Biden SPEECHLESS After Bernie Attack

Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, and Adrienne Lawrence discuss Biden's record on Social Security on The Young Turks coverage of the Democratic presidential debate between Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden. 

 http://tyt.com/go 

Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Adrienne Lawrence, John Iadarola 

Cast: Cenk Uygur, Adrienne Lawrence, John Iadarola

Republicans Will Hurt You More Than 100 Caravans of Immigrants

Posted by Rude One

You have to be a special kind of son of a bitch to look at filthy, exhausted people wearing rags and desperately trying to get somewhere they won't be raped, tortured, murdered, or forced into gangs or where they won't watch their children starve to death, and think, "Fuckin' stop them because they gotta be terrorists." You gotta be a particular type of motherfucker if you exploit those families, those mothers, those fathers, those children in order to whip a horde of idiots into an orgy of xenophobia and racism where a perverse, heaving mass of flesh, all sweat and pimples and whiteness, so much whiteness, pumps and sucks, fucking themselves until they reach an undulating roar of intolerance.

Goddamn, the stink.

At each of his rallies of the damned, resident Donald Trump, a lump of cow shit with bits of undigested hay stuck in it, has been that son of a bitch and that motherfucker, frothing in a Mussolini-esque squawk about the immigrants and the vile Democrats who allowed this to happen and the depraved leaders of Honduras and Guatemala and Mexico who have not halted the march of the immigrants. Jesus, how the mob of Trumpistas lap it up like semen spooged straight from Jesus's circumcised dick, fighting over each other for who can ingest the last precious drops as Trump does his dance with the ghost of Hitler, demonizing, condemning, promising violence, stopping just short of advocating violence himself, but ensuring that the mob's adoring hatred will drive them to the voting booths to protect him, protect the future he has promised, the white future, the rich future, when the nation is Mar-a-Lago and you're either a member or you're staring in longingly from the gate.

Trump has mastered the art of layering lie upon lie, creating a shit parfait of lies, the essence of his entire career. He told the gathered villagers in Houston last night to get their pitchforks and torches ready for the "caravan" of immigrants traveling to the United States border with Mexico because "I think the Democrats had something to do with it and now they're saying I think we made a big mistake because people are seeing how bad it is...look, that is an assault on our country and in that caravan you have some very bad people. You have some very bad people and we can't let that happen to our country." Yes, the president of the United States, with no evidence at all, is saying that the opposition party is behind a mass of immigrants who are hiding evildoers. He said earlier in the day that, if you search the thousands of immigrants walking over 1000 miles, "You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Eastern, you’re going to find everything."

Many of the Hondurans and others are fleeing from vicious gangs who have threatened to kill them or their families, who have killed family members, who have taken over communities. You think that they'd want open gang members to be along with them? Or are they in disguise as young children being carried by their parents? And, as for Middle Easterners, you think that immigrants who want to start a new life are totally fine covering up for terrorists? They'd probably be able to tell the difference between a Saudi and a Guatemalan.

You know what would happen if those immigrants were treated like asylum seekers and refugees ought to be treated in the supposed wealthiest, greatest, mostest wonderfulest, sexiest nation in the history of the earth and universe forever? The adults would get jobs. They'd open businesses. The kids would go to school. They'd all create safe communities if they didn't have to worry about ICE coming in to tear their worlds apart. They'd want to become Americans if our shit system for allowing that wasn't hopelessly backlogged and broken. They would barely be a blip in the immigration radar.

Some would commit crimes, sure, but, statistically, at a lower rate than citizens. And a few might join a gang because that's just how the world goes. But the vast majority just want a goddamn life and a chance for their kids to survive and thrive and they are willing to fucking walk 1,500 miles for the barest thread of hope. (And, by the way, the caravan is just inside Mexico. Walking nonstop, it'd be at least two months before they got to the border, unless George Soros provides them with some helicopters, so everyone just calm the fuck down.)

Even if every single one of the immigrants were let into the United States, it would have no effect on your life (unless you work in resettlement or enforcement). They're not all gonna settle in your neighborhood. Some would live with family already here. The rest would be dispersed to different areas. The most you might see is a new family moving in next door. If that frightens you, well, you're a fucking dumbass and aren't worth talking to.

