Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is proposing a new program to be administered by Social Security that would give workers up to 12 weeks of benefits at two-thirds of their usual salary at times of family crisis. It would be funded by employer and employee contributions of 0.2% of workers' wages.
Does this have a realistic chance of passage at this point? Of course it doesn't. Tea party Republicans control the House of Representatives. However, this proposal and Senator Warren's proposal to increase Social Security benefits significantly are both signs that Democrats increasingly view expansion of Social Security as a political winner today and something that will become feasible in the not too distant future. Democrats may well decide that proposing to increase Social Security benefits is their best path to win back the House of Representatives.
7 comments:
This has to be a joke. Another program for SSA to administer when it is suffering critical staffing shortages and continues to close offices? Looks like another liberal giveaway program to buy votes.
Define: "Family crisis"
Define: "Two-thirds of usual salary"
Of course, it is always wise to take even more of a worker's wage to help others, because workers are too stupid to save for a future emergency. Anyway, workers must learn the government is better able spend their money to than they are (after only taking a little off the top).
Gillibrand's proposal is DOA and in my opinion rightfully so. FMLA already covers this, albeit unpaid. If you are going to address this, then it needs to be done as an amending of the FMLA rather than an add-on to SSA's already stretched-thin employees.
However, Warren is onto a political winner here. If Roubini is right about this being the end of the gilded age of income inequality, then she is onto something politically with expanding SSA benefits. I'm not saying it is necessarily the correct thing to do, but politically I think she has a winner here.
From where I'm sitting, potential loss of the Senate is Democrats overriding concern. Obama's 2015 budget is to be released Mar 4. Should his budget retain Chained CPI language, that alone could unseat enough Democrats to switch control of the Senate to republican.
How insane. The funding element is seriously understated. What would define family emergency. How long would it take any initial definition to be expanded? Death of a beloved pet? The nation does not need more incentive for folks not to work. Even the French are waking up to that. Pres Obama said he never met anyone who wanted benefits over work. That means he has never been to a SSA office.
We need to stop paying for excessive benefits for federal workers. My tax dollars should not pay for lazy Social Security employees to have so many days off they have to burn before the end of the year that there is no one available to answer phones at the local office and hearing office. There should be no paid leave for family emergencies for federal workers and certainly not health insurance paid for by my tax dollars.
I checked the calendar to make sure it's not April 1. If this proposal is serious, it's so ridiculous that it makes me embarrassed to be a progressive.
The only other explanation is that the liberal Democrats desire to sink the existing Social Security system as much as the conservative Republicans do. Hmmm....
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