Via email:
I can almost guarantee that you know someone — a family member, friend, or neighbor — who counts on Social Security checks to get by.
That’s why I was shocked to hear that the President’s newest budget proposal would cut $100 billion in Social Security benefits. Our Social Security system is critical to protecting middle class families, and we cannot allow it to be dismantled inch by inch.
The President’s policy proposal, known as “chained CPI,” would re-calculate the cost of living for Social Security beneficiaries. That new number won’t keep up with inflation on things like food and health care — the basics that we need to live.
In short, “chained CPI” is just a fancy way to say “cut benefits for seniors, the permanently disabled, and orphans.”
Two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for most of their income; one-third rely on it for at least 90% of their income. These people aren’t stashing their Social Security checks in the Cayman Islands and buying vacation homes in Aruba – they are hanging on by their fingernails to their place in the middle class.
My brothers and I grew up in an America that invested in its kids and built a strong middle class. An America that allowed millions of children to rise from poverty and establish secure lives. An America that created Social Security and Medicare so that seniors could live with dignity.
We can’t chip away at America’s middle class and break the promise we make to our seniors.
Your Senator at work.
More like her, please!!
I think we’re looking at the winning candidate in the 2016 presidential election — I’m not going to say for what party.
Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum — and Ms. Warren is an object lesson in that for the Democratic Party leadership.
…is America ready for Clinton-Warren 2016?
Put her in charge of reorganizing the banks and let Hillary stay awesome on foreign policy and maybe take another swing at healthcare. LOVE IT
to triangulate just a touch to the right of Warren will be Hillarious. “I’ll make the banks just slightly too big to fail, and subsidize banker bonuses.”
The 2016 election cycle is shaping up to be a hoot for both parties.
Now that sounds fantastic to me!
Keep fighting for a country that keeps it’s promises. That “strong middle class” is almost history. You’re the best!
I had a feeling this would happen based on my assessment of the Senator. It’s one thing for Sanders to come out against it, its another thing entirely for Warren who was viewed as a key Obama ally. Great stuff!
“a key Obama ally.” I knocked on doors for that woman to pull this party back toward policies that make sense, not to stand with Obama as he offers up bad policy after bad policy in the unrequited hopes that some dweeb on a DC talk show will say he’s “reasonable.”
Same for me in terms of knocking on doors and giving $ to her campaign etc etc etc — and thousands more like us.
Very pleased with my senior Senator today. Am reminded of the following bit from the recent Phoenix profile:
What Obama has done today is give a big fat middle finger to all of us at the grassroots level of the Democratic Party, as well as the Democratic US Senators running for re-election in 2014, who are tasked with maintaining the Democratic majority in 2014, which was already a heavy lift. No doubt Senators Merkeley and Franken are THRILLED. And speaking as one of those people who will be asked to donate and work for Democratic candidates next year, thanks a whole heck of a lot, Mr. President. MAJOR FAIL.
And right on cue, as if they had it already drafted which of course they did, the Republicans debut their campaign for 2014: The Democrats tried to cut your Social Security!!!
And Maddow and Hayes pointed out yesterday that Billo and his Faux pals have already started that line of attack as well. Billo even had the gall to say “how dare he cut Mrs. O’Reilly’s benefits?”.
How many times does this need to happen until Obama wakes up?
Besides complaining about what Obama is suggesting ( throwing rocks), how about some solutions to the budget issues. What are her suggestions to save social security?
For example
Having unearned income be subject to social security tax? This your idea or Warren’s proposals?
She has proposed it at various times in the past. I support it wholeheartedly. Your buddy Sunapee Scott Brown tried to hit her for it last year.
Interested if she wants to cap it at all, do employers have to pay the tax as well? Or is this just a thought but won’t propose it.
to spread information around in furtherance of debate, but I’m not your research assistant.
Democrats Hide When Asked About Ending The Payroll Cap
Four Senators expressly declined to comment through their press offices to answer their questions on the payroll cap:
Chris Coons (D-DE)
Mark Udall (D-CO)
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
She studying the issue? Fenway said she supports raising the cap?
I’d like to think the best of Sen Warren, but it’s hard to see any good reason for her to run away from this issue. I apologize for not figuring out how to include links in my posts, but if you google the first line of my post you will find that post on today’s daily kos.
Lifting the cap on payroll taxes would affect only a tiny group of people but virtually everybody on the Sunday talk shows, and everyone in congress is part of that tiny group and would lose money if the cap were abandoned. The simplest argument is that their opposition is pure self interest.
And of course, there is no logical reason for a cap. The same people who argue that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and that the trust fund isn’t real tell us that we can’t tamper with the sacred payroll tax cap because it would change the very nature of Social Security.
So the cap is just never mentioned.
No need to make noise right now on an issue like the cap when there’s nothing remotely approximating legislation on this before the Senate. The Obama budget will likely not come before the Senate without major changes. She has said in the past that she supports a cap adjustment, and today said (again, coyly) in an email to me: “We can make modest changes that will keep the system solvent without cutting back on benefits.”