You know what will have an effect on your life? If Republicans continue to run the government without any check on their power, Mitch McConnell has vowed to go after Medicare and Social Security cuts to help pay for the tax cuts for the greedy, wealthy pig fuckers who fund our fraught and frayed political system. That's a real goddamned threat to you and your family.

If Republicans keep both the House and Senate, they have vowed to try again to overturn the Affordable Care Act, even as they blatantly lie about protecting the pre-existing conditions exemption. That's a real goddamned threat to you and your health.

If Democrats lose in the midterms, we'll fall even further behind on anything to slow climate change as even supposedly smart Republicans have come down on the "Well, the climate is changing, sure, but we don't know what causes it" side of the bullshit (even though we totally know what causes it). That's a real goddamned threat to you and safety and security and property.

You know what's not a threat to you, your family, your health, your safety, your security, and your property? The fucking caravan of immigrants in Mexico right now. If you give an actual shit about protecting your ass, you'll get rid of the people who have flat-out promised to do shit to kill you.

Vote for Democrats like your ass depends on it.

Republicans want to take away your Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid

By Laurence Lewis

 

Mitch McConnell is disappointed:

After instituting a $1.5 trillion tax cut and signing off on a $675 billion budget for the Department of Defense, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

"It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem," McConnell said of the deficit, which grew 17 percent to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018. McConnell explained to Bloomberg that "it’s a bipartisan problem: Unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future." The deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.

New Treasury Department analysis on Monday revealed that corporate tax cuts had a significant impact on the deficit this year. Federal revenue rose by 0.04 percent in 2018, a nearly 100 percent decrease on last year’s 1.5 percent. In fiscal year 2018, tax receipts on corporate income fell to $205 billion from $297 billion in 2017.

The Republican tax cuts for the wealthy gutted federal revenues and exploded the deficit, just as the CBO said they would, but it's not the Republicans' problem. That's Republican logic for you. And of course their solution isn’t to undo the damage they inflicted but to inflict more. By gutting the budget. McConnell has some very specific spending targets:

McConnell said it would be “very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid,” with one party in charge of Congress and the White House.

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government,” McConnell said.

Trying to follow his train of thought makes the brain hurt. He's saying he wants to slash Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, but he can't because his party controls all the branches of government. Democrats have no interest in destroying these popular and enormously beneficial programs, but somehow McConnell can only get it done with their help. The point seems to be that in order for an unpopular and disastrous Republican agenda to be enacted, Democrats need to be elected. Which may be his way of saying that if you don't want an unpopular and disastrous Republican agenda you need to keep Republicans in power.

Did I mention that trying to follow his train of thought makes the brain hurt?

But the point is clear. However he gets it done, he wants it done. Whatever the politics, his policy goal is to gut funding for Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. And as for his reference to any objective standard as to the driver of the debt, well he seems to have a different standard of objectivity than reality. That the Republican tax cuts for the wealthy would explode the deficit was known all along. Both before they were passed:

The House Republican tax plan may have a deficit problem.
The GOP bill including some changes would increase federal budget deficits by $1.7 trillion over 10 years, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That includes money for additional debt service payments due to the bill.
Under the plan, U.S. debt would rise to 97.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2027, up from 91.2 percent under current CBO projections.

And after:

The deficit - the amount that Washington’s spending exceeds its revenues - will expand to $804 billion in fiscal 2018, which ends on Sept. 30, up from $665 billion in fiscal 2017, CBO said.

The national debt is on track to approach 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2028, said the nonpartisan CBO, which analyzes legislation for Congress.

“That amount is far greater than the debt in any year since just after World War II,” CBO said, adding that the debt is now about 77 percent of GDP, a measure of the size of the economy. The Republican tax legislation, passed by Congress without Democratic support, along with a recent bipartisan $1.3 trillion spending package, are expected to drive economic growth faster than initially expected, CBO said.

Of course, McConnell was lying about it all along:

Nearly a year ago, as the debate over Republican tax breaks for the wealthy was near its end, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted that the tax cuts didn’t need to be paid for – because they’d pay for themselves.

“I not only don’t think it will increase the deficit, I think it will be beyond revenue neutral,” McConnell said in December 2017. “In other words, I think it will produce more than enough to fill that gap.”

