy: they average $1,130 a month, just over the federal poverty line for a single person, and usually replace less than half of someone’s previous earnings. Very few beneficiaries are able to work and supplement that income: less than 17 percent worked at some point during the year in 2007, but less than 3 percent of those people made more than $10,000 annually.

Apparently, even that’s too much. The government needs to crack down on these lazy moochers and put them to work. Back in the day they used to sell pencils and apples on street corners, amirite? And in third world countries you see plenty of horrifically disabled people making a tidy living by begging. They show the kind of gumption we are denying our paraplegics and mentally ill by molly coddling them with a poverty level stipend.

These Republican officials are not alone in holding this philosophy. Recall this confrontation between a Tea Partyer and a disabled citizen during the health reform debate:

A man with a sign saying he has Parkinson’s disease and needs help sat down in front of the reform opponents. Several protesters mocked the man, calling him a “communist,” with one derisively “throwing money at him.” “If you’re looking for a handout you’re in the wrong end of town,” another man said.

He added, “nothing for free, over here you have to work for everything you get.” The lovely gentleman who threw a dollar in his face put the begging principle in stark terms yelling “I’ll decide when to give money!”

The immediate future of the health care reforms will be decided this June by the Supreme Court as they take up King vs Burwell (also known as the “Typo Of Death” case.) In the meantime, as that argument is on hold the right is moving against the safety net from this other direction. Basically, they are challenging the the definition of modern medicine itself:

Fox News Radio host Tom Sullivan told a caller who said she suffered from bipolar disorder that her illness is “something made up by the mental health business” and just “the latest fad.” When the caller told Sullivan that she “would not be alive today” if she hadn’t received mental health treatment, Sullivan wondered if “maybe somebody’s talked you into feeling and thinking this way.”

Sullivan, who is also a frequent Fox Business contributor and guest anchor, began his January 28 program by complaining that people with mental illness have figured how to “game the system” by receiving disability benefits. “They’re mostly government employees and they know how to do it,” he added. Sullivan also defended Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) controversial and false statement that “Over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts.”

Obviously, that is nonsense. But it’s becoming quite common on the right to suggest that illnesses are not real, that people are faking them anyway and that those who are sick are lazy parasites who should find some way to make a living. We have Republicans, some of them medical doctors, publicly declaring that fellow citizens who have been unlucky enough to have an accident or contract a debilitating illness need to be harshly scrutinized by the government to ensure they aren’t stealing that generous $1,000 a month.

I think we probably need to consider the alarming idea that this is going to be the right’s overall approach to dealing with health care. They have no real ideas for how to deliver affordable health care to every citizen and they have no methods for controlling the spiraling costs of the former system. In order to maintain their “free-market” health care philosophy they are going to have to make it clear that you must get rich if you expect to live through catastrophic illness or accidents. If you are sick, it’s up to you to figure out how to pay for your care and shelter. That’s the only solution available to them.

As a libertarian theorist posited in the Washington Post last week,”people could die and that’s ok”:

[It] is an acceptable price to pay for certain goals — including more cash for other programs, such as those that help the poor; less government coercion and more individual liberty; more health-care choice for consumers, allowing them to find plans that better fit their needs; more money for taxpayers to spend themselves; and less federal health-care spending.

I’m going to guess that more money to help the poor is an unlikely “choice” that people who want less government coercion and more individual liberty are going to make. But the rest of that sounds like it’s right in the current Republican wheelhouse. If you get sick and can’t make enough money by begging, well, you can console yourself with the knowledge that other people have more freedom, less government, and more money to spend on themselves. And that’s what life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are all about. Well, maybe not life.  But two out of three ain’t bad.

First on the list: Cut the disabled people

Posted by stbalbach

On the first day of the new Congress, a Texas Republican is leading an effort to make deep cuts in Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) to take effect within about a year. Democrats appear to have little recourse due to the recent election results. Fraud in SSDI is not a major problem despite Republican claims and mythmaking by NPR and 60 Minutes. The inspector general found only about 0.4 percent of cases were approved by fraudulent judges.

More and more people are on disability. This reflects an aging and sick population, not fraudulent activity. Demographics explains most of the increase. See Just The Facts on Disability.

