… Mr. Biden campaigned on increasing Social Security benefits for many Americans and moving to shore up the program’s finances, funded by higher payroll taxes on workers who earn $400,000 or more.
But his $4 trillion agenda has thus far excluded those efforts, which were also excluded from his first formal budget request as president. Administration officials have suggested privately that Mr. Biden will wait to push Social Security changes later in his term, once he has completed work on infrastructure and other efforts to remake the American economy with a larger role for government.
Mr. Brady and Mr. Crapo [two Republican Senators] alluded to that proposal in their reaction to the firing. “We are concerned that this politicization of the Social Security Administration is just the beginning of efforts to raise payroll taxes,” they said, “and seriously undermines bipartisan efforts to save Social Security for future retirees.
Do Republicans want to filibuster a bill that would increase Social Security benefits in an election year? Is opposing an increase in the FICA tax that would only apply to those with high incomes a political winner for the GOP?
11 comments:
Most Republicans now live in a world where nothing they do has any consequences because their followers are drunk and stupid on the Fox News kool-aid.
Look for them to be fully and proudly obstructionist against everything that Biden tries to do until the next election.
The best idea when a program is running low on funds is to expand it, no?
It worked with estate taxes, something 98% of American's don't run into yet, branded the "death tax", they successfully fought that. So yes, they will indeed fight any tax increase regardless of what it does.
As long as you also increase revenue to the program there is nothing inherently wrong with expanding SSA. In the view of most Democrats it has been underfunded for decades. The FICA tax hasn't been increased in over 30 years after being increased over a dozen times during the program's first half century of existence.
anon@7:14am,
At least the Republicans are honest about their desire to destroy and do away with Social Security.
Democrats tend to spew a lot of hot air on the subject of Agency underfunding, but it always ends up as exactly that, hot air with no substance. Even when they had the White House and both Houses of Congress, they did nothing.
Lets face it, the reality is that neither party really cares about Social Security except as an issue they can trot out at election time, then completely ignore once it has served its purpose.
Pretty standard political game, remind everyone in an election year that the the other party is against helping them and expanding a popular entitlement program. Standard class war politics. Won't matter though culture wars rule the day. Republican voters demonstrate time and again they are more than willing to vote against their economic interest.
Eventually, if they are going to keep the program afloat, a tax increase on everyone is coming. There simply are not enough rich people to tax to make up all of the shortfall. It is going to come back to land on the shoulder of the middle and lower income folks, there are just more of them to shoulder the burden. Been needed for decades, but that is another can of worms.
The Social Security 2100 Act, Larson's Bill, would increase benefits but has a very small increase, 1%, for those now employed and a substantial increase over the zero now being paid for people with incomes over $400,000 per year. Apparently, this is too much for Republicans to stomach.
An adjustment in the PIA formula to increase benefits for low wage earnings and slightly decrease for those now earning over $100,000 could increase benefits with no tax increase. You have to pay for increase somehow, band a small adjustment now should be agreeable if the Republicans care at all for helping the most needy.
It seems like raising the cap on taxable earnings is the answer. Right now, it is about $142K. Seems like some bean counters could figure an increase that would create solvency down the road.
Seems like both parties have kicked the can down the road to fix this shortfall. I remember when Obama had these grand promises to fix Social Security that did not happen. Of course, Chump did nothing except elect a commish who was maniacal against telework.
Someone will have to bit eh bullet before 2030 or so.
10:26 wrote: "At least the Republicans are honest about their desire to destroy and do away with Social Security."
Perhaps you missed the Republican response to Saul's firing. Here's a sampling:
Tom Cotton (R-Ark.): "This unprecedented and unjustified move by Joe Biden puts Social Security at risk."
Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): "President Biden is overtly politicizing the SSA. People don’t want their retirement and benefits politicized, they just want an agency that works. We had that under Commissioner Saul.”
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): "I agree with @ChuckGrassley. This removal would be an unprecedented and dangerous politicization of the Social Security Administration."
Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) & Kevin Brady (R-Tex.): "We are concerned that this politicization of the Social Security Administration is just the beginning of efforts to raise payroll taxes and seriously undermines bipartisan efforts to save Social Security for future retirees."
Do those sound like Republicans who are being honest about their desire to do destroy Social Security? I see Republicans who are pretending to care about Social Security so that they can fire up their constituents, who don't know any better.
Political theatre. The same would have come from the Dems if the shoe was on the other foot. Get over it.
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