Whether the GOP leader actually believed his own rhetoric is an open question, but either way, we now know the Kentucky senator’s claim was spectacularly wrong. The Republican tax breaks have, as Democrats and those familiar with arithmetic predicted, sent the nation’s budget deficit soaring.

And just last month the Republican House of Representatives was pushing through yet another round of tax cuts:

A second round of Republican tax cuts would add an additional $3.2 trillion to the federal deficit over a decade, according to a new report released by a centrist think-tank...

The GOP’s “tax reform 2.0” would make permanent many of the individual and estate tax provisions in the tax law Republicans passed last fall, which the Congressional Budget Office said would already add about $1.9 trillion to the deficit, factoring for interest costs.

The second round of cuts would cost $631 billion before 2028 and an additional $3.15 trillion in the decade after that, according to the Tax Policy Center. The finding was somewhat larger than the $2.4 trillion cost over 10 years projected by the Tax Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

The first round of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy exploded the deficit, leading the Republican Senate leader to call for cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, and the Republicans already are pushing for yet more tax cuts for the wealthy, which would further explode the deficit, undoubtedly leading to more Republican calls for more cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and absolutely anything else that serves the interests of anyone other than the wealthy beneficiaries of the Republican tax cuts. For decades, this has been the Republican Party’s dream. If they retain control of Congress they can make it happen. As I wrote eight years ago, just don't call it class warfare:

It's not class warfare. Don't you dare call it class warfare. The Republicans may relentlessly pursue policies that favor the wealthy and hurt everyone else, but it most emphatically is not class warfare. The arbiters of appropriate political discourse will be most put out if you call it class warfare. You will not be welcome in the Village. You will not be invited to appear on the Sunday talk shows.

Class warfare is such an ugly term. To begin with, it suggests that we are a socially stratified nation, and that such stratification is at least to some degree based on money. Money is dirty. One shouldn't discuss money in polite conversation. And it's important that we be polite. And everyone knows that we are a melting pot. Everyone is capable of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and don't even consider questioning the physics when there is neither a fulcrum nor a point of leverage. This is America. The land of opportunity.

Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is not class warfare, but to discuss Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is class warfare. The pundits will say so. The policies themselves are not class warfare, but raising awareness about them is.

This isn't new. It's a pattern. It's the basis of the Republican Party’s economic history. As I wrote more than seven years ago:

Ronald Reagan used the deficit as an issue when he ran against President Carter. As president, Reagan ran up the largest deficit in U.S. history. The Republicans of his era talked a lot about a Balanced Budget Amendment, while consistently voting to run up the largest deficit in U.S. history. Reagan's successor, the heir to the Bush dynasty, outdid his mentor by running up an even larger deficit. President Clinton raised taxes, eliminated the deficit and created a surplus, and just coincidentally oversaw an enormous economic expansion and near full employment. The next heir to the Bush dynasty cut taxes, eviscerated the Clinton surplus, and outdid both his father and Reagan by breaking their records for creating the largest deficits in U.S. history. He also all but broke the economy. This isn't complicated. This isn't difficult to explain.

Republicans never did actually care about deficits. They cut taxes, explode deficits, then use those deficits as a rationale to cut government spending. It's not complicated. It never has been complicated. It has, in fact, been transparent all along. And it's transparent now.

Underneath his bizarre, Byzantine gaslighting, McConnell revealed the Republicans' ultimate goal. He wants to blame the Democrats for what his policies have wrought, and he wants to make the Democrats complicit in his further goals of wreaking further economic havoc. But the Democrats want no part of it. But cut through the misdirections and circumlocutions, and one thread of truth runs through McConnell's rhetoric. He admitted what he wants to do. He admitted what the Republican Party wants to do. And make no mistake that if they retain control of Congress, Republicans will push it through. They will blame its disastrous consequences on Democrats, but it is their agenda. More tax cuts for the wealthy. More cavernous deficits. And their ultimate goal: eviscerating Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.

So much is at stake in next month's elections, and it's sometimes hard to focus when Trump, McConnell and the Republicans are burning down the republic in so many ways, but don't lose sight of this one. The existence of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid are on the ballot this November.

Because the Republicans want to destroy them.