Republicans fought against SSDI throughout the 50s its passage was a dramatic story that few know or remember today. The current "crisis" is a manufactured one, part of the long-view Republican strategy to eliminate SSDI and a broader attack on Social Security. In 1983, a Republican effort moved funds that had been allocated for the disabled into the Social Security Retirement program, artificially creating an imbalance that is coming due today.

The New Republican Attack on Social Security Starts Now.

Why Defending Social Security Needs to Be Next on Obama’s To-Do List

“[People in power] use the word ‘reform’ when they mean ‘privatize,’ and they use ‘strengthen’ when they really mean ‘dismantle.’ They tell us there’s a crisis to get us all riled up so we’ll sit down and listen to their plan to privatize … Democrats are absolutely united in the need to strengthen Social Security and make it solvent for future generations. We know that, and we want that.” (Senator Barack Obama, 2005)

GOP's Sneak Attack on Social Security

Thom Hartmann talks with Senator Sherrod Brown (OH) about the GOP's sneak attack on social security.

Sherrod Brown Condemns Dangerous Move by the House That Would Undermine Social Security by Attacking Disability Insurance

More than a Third of Social Security Beneficiaries are Disabled Americans and Other Non-Retirees. House Rule Released Today Would Prevent Clean Reallocations of Social Security to Fund Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)

Tuesday, January 6, 2015
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) condemned a dangerous new rule in the House of Representatives that would undermine Social Security by attacking Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). The unprecedented rule change would prevent the House of Representatives from passing clean reallocations of the Social Security Trust Fund.

“Today, House Republicans are trying to change rules that have been in place for decades as a way to attack social insurance,” Brown said. “Rather than solve the short-term problems facing the Social Security Disability program as we have in the past, Republicans want to set the stage to cut benefits for seniors and disabled Americans.”

Reallocation is a simple procedure used by Congress to rebalance how Social Security payroll tax revenues are apportioned between the two trust funds - the equivalent of transferring money from a checking to a savings account.  Reallocation is commonsense, bipartisan policy that has been utilized by both parties 11 times since 1957– most recently in 1994. At that time, it was projected that reallocation would keep the trust fund solvent until 2016.

“Reallocation has never been controversial, but detractors working to privatize Social Security will do anything to manufacture a crisis out of a routine administrative function,” Brown continued.

“Reallocation is a routine housekeeping matter that has been used 11 times, including four times under Ronald Reagan. Modest reallocation of payroll taxes would ensure solvency of both trust funds until 2033. But if House Republicans block reallocation, insurance for disabled Americans, veterans, and children could face severe cuts once the trust fund is exhausted in 2016.”

In July, Brown attended a Senate Finance Committee hearing to examine SSDI and its importance to the entire Social Security system. The hearing was entitled “Social Security: A Fresh Look at Workers’ Disability Insurance.” That same month, Brown delivered a keynote speech on SSDI at the Center for American Progress (CAP) where he outlined future threats that Social Security faces from those who seek to privatize and cut the program. Brown warned how undermining SSDI represents an effort to siphon public support from the entire Social Security program and urged Social Security advocates to organize to prevent detractors from “dividing and conquering” the program.

With more than a third of Social Security beneficiaries being non-retirees, SSDI now more than ever needs to be protected. SSDI is one of our nation’s most successful insurance programs and helps millions of disabled Americans, children, and veterans. Further, SSDI is the sole source of income for one in every three beneficiaries. Without SSDI, half of all beneficiaries would be below the poverty line.

In December, Brown announced that he will introduce the Strengthening Social Security Act – championed by retired U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA). The bill would extend the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund, which nearly two in three Americans rely on for at least half of their income in old age.

Brown’s prepared opening remarks from the July hearing on SSDI can be found below.

Senator Brown Prepared Opening Remarks for Finance Subcommittee Hearing on “Social Security Disability Insurance”

Thursday, July 24, 2014

I want to begin today’s hearing on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) by talking about 52-year-old Sheila in Youngstown.

Sheila works in a steel factory along the Mahoning River. She punches a time clock each day on her way into the factory and again on her way out – the same routine every day for the last 18 years.

Sheila has no union strong enough to demand a defined pension, retirement savings account, or even a fair wage, and it’s a grueling job – standing on her feet all day.

