Devote Estate Tax Revenues To Social Security Trust Funds?

     From an opinion piece written for The Hill by Nancy Altman, co-director of Strengthen Social Security and a member of the Social Security Advisory Board:

Of the many giveaways to the super-rich in the Republican tax bill, the elimination of the estate tax stands out. This tax, the government’s most progressive source of revenue, does not affect 99.8 percent of Americans. Rather, it is paid by Republicans’ billionaire donors. ...

If Republicans don’t want the revenue from that top 0.2 percent of wealthiest Americans to run the government, let’s dedicate it to Social Security and use it to expand those modest but vital benefits for everyone. ...

[T]he bulk of income gains captured by the wealthy either fall above Social Security’s maximum earnings contribution cap (currently $127,200), or are unearned income on which they do not pay Social Security contributions.

Since the earnings of high-income workers have increased much more rapidly than the average in the last several decades, Social Security now covers only about 82 percent of all wages. In 2016 alone, those at the top paid $80 billion less to Social Security, only because the cap has slipped from covering 90 percent of wages, as Congress intended, to 82 percent today. Those are billions of dollars that should have gone to Social Security but instead stayed in the pockets of the wealthiest among us. Unquestionably, the richest are not paying their fair share into Social Security. ...

Isn’t it more than fair that their heirs, who had nothing to do with creating the wealth, receive most of it, but not every single penny of it? Isn’t it more than fair that a small piece of all that wealth go to the rest of us, without whom that wealth would never have been amassed? ...

Social Security Will Be Affected By Republican Tax Bill

     The tax bill that Republicans hope to pass would potentially have effects upon Social Security. It would trigger budget rules that would demand significant cuts in Social Security and Medicare. Congress would still have to pass those cuts but they would have held a gun to their heads to force themselves to do so. However, the bill would end a tax loophole that has allowed many professionals to avoid the FICA tax that supports Social Security by using pass-through corporations.

"Backlogged To The Point Of Near-Absurdity"

     The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is reporting on the effects that Social Security's horrible backlogs are having on disabled people. Here are some excerpts:

...[T]he system is backlogged to the point of near-absurdity. Local applicants can wait up to two years for a hearing before a judge, with many cities facing longer waits. A hearing is scheduled after applicants have already been denied — as most typically initially are — a process in itself that can take up to eight months.

And so as the bureaucratic clock creeps toward a hearing, many applicants are faced, month after month, with slashed household income, dwindling or drained savings accounts and often no option left but to pile car payments, mortgage payments, the electricity bill and prescriptions and groceries on to credit cards....

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article184703718.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article184703718.html#storylink=cp

A staffer in the Washington, D.C., office of Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas — who is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee where he serves as the chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee and sits on the Health Subcommittee referred calls to health adviser Darren Webb.

Webb, however, did not return an email message. ...

A Fort Worth woman who has had breast cancer, has undergone heart surgery and suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that limits her lung functionality to 54 percent, filed her initial disability claim two years ago. She isn’t scheduled for her hearing until early 2018.

She said she is “appalled at the process” and was too scared to be quoted by name for this story because she feared jeopardizing her chances at winning her claim, or delaying the process further. She said she has “has always worked and paid my taxes,” but is now in “serious financial problems.” If not for her ex-husband helping her pay bills, she said she would have lost her house through this process. ...

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article184703718.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article184703718.html#storylink=cpy

Good Contracting Move?

     When a Social Security Administrative Law Judge holds a hearing, there's always someone helping him or her -- escorting the claimant and attorney into the hearing room, operating the recording equipment, taking notes, etc. I've heard this person referred to as a hearing recorder or monitor or reporter. Some years ago, the hearing recorder was a regular Social Security employee. Then the agency began using contract workers to do the job. The hearing recorders were paid a set amount per hearing -- as long as the claimant showed up for the hearing. When my client failed to show up for the hearing, I wasn't the only one who was disappointed! The contracting was done on an individual basis with each hearing recorder.

     We've now heard that Social Security has decided to contract with a firm which will hire and manage hearing recorders to provide this service generally. I don't know how widespread this is. It covers at least all the hearing offices in North Carolina. This will start at the beginning of 2018. 

     The contractor that has been hired has informed the current hearing recorders in North Carolina that they can continue the work but that they'll be paid 40% less. Almost all of the hearing recorders I've talked to have told me they're not interested in taking a 40% pay cut and working for the new contractor.

     Like a lot of jobs, the hearing recorder job may seem easy to perform and not that important -- until you get someone performing the job badly. I'm concerned that because the job will pay so much less that the new people hired will be unable to provide quality service. I know that at best there's going to be problems and frustration come January.

I'd Call This Answer Seriously Incomplete -- Why?

     From app., some newspaper that doesn't want you to know its name or where it's located:

In my daughter’s senior year of high school, she had an accident that paralyzed her. It doesn’t look like she will be able to work in the near future, and since she has never worked she hasn’t paid Social Security taxes. Can Social Security still help her?

Your daughter may qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. SSI is a needs-based program paid for by general revenue taxes and run by Social Security. It helps provide monetary support to people who are disabled and who have not paid enough in Social Security taxes to qualify for Social Security disability benefits. To qualify for SSI, a person must be disabled, and have limited resources and income. For more information, visit our website and check out our publication, “You May Be Able To Get SSI,” at www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs.

Valerie Fisher is district manager of the Social Security office at 3310 Route 66, Neptune, NJ 07753. Call 800-772-1213 for information.

     This may have been prepared by some press officer at Social Security rather than by Ms. Fisher. In any case, it's an incomplete answer. It's the sort of thing that is often, perhaps usually, missed. What is it?

That's A Bleak Image

     I think that half the press articles about Social Security use this same bleak stock photo. Why can't they do better? Is that how we want people thinking about Social Security? Here's a few links to give you an idea: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, USA Today, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. What would a better illustration look like?

Lest We Forget

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

From For The Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon

Social Security Numbers Must Go?

     From Tech Crunch:

Eyeing more secure alternatives to Social Security numbers, lawmakers in the U.S. are looking abroad. Today [November 8], the Senate Commerce Committee questioned former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Verizon chief privacy officer Karen Zacharia and both the current and former CEOs of Equifax on how to protect consumers against major data breaches. The consensus was that Social Security numbers have got to go. ...

“Some combination of digital multi-factor authentication… is the right path,” former Equifax CEO Richard Smith said when asked about such a program.

Multiple times throughout the hearing, Brazil’s Infraestrutura de Chaves Públicas system of citizen IDs through digital certificates came up as a potential model for the U.S. as it moves forward. In this model, a certificate lasts for three years at maximum and can be used to issue a digital signature much like written signatures are used now. Unlike its counterpart in the U.S., these identity accounts can be revoked and reissued easily through an established national protocol. ...

Last month, White House cybersecurity coordinator Rob Joyce made it clear that the Trump administration is also interested in abandoning Social Security numbers in favor of a more secure, more digital form of identification, stating that the form of ID has “outlived its usefulness.”