The Republicans Are What We Thought They Were

First, they pass tax cuts and run up the deficit. Then, they use the deficit to ‘prove’ spending is out of control, and start slashing entitlement programs.

Michael Tomasky

12.15.17 7:41 PM ET

You’re surprised at Bob Corker? Really? Please. Yes, he’s a deficit hawk. And he’s a senator who has, from time to time, made some effort to work in a bipartisan fashion.

But come on. He’s a Republican. He likes tax cuts. He believes, as they all do, in supply-side economic theory. And he has donors and constituents in Tennessee who wanted this. See what he said in defending his switch from no to yes on the GOP tax bill: He changed because of “many conversations over the past several days with individuals from both sides of the aisle across Tennessee and around the country.” In other words, rich people.

Besides, he’s not going to buck the team. Not on something like this. There’s a history here. Read Robert Kaiser’s great book Act of Congress, about how the Dodd-Frank bill became law. Corker was working with Chris Dodd. In absolute good faith! But Corker couldn’t—or wouldn’t—bring any other GOP senators along with him. A crucial defection, incidentally, was Richard Shelby, whom we’re praising this week for helping to save us from Sen. Roy Moore. Corker ultimately voted against it.

Marco Rubio? That was a joke from the start. He seems to have gotten a portion of what he wanted on the child tax credit. Rubio called the changed that leadership agreed to a “solid step.” We all know what words like that mean. They mean: Well, it kinda sucks, but it’s enough for me to save face, especially with Americans for Tax Reform and Club for Growth and all these other people threatening to find someone to primary my ass if I vote no.

Like the coach said, the Republicans are who we thought they were. So it’s done. Or is going to be.

As I wrote in The New York Times Friday, it’s the second most unpopular piece of major domestic legislation of the last 27 years. The first most unpopular? The attempt to repeal Obamacare earlier this year. Nice work, 115th Congress!

You think this is bad, think about what’s next. What’s next are cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other domestic spending programs. Because this is the Republican formula:

1. Pass massive tax cuts for the top 1 percent.

2. Run up the deficit.

3. A year or two later go, “Oh my God, look at the deficit! This proves that spending is just out of control!”

4. Start taking the axe to entitlement programs and the domestic discretionary budget.

That’s how it works, ever since supply-side became part of conversation. Ronald Reagan cut taxes and ran up deficits like mad, tripling, quadrupling them over Jimmy Carter’s level. George H.W. Bush raised taxes a little, but the economy was so in the doldrums that the deficit was still bad. Along came Bill Clinton, who had to fix it. He raised taxes. He did investments. He got the economy humming. He eliminated the deficit. Gave George W. Bush a surplus.

Then Dubya cut taxes. Twice. And started two unfunded-mandate wars. Up shot the deficit again. Ach, they all said! These deficits. We must cut spending. And bring Social Security under control.

But they never did cut spending, and popular will against Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme was so strong that that one died on the vine fast. Meanwhile they turned the banking system into a casino, and that crashed.

Then came Barack Obama, who, again, had to fix it. He wasn’t able to, quite enough, because his stimulus package should have been much larger than political realities allowed. But he did reduce the deficit substantially. As a percentage of GDP, it went from the 10 percent Bush handed him to around 2.5 percent. And he oversaw 75 consecutive months of job growth. He handed Donald Trump exactly the economy that 14 months ago Trump was saying was a disaster but now is saying is beautiful.

That’s the cycle, folks. That’s how it works. And now, thanks to the GOP, we’re about to open another gash in the deficit. They’ll try to slash away, but I hope and think that by and large they won’t succeed, because if you thought this tax bill was unpopular, wait till you see what happens when they start openly talking about tinkering with people’s nursing home care (Medicaid), prescription drug benefits (Medicare), and fixed pension distributions (Social Security).

And so a Democrat may well get elected in 2021, inheriting a mess from Trump. A deficit. Maybe a bad economy. And it will be on the Democrat to fix it again. And he or she will. But only to a point.

The Republicans, then in opposition, will obstruct and not allow the next Democrat to really fix things, because Republicans will know deep down that public investment would fix the economy, but they’ll rail against it on the grounds that it will… increase the deficit! So they will try to engineer things so that the recovery is tepid, so they can get the Democrat out and cut taxes for the rich one more time and balloon the deficit and start the whole grim process again.

