Back in 2015 Martin O'Malley was running for President. He didn't get very far but he did take these positions on Social Security:
- Increase Social Security benefits. O'Malley proposed increasing minimum Social Security benefits to 125% above the poverty line and raising benefits for low- and minimum-wage workers, who the governor claims currently don't receive enough benefits and often don't have any retirement savings at all.
- Raise the cap on the payroll tax for workers making more than $250,000 a year.
O'Malley claimed that raising the payroll tax — along with raising the
minimum wage and enacting immigration reform — will pay for many of his
proposed reforms. ...
Please remember that as Commissioner, O'Malley would have no ability to adopt such plans. Congress has to do that. As Commissioner, he probably couldn't even lobby for such plans. That seems to be an unwritten rule these days. It's not always been that way, though. I've read the autobiography of Arthur Altmeyer, the first Commissioner of Social Security and an extremely important figure in the history of Social Security in this country. As Commissioner, Altmeyer was engaged in lobbying Congress almost full time. Other people were actually running the agency. By the way, I do not recommend reading the Altmeyer autobiography. It's really dry and tedious.
Also by the way, the White House has lined up quite a number of endorsements for O’Malley’s nomination but none from Republicans.
8 comments:
Just for fun
Average SSA Retirement Benefit 2023 $1781.63
Federal Poverty Level 2023 $1132.50
125% of FPL $1415.62
The $250,000-plus income bracket roughly represents the top 5% of earners in the country, according to US Census Bureau data.Jun 1, 2022 Bloomberg citing US Census Bureau data.
Not sure where the chicken in every pot and two cars will come from though.
930 you quoted an average. There are many, many people below the $1,400 level. Many below 1,000.
@9:30
The solvency issue is overblown by both parties for political reasons, but even if you believe it, removing the cap fixes 76% of the shortfall. That, in addition to a 1.4% tax increase more than solves it. Even adding a minimum of 125% FPL is solvent with those 2 policy changes.
There's a fun calculator online to test potential policy decisions.
https://www.crfb.org/socialsecurityreformer/
This is kind of interesting timing given that there is a little over a year and a half or so left in Biden’s term. If he doesn’t win re-election and based on what happened with Saul, is it possible we will have a new commissioner in 2025? 3 commissioners in 2 years is textbook disaster for a classical Weber style top-down bureaucracy like SSA.
There are Republican supports in the White House link posted. Bloomberg was a Republican mayor at times, and Manchin sits on the GOP side of the aisle at SOTU and votes their agenda frequently. I think he'd also be the first Democratic-nominated SSA commissioner since the spinning off from HHS.
It was known that he wouldn't nominate Kamikaze for the spot. However, I don't know why he waited so long to nominate anyone. The sooner that SJW and her crew are out of the 9th Floor, the better.
The biggest problem with the current ACOSS is that she has zero experience in running a large organization, followed closely by her weird extreme obsession with DEI issues. And, don’t get me wrong, DEI is absolutely important. But it can’t be the singular pillar that the agency leans on if it wishes to survive long term. However, what she fails to take into consideration is that her failure to address serious service/recruitment/retention problems within SSA means that NO ONE gets proper service as at all, regardless of race, gender, disabled, or abled. So she can harp and scream about underserved communities of color all she wants, but no one is getting served properly because the agency is a sinking ship. She’s in the bow of the boat screaming while ignoring the massive hole in the hull taking on water. Delusion at its finest.
Because it's a suicide mission for anyone Biden nominates. The Republicans are still pissed that Biden disposed of Saul (rightfully). Even putting that aside, there has been a poor track record in recent years of getting SSA commissioners nominated by Democratic presidents confirmed.
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