From the New York Times:
Congressional Republicans, eyeing a midterm election victory that could hand them control of the House and the Senate, have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs. ...
The Republican leaders who would decide what legislation the House and the Senate would consider if their party won control of Congress have not said specifically what, if anything, they would do to the programs. ...
Yet several influential Republicans have signaled a new willingness to push for Medicare and Social Security spending cuts as part of future budget negotiations with President Biden. Their ideas include raising the age for collecting Social Security benefits to 70 from 67 and requiring many older Americans to pay higher premiums for their health coverage. ...
24 comments:
Social Security spending is not a significant problem, at all. A few tweaks, and it will be fine. It's mostly a pay as you go system. Just increase taxes a bit, and we're all good. I want to increase benefits/taxes for this one. Strongly disagree with the Republicans on this one. Don't touch it. Taking money from retirees/disability beneficiaries is just cruel.
Medicare spending is a severe problem that needs to be dealt with. It's causing massive deficit spending, with no appreciable benefit for the money that is being spent. It's a black hole. The Republicans can gut this system and I would smile. The entire U.S. Healthcare system is set up to pump money into the pockets of people who don't need it.
These are two completely different issues/programs and conflating them is idiocy.
If you are under the age of 40 you know that they will end up raising your retirement and Medicare age and your taxes. No doubt about it. Personally I think they should cut benefits, the can kicking needs to come home to those kickers.
@10:08
Under 40 here, raising retirement/medicare age is reasonable and I've never thought otherwise. Raising taxes or cutting benefits is always within the discretion of Congress but the claim that it is necessary is untrue. The "can kicking" has gone on for over a century and there is no necessity it be ended. To the extent it is used as an argument, it's made in bad faith and in reality is just a means to get to the end of the most popular and probably most cost-efficient publically-funded program in history.
11:38 call me in 20 years and tell me working to 70 still sounds like fun!
Look at the 4-5 posts you’ve had on this topic over the last handful of months. The goalposts are shifting. It’s gone from—talking about cuts is the third rail; to—Ds are overreacting to Rs talking about this; to—this is the R’s stated plan.
If the midterms and 2024 go the way Rs want it to, I very much expect that this will happen. Why else would they be laying the ground work to shift the goalposts now if they won’t jump on it given the chance?
They could leave early retirement at age 62 but at an even lower rate.
Something has to be done either lower benefit amounts (ouch), raise full retirement age, raise SSA tax rate, etc. Raising the rate 1% seems the most palatable.
Agree 12:57 retroactive for the retiring generation.
Ever notice how easy it is to raise the taxes of others? Lets tax the young more, move the benefit even further out of reach and raise the amount they pay for the same service, that way it doesnt cost me anything!!!! Woooooooo!
I'm curious about something. Has there ever been a serous proposal to implement a sliding scale retirement age linked to lifetime or recent earnings? I'm thinking generally higher-paid jobs are often also less physically demanding and therefore possible to continue to a higher age.
@11:47
11:38 here. It doesn't sound particular fun now. It's just reality that the benefits as calculated were meant to cover individuals for a particular window of years, and as that window gets bigger, three options exist; cut benefits (ha, no), increase taxes (ha, also not gonna happen), or raise retirement age (happened before, seems the most likely option that will be taken).
For some of those retired now, the full retirement age has been raised from 65 to 67 for people born 1960 and later. The SSA tax rate started at 1 percent in 1937. Now 7.65 including Medicare. Last went up about 30 years ago.
The reality is that absolutely nothing is going to happen to Social Security or Medicare as long as a Democrat is president and Republicans can't override a filibuster.
All this talk about how Congress will raise the retirement age to 70 for Social Security and Medicare and cut benefits. Well, they won't if the voters don't elect these people to Congress. While we still have a semblance of democracy, Congress and the President can decide to make those changes but the voters decide who is in Congress and the White House.
Very interesting that we are talking about raising retirement age when life expectancies for most American's are going in the wrong direction. Particularly, white high school degree only Americans. Something unheard of in advanced Western industrial societies. So at some point most American's won't live to retirement age anyway due to our major policy and societal failures. We can come up with, or print trillions, to bail out Wall Street Bankers and trillions for wars but we can't have decent healthcare and a civilized retirement plan. This is a failure of policy and political will.