That’s the game. It feels like we’re fated to play it for the next 50 years.

There’s one way out. The next time the Democrats are in power, they need to really turn the tables on tax reform. Not nip and tuck, but really fundamentally do something different. This isn’t the place for all the details. Maybe some future columns. But that will be the only way to break the pattern. They can’t do anything about what Congress is about to do. But they can smash the glass next time they have the hammer, and they’d better do it.

Republicans plan massive cuts to programs for the poor

Under pressure to balance the budget and align with Trump, the House GOP has its eye on food stamps, welfare and perhaps even veterans’ benefits.

By Rachael Bade and Sarah Ferris

House Republicans just voted to slash hundreds of billions of dollars in health care for the poor as part of their Obamacare replacement. Now, they’re weighing a plan to take the scalpel to programs that provide meals to needy kids and housing and education assistance for low-income families.

Donald Trump’s refusal to overhaul Social Security and Medicare — and his pricey wish-list for infrastructure, a border wall and tax cuts — is sending House budget writers scouring for pennies in politically sensitive places: safety-net programs for the most vulnerable.

Under enormous internal pressure to quickly balance the budget, Republicans are considering slashing more than $400 billion in spending through a process to evade Democratic filibusters in the Senate, multiple sources told POLITICO.

The proposal, which would be part of the House Budget Committee's fiscal 2018 budget, won't specify which programs would get the ax; instead it will instruct committees to figure out what to cut to reach the savings. But among the programs most likely on the chopping block, the sources say, are food stamps, welfare, income assistance for the disabled and perhaps even veterans benefits.

If enacted, such a plan to curb safety-net programs — all while juicing the Pentagon’s budget and slicing corporate tax rates — would amount to the biggest shift in federal spending priorities in decades.

Atop that, GOP budget writers will also likely include Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal to essentially privatize Medicare in their fiscal 2018 budget, despite Trump’s unwavering rejection of the idea. While that proposal is more symbolic and won’t become law under this budget, it’s just another thorny issue that will have Democrats again accusing Republicans of “pushing Granny off the cliff.”

“The Budget Committee is trying to force the entire conference and committees of jurisdiction to focus on ways to bring down this deficit,” said senior budget panel member Rep. Tom Cole.

Republicans have long sought to tackle the nearly $20 trillion debt, but Trump has tied their hands by ruling out cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

The Oklahoma Republican, however, acknowledged that mandatory spending reductions could become “very tough issues” — though he declined to name which programs would see major cuts:

“These are hard for anybody, no matter where you’re at on the political spectrum.”

While budget writers are well aware of the sensitive nature of their proposal, they feel they have no choice if they want to balance the budget in a decade, which they’ve proposed for years, and give Trump what he wants.

Enraged by Democrats claiming victory after last month’s government funding agreement, White House officials in recent weeks have pressed Hill Republicans to include more Trump priorities in the fiscal 2018 blueprint.

House Budget Republicans hope to incorporate those wishes and are expected, for example, to budget for Trump’s infrastructure plan. Tax reform instructions will also be included in the budget, paving the way for both chambers to use the powerful budget reconciliation process to push a partisan tax bill through Congress on simple majority votes, as well as the $400 billion in mandatory cuts.

“The critique last time was that we didn’t embed enough Trump agenda items into our budget,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a budget panel member. Trump has "made it clear it will be embedded in this budget. … And so people will see a process much more aligned with President Trump’s agenda in this forthcoming budget.”

New spending, however, makes already tough math even trickier for a party whose mantra is “balance the budget in 10 years.” Lawmakers need to cut roughly $8 trillion to meet that goal, budget experts say. And while a quarter of their savings in previous budgets came from repealing Obamacare and slicing $1 trillion from Medicaid, Republicans cannot count on those savings anymore because their health care bill sucked up all but $150 billion of that stash — relatively speaking, mere pocket change to play with.

Republicans’ first reflex would be to turn to entitlement reform to find savings. Medicare and Social Security, after all, account for the lion’s share of government spending and more than 70 percent of all mandatory spending.