But in a town that’s seen far too many factory gates closed and more plants shuttered than most will ever see in a lifetime, Sheila knows that she is fortunate.

One day before heading out the door to work, Sheila decides to throw a load of laundry in the washer before her shift.

She hoists the laundry basket onto her hip and opens the basement door with the other hand. But as she reaches to turn on the lights, Sheila loses her footing and falls down the hard, wooden steps to the concrete floor.

The accident leaves her permanently paralyzed.

Sheila can no longer work.

She doesn’t know how she is going to pay her mounting medical bills, let alone her regular bills now that she has lost her income. Then, Sheila finds out that she has been paying into Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) her entire working life.

This insurance is now Sheila’s lifeline.

She always thought Social Security would be there for her once she retired, but now – Social Security is all she has.

She is now one of the nearly one-third of Social Security beneficiaries who are not retirees.

Nearly nine million disabled workers are SSDI beneficiaries – and 4.4 million children also receive assistance.

One in five SSDI beneficiaries lives in poverty, and nearly half of disabled workers younger than 50 are poor or near poor.

Social Security – as a whole – is a plan that offers working families a bundle of insurance products: retirement, life, and disability insurance – social insurance that most working families couldn’t afford to buy on their own.

That’s why most Americans do not support making cuts to Social Security. In fact, overwhelming majorities are willing to pay more to preserve this program.

Detractors of Social Security know this so they seek backdoor ways to dismantle the program.

That backdoor?

SSDI.

Detractors divide Social Security into “good Social Security” and “bad Social Security.”

They say “bad Social Security” is disability insurance and that the program is bankrupt and rife with fraud, which in turn, undermines Social Security as a whole.

We will address these claims in today’s hearing.

Disability insurance is not bankrupt. The disability trust fund simply needs to be reallocated.

Reallocation is commonsense, bipartisan policy. Since 1957, it has been done 11 times– most recently in 1994.

At that time, it was projected that reallocation would keep the trust fund solvent until 2016 – which it did.

Rebalancing the fund ensures there is adequate funding so that SSDI is there for all of us, if the worst should happen.

Many in this town claim to sympathize with low-income workers.

But when it comes to supporting disability insurance – a program that provides a modest safety-net to the most vulnerable Americans – they dismiss beneficiaries as lazy scammers looking to game the system.

They’re wrong.

Keep in mind, the average SSDI check is about $300 a week.

In my home state of Ohio, the typical annual SSDI benefit for a disabled worker was $11,988 in 2012.

That’s barely over the federal poverty level for an individual.

Go back to Sheila. She worked 18 years in a factory, standing on her feet all day.

More than half of disability insurance beneficiaries are like her – they too worked in jobs that demanded physical labor.

To call people like Sheila lazy – to prey upon the most vulnerable in society – is wrong and unacceptable.

Where fraud exists, we can address it to maintain the protections that SSDI affords us all.

But to divide Social Security into good parts and bad parts is not how we will solve this issue.

I want to share a letter with you from the grandfather of one of my staff.

He received this letter from his employer, the Pennsylvania Gas and Electric Company, on December 24, 1936.

The letter reads:

“On August 14, 1935, Congress passed the Social Security Act. Under the provision of this Act, the company is required to deduct 1% of your wage beginning on January 1, 1937. These deductions, which are matched by your company, are designed to provide for a retirement at age 65.”

Imagine receiving this letter and being told your wages would start being taken away, and that you would get it back when you reached the age of 65.

This was a time when most people didn’t know anyone who lived to 65, so to receive a letter telling you this was controversial to say the least.

When Social Security began, it was an untested idea that was met with a great deal of misunderstanding and resistance.

Today, it is woven into the fabric of our country.

A few years ago, the idea that we would expand Social Security seemed unlikely. All of the conventional Washington wisdom was that we would have to cut the program.

Today, not only are cuts to Social Security deeply unpopular, we are now debating how much we need to expand Social Security to make sure the program continues to be there for all of us.

In today’s hearing, we will examine ways to strengthen Social Security by protecting disability insurance.

We will examine why reallocation is a simple and commonsense administrative function.

And, we will examine the need to cut fraud so the program continues to safeguard against fraud.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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