I hope the Republicans don't try to cut SSA administrative costs, which would affect hiring and overtime.
And they should not try to cut telework for SSA employees either.
These types of cuts would lead to even greater SSA backlogs, and employee morale and retention problems .
@ 9:18 "Social Security spending is not a significant problem, at all. A few tweaks, and it will be fine. It's mostly a pay as you go system. Just increase taxes a bit, and we're all good. I want to increase benefits/taxes for this one. Strongly disagree with the Republicans on this one. Don't touch it. Taking money from retirees/disability beneficiaries is just cruel."
100 percent correct. It is a simple fix to just raise the earnings threshold. Out here in Cali for example, they have the money to educate in the public school system. The 5th largest economy in the world. Just the crazy spending and siphoning has teachers and administrators always asking for money.
It got me thinking about the SSA spending all that money to upgrade their computer system a while back maybe 5-10 years ago. Basically it did not work and it was like $200-400 million down the drain.
Money really is not the issue. It is how these 2 so-called party politicians allocate. Troubling.
Republicans will play the same game they did with Obamacare. They'll scream, to a man about how it needs to go, vote dozens of times in sham votes with no chance to succeed (and no real behind the scenes legislative push) to repeal it, chip away at it with attacks from small administrative angles, and then when it looks like they might succeed and actually kill the damn thing, they'll pray that the Dems manage to get a few moderate Republicans or a judge somewhere to save them from themselves. They'll sigh and go WHEWWW, but publicly lambast the moderates as traitors and RINOs.
They're a dog chasing a car. God forbid they actually catch it.
Always consider the self-interest angle when judging what people in congress say. Who is buying influence from those in congress who say they want to cut Social Security and Medicare? You'll find it is people who are very public about their desire to cut those programs. So, those who pass bags of cash to those politicians expect them to publicly say something about cutting the programs. It's the service they paid for. If they don't say something the cash would stop coming, and might start going to people running against them next election.
Of course, it is the dream of such politicians to make programs like those come up for continuation periodically instead of being an entitlement. Then they could basically hold them for ransom.
How weird it must be to vote for someone promising to do things you don’t want them to do, then justify this bizarre behavior on the basis that they’re just a bunch of lying, corrupt windbags whose campaign promises are merely bait for corporate donations. With that level of cognitive dissonance prevailing, I can see why certain certain observant folks might write off large chunks of the electorate as hopeless deplorables.
Republicans cutting Social Security is a Democrat talking point. I haven't heard ANY Republicans talking about it, other than Kevin McCarthy who said, "We want to strengthen Social Security, not cut it," in response to a question.
Tim wake up strengthening to a Republican means CUT CUT CUT
Hi Tim.
There's literally a dozen of them in the Senate alone. Mike Lee got caught on camera talking about how he wants to eliminate the entire program.
If you haven't heard ANY of them doing so, it's because you're actively trying not to.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/yes-some-republican-senators-are-talking-openly-about-social-security-cuts-11667576391
Every year measures are introduced to repeal or modify GPO and WEP. They've been around for decades and are still in place. Introduced bills don't mean SSA is threatened.
There is Mike Lee, who mentioned in 2010 that there might need to be cuts to SSA... Then there's Johnson (Wis), who wants to sunset many programs (including SSA), so that Congress has to vote on them every few years.. Scott (Florida) seems to be the true "cutter." Romney and Lindsey Graham are a group that want to do "something," to "save SSA" from drastic cuts if nothing is done. That group includes Kyrsten Sinema (Dem-Arizona). Plus, a few others have talked about SSDI/SSI, including Tom Cotton, Rand Paul and Joe Manchin Dem-WV). But, it is unlikely they could convince a majority of Republicans to back any of these concepts, which haven't been developed into any plan. Most of these claims of "plans" to defund/cutback SSA/SSDI/SSI are based upon subjective interpretations of a comment or a few comments and not upon actual published plans. The vast amount of people, whether Democrats or Republicans, don't want ANY cuts to SSA.
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