But while former Freedom Caucus conservative-turned-White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has tried to convince the president of the merits of such reforms, Trump has refused to back down on his campaign pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security alone. (He’s reversed himself on a vow not to touch Medicaid, which would see $880 billion in cuts under the Obamacare repeal bill passed by the House.)

Mulvaney, sources say, has been huddling on a weekly basis with House Budget Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) to plot a path forward. There appears to be some common ground to consider cuts to other smaller entitlement programs: While the Office of Management and Budget would not respond to a request for comment, CQ reported Tuesday that the White House was also considering hundreds of billions in cuts to the same programs being eyed by House budget writers.

“I’ve already started to socialize the discussion around here in the West Wing about how important the mandatory spending is to the drivers of our debt,” Mulvaney told radio host Hugh Hewitt in March. “There are ways that we cannot only allow the president to keep his promise, but to help him keep his promise by fixing some of these mandatory programs.”

Final details of the GOP’s budget plan aren’t expected until June, and specific language mandating the mandatory cuts still hasn’t been written, according to one aide familiar with the process.

Committees would then have several months to put together the department-by-department details on what exactly to cut, proposals that probably won’t land until the fall at the earliest, given the legislative calendar.

The idea could run into problems: It is unclear whether such cuts would be acceptable in the more moderate Senate. In order for the proposal to actually move, Senate Republicans would need to include the same instructions in their own budget.

In the House, Republican leaders hope the moves toward deficit reduction will buy them some good will with conservatives going into September, when the party’s right flank will have to swallow difficult votes to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government.

Cole argued the deficit-trimming push will appeal to the House Freedom Caucus, which blocked the House GOP’s budget on the floor last year in protest of spending levels its members considered too high.

But pleasing conservatives this time around will fuel anxiety on the other end of the conference. Endorsing cuts to programs for the poor will certainly make centrist House Republicans — many of whom were uncomfortable voting to slice Medicaid just weeks ago in the Obamacare repeal bill — very uncomfortable.

Rep. Charlie Dent, a centrist and senior Appropriations Committee member, said budget reconciliation instructions should center solely on tax reform, which “is complex enough on its own,” he said.

“All I can say is: Tax reform by itself is very complex and controversial,” Dent (R-Pa.) said. “Adding some of these other changes will only make the tax reform more difficult.”

Asked about mandatory programs that might be cut, he added: “This will create challenges, no question about it. When so many of the entitlement programs are taken off the table for discussion … that limits our ability to fund the non-defense discretionary programs and other mandatory programs that affect a lot of people.”

GOP backers of the idea will argue in the coming weeks and months that moderates have voted for GOP budgets that included similar cuts in the past — so they should be able to support them again.

But if House GOP leadership has learned anything from the Obamacare repeal debacle, it should be that voting for something that has no chance of becoming law and makes for great campaign fodder is much easier than backing a bill that could be enacted.

Social Security safe? Here's the double-talking regime's plan to gut it

By Meteor Blades

 

Heather Digby Parton at Salon writes—Donald Trump is coming for your Social Security: How the GOP plans a bait and switch to cut taxes — and pensions:

It seems like a lifetime ago that Republican National Committee chief Reince Priebus brokered a meeting between the unexpected presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan to try iron out their differences. But it was just a little less than a year ago in a world that seems more and more distant by the minute. They spoke of many things, with Ryan desperately trying to convince Trump that he needed to adopt the GOP agenda and Trump telling him he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Bloomberg reported one particular exchange in the meeting that stuck in my mind:

According to a source in the room, Trump criticized Ryan’s proposed entitlement cuts as unfair and politically foolish. “From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,” Trump told Ryan. “But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’”

Trump may not have realized it, but Republicans have never won the presidency by explicitly saying they were going to make cuts to Social Security. They have always used euphemisms, saying they were going to “privatize it” or promising to “save it” from itself. The reason Democrats continually win the day (if not the office they are vying for) is because people don’t trust Republican double-talk on the subject and for good reason. They have been trying to destroy Social Security since it was enacted.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote in “The Coming of the New Deal” that President Franklin Roosevelt knew that creating a dedicated funding stream gave workers the “legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions.” He said, “With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.” Schlesinger also noted that Republicans and business leaders at the time were appalled, with one warning that the program would “undermine our national life by destroying initiative, discouraging thrift, and stifling individual responsibility.”

Donald Trump’s comment in that meeting last year that he agreed with Ryan on a “moral basis” indicated that he was on the same page as those earlier plutocrats even if he sings a different tune in public. [...]

Trump budget cuts meals on wheels to fund defense contractors

"The preliminary outline for President Donald Trump's 2018 budget could slash some funding for a program that provides meals for older, impoverished Americans.

The budget blueprint suggests cutting funds for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by about $6.2 billion, a 13.2% decrease from its 2017 funding level.

Here's what Trump wants cut

Almost half of those savings will come by eliminating the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which provides money for a variety of community development and anti-poverty programs, including Meals on Wheels."

Mick Mulvaney defends meals on wheels cuts

"At a news conference Thursday, Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s budget chief, defended proposed cuts to the Meals on Wheels program, which provides food aid to needy senior citizens, by saying the program is one of many that is “just not showing any results.”



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/16/trump-budget-chief-says-meals-on-wheels-is-not-showing-any-results-hes-wrong/?utm_term=.076df1fe6814

Paul Ryan Promises 'Unified Republican Government' Will Destroy America in 2017

Take away healthcare because it's hurting you. Take away corporate taxes (and raise yours). Take away regulations that protect you from clean air, water, and food.

By Hrafnkell Haraldsson


Paul Ryan promises, “In 2017, we’ll deliver results.” The results, unfortunately, if Republicans can be bothered to do anything at all, will be uniformly bad for Americans.

We’ve heard this song and dance before. The changes are being billed as an improvement, a “better way” and they even have a fancy new website full of lies to back it up. But the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has never been about anything but empty talk while they do literally nothing, at best, solutions in search of problems.

The real actions Ryan plans to take are attacks on the American people on behalf of big corporations.

“Relief from Obamacare—this law is hurting families and it’s only going to get worse. Relief from this broken tax code that is costing us jobs, competitiveness, and growth. Relief from overreach and needless regulations that are crushing livelihoods and industries across this country.”

In other words, Take away healthcare because it’s hurting you. Take away corporate taxes (and raise yours). Take away regulations that protect you from clean air, water, and food. Livelihoods aren’t being hurt – yet. But they will be if Ryan gets his way.



“At the start of this year, we as House Republicans made a number of commitments to the American people.

“First, we pledged to open up the process—to find common ground for the good of the country. If you look at how we are wrapping up our work for the end of the year here, we’ve done just that: 21st Century Cures. The National Defense Authorization Bill. The water resources bill.

“These initiatives all went through the committees. They are all bipartisan. And they are all House-Senate agreements.

“That is how we should do things here. It’s important, because that’s exactly how things should work.

“The most overarching thing we set out to do—going all the way back to our retreat in Baltimore almost a year ago—was that we would raise our gaze. We would go from being seen as simply being an opposition party to being a proposition party. And with 7 out of 10 Americans unhappy with the direction our country is headed, we felt we had a duty—a moral obligation—to offer our fellow citizens a better way forward. And that’s exactly what we did.

“We did not just check the box to win an election, or we didn’t do this so I could just [promote] a website—better.gop—a thousand times with you. The idea was, if we actually won the election by campaigning on solutions and ideas, we would be ready to govern.

“And here we are. We are ready to hit the ground running, and we need to hit the ground running. We gave the people a very clear choice, and now the people have given us very clear instructions: deliver results and deliver relief.

“Relief from Obamacare—this law is hurting families and it’s only going to get worse. Relief from this broken tax code that is costing us jobs, competitiveness, and growth. Relief from overreach and needless regulations that are crushing livelihoods and industries across this country.

“That is what a unified Republican government will be about. It will be about helping our people reach their potential, and making America great again.

“So 2016 was about raising our gaze. 2017 is going to be about doing big things for our country.”

The words “unified Republican government” ought to throw fear into the hearts of every American. The Republican plan for 2017 is a disaster. The Republican plan is a mockery.

The real burden, from Ryan’s perspective, is that placed by government on corporations to prevent them from poisoning and killing us all in search of a profit.

Bernie Sanders Goes On The Warpath As Trump Nominee Signals Cuts To Social Security

By Jason Easley on Tue, Nov 29th, 2016 at 5:40 pm

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blasted Donald Trump for lying about protecting Social Security after the president-elect nominated a man who is dedicated to killing Social Security and Medicare to run HHS. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blasted Donald Trump for lying about protecting Social Security after the president-elect nominated a man who is dedicated to killing Social Security and Medicare to run HHS.

Sen. Sanders reacted to Trump nominated Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) to run HHS in a statement, “Donald Trump asked workers and seniors to vote for him because he was the only Republican candidate who would not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – programs that are of life-and-death importance for millions of Americans.

Now, he has nominated a person for secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price, who has a long history of wanting to do exactly the opposite of what Trump campaigned on. Rep. Price has a long history of wanting to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

What hypocrisy! Mr. Trump needs to tell the American people that what he said during the campaign were just lies, or else appoint an HHS secretary who will protect these programs and do what Trump said he would do.”

Sanders is correct. There is no way that Trump would nominate a man who is deeply committed to cutting Social Security and Medicare if he had any intention of keeping the programs fully funded and in place. The nomination of Rep. Price to HHS indicates that the Trump administration is going to be targeting two programs that are beloved by the American people.

Trump has signaled that he is about to make the one move that will turn Bernie Sanders into an immediate and lifelong political enemy of the incoming administration. Sen. Sanders will fight tooth and nail to protect Social Security and Medicare.

Donald Trump is coming for the Social Security and Medicare of those who voted for him. 

Democrats tried to warn seniors that this would happen if they voted for Trump, and it looks like all of their warnings are about to come true.

Tom Price isn’t coming to HHS to save Social Security. Price is coming to destroy it.

If you're an elected Democrat who is open to cutting Social Security, or Medicare or S.N.A.P., Fuck you.

By cali

It doesn't matter if you call yourself a Democrat. It's not excusable because you support marriage equality. It's not enough that you support reproductive rights. Being a social liberal isn't enough.

Period.

If you're an elected Democrat who leaves the door open to cuts in Social Security and the safety net, it won't go unnoticed.

And yeah, Fuck you.

A Democrat Wants To Cut Social Security?

By Colonel Rainsborough  

Just today, I read a story about a clueless California Republican who declared that Social Security was a bad idea.  After laughing about how hopeless the Republicans have become, I read this:

theintercept.com/...
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called on an audience of business and political elites earlier this week to respond to populist anger by lobbying harder for a deficit-reduction package that would reduce corporate tax rates and cut public retirement programs such as Social Security.

As the children would say, “DaFuq?”

Although a dominant populist sentiment is that the system is already rigged in favor of the rich, Warner suggested that the “business community” needs to get more involved in politics or face unpleasant repercussions.

“If you don’t think the frustration of Americans with our overall system, — not just our political system, but our business system, our tax code — is at the boiling point, then Katy bar the door!,” he said. “The walls that are gonna have to be built, may not be at borders, they may be around neighborhoods the way they are in many Third World countries around the world,” Warner warned.

The cure for corrupting corporate power is MORE corporate influence?  I am not making this up.  While the panelists acknowledged that the public is angry about inequality, the proposed cure is more inequality.

I especially like the idea that Warner anticipates that rich people will have to live in walled communities to protect themselves from angry, unwashed peasants.  Oh, wait…Most of them already do…

Wait, I think I misinterpreted his idea.  He wants to build the walls around OUR neighborhoods.  Palestine, after all, is such a successful community planning experiment.

Warner was speaking on Monday at the Milken Institute’s 2016 Global Conference. 

Yeah, that Milken — the guy who was convicted in 1990 of securities fraud and tax evasion.  Perhaps in the near future, there will be a conference named after Bernie Madoff.

Apparently, Sen. Warner was unhappy that the awful Simpson-Bowles “Grand Bargain”plan was not accepted.

The commission put together a plan that called for corporate tax reform focused on cutting the corporate tax rate and entitlement reform based on policies such as raising the Social Security retirement age. Obama never embraced the plan, but a group of lawmakers, including Warner, known as the “Gang of Six” put forth legislation that mirrored its recommendations.

“We’d have gotten 70 votes if the establishments on both sides had not shot down our effort,” Warner complained on Monday.

We would have gotten away with it if it had not been for those lousy…

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.

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)

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.”