If we’re not cutting benefits, the most obvious “modest change” is a cap adjustment. But there’s plenty of time to determine what policy to advocate, and the specific numbers involved, when we reach a point where an actual Social Security solution is at hand.
on making the rec list on DKos, by the way.
but pass on her message. The name “Elizabeth Warren” is pure magic over there, as it should be.
SS is NOT part of the budget. It is accounted for separately and is not itself, to the best of my knowledge, running a deficit. The only reason it’s on the table at all is the GOP doesn’t like it and President Prenegotiator seems willing to give it up in the name of “compromise”.
There is no surplus. It’s on the table b/c what we are doing is unsustainable. Kiddos to Obama. As he said in 2012, it’s called arithmatic.
There is a separate funding source for Social Security. It ran a surplus for nearly 30 years or so. That money has used to pay for general budget programs, making it easier to slash taxes on the wealthiest, who have gotten all the gains since the 2008 crash and virtually all the gains since the 1970s.
So somehow the solution to our overall budget deficit problem is to leave taxes low on runaway top incomes but cut the program that is not only solvent, it has been a piggy bank for the rest of the budget? That makes no sense at all.
General budget: raise taxes on top 5% of earners (including Buffet Rule, Tobin Tax, and capital gains/dividends tax), cut bad subsidies and excessive defense spending.
Social security: raise the cap to cover 90% of income subject to Social Security.
Done.
The cap may have made sense a hundred years ago. It doesn’t make sense today.
Gosh, and it feels like the New Deal was only 80 years ago! How time flies. 😉
I was aiming for a zinger that emphasized how different the political and cultural world was that produced the cap. Payroll tax withholding was new, novel, and controversial. Federally-insured banks were new, because millions of families had been destroyed by bank failures.
I should have chosen wording more like “The cap may have made sense last century”.
and it feels like last century was only 14 years ago. How time drags 😉
support eliminating the cap entirely, for two reasons. First, running too big a surplus would lead to exactly the type of piggy bank shenanigans we’ve had since 1983.
Second, it would result in some very high income people saying “I paid X a year into S.S. and I’m not getting anywhere near that. It’s a redistributive welfare program.” This scenario will help Social Security’s opponents undermine political support for the program.
As STom and others can point out I used to favor this as well, but based on my limited experience with means testing for bankruptcy, its very easy to manipulate and will likely save little money for the taxpayers while generating a lot of money for Binder and Binder. Additionally it turns SSA into an anti-poverty program and undermines its political support. Raising the cap would have a much better effect on ensuring the rich are not getting SS checks (since they’d be paying more through taxes than they get out of it).
If we have to have a ‘sistah souljah’ moment we could crack down on SSD payments. My dad is on it and his legitimately disabled, so I am highly sympathetic to those that need it, as is a mentally disabled nephew, but the percentage of people on disability outweighs the ADA estimate of how many adults are disabled. So that should be looked into, I’d favor raising the retirement age only as part of a package that would raise the cap, and only to 66 or 67.
I saw, on Chris Hayes the other day, a panel discussing this. And the Bush Social Security commissioner was on there. He was one of five or six recent Social Security commissioners who signed a letter saying it’s just not so that people who shouldn’t qualify are getting SSD. My experience a few years back, working in the federal courts, was that the SSA uses every trick at its disposal to deny applications.
The retirement age already is at 67 for people born 1960 or later, and phased in between 65 and 67 for people born between 1938 and 1959. I don’t support raising it any more as long as our economy can’t produce enough decent jobs, especially for older workers who were tossed into unemployment through really no fault of their own thanks to the Bush economic crash.
And the whole “sistah souljah” thing is well past its sell-by date. Enough. When does the right get such a moment?
Add that mob to the angry ghosts of people who drop dead from overwork before the crucial age of 67 haunting us with their petulant moans of “What the hell did I pay for all those years- I never got to collect a penny! It’s a welfare program for the living!”
The aged rich should take comfort that they’ll have fewer elderly burglars to worry about if their socioeconomic lessers are adequately taken care of.
I’ve read statistics flavored a few different ways which suggested that African Americans put in more than they get out of SS, relative to whites. It’s a function of earning less, but being far more likely to put money in and die before collecting a dime.
The same phenomena may exist for the working poor. Sure, they put in less each paycheck than white collar workers, but if they’re dying off before collecting in greater numbers [or dying off soon after retirement], it may be that SS is distributing from the poor and funding wealthier (and whiter) retirees.
of any retirement system. I did see the point raised recently as a way of saying Obama’s proposed bumps for “poor elderly” in the chained-CPI scheme will disproportionately go to Caucasian white collar workers, because they wouldn’t kick in until you collect for 10 years (age 76 and change).
Problem with all this is it will become the next GOP argument: eliminate Social Security altogether because it’s racist.
But Senator Warren needs to come out publicly (press release or whatever) and loudly against Obama’s dismantling of the New Deal. Expressing shock is nice. Saying you will not Support nor Vote for a budget that cuts SS and Medicare is a strong stance and what people voted Warren to do.
C’mon Elizabeth, speak out for us.
Overall, I’d say Senator Warren has so far been very savvy not only in what she says, but in where, when, and how she says it.
The budget is out officially now. Sure take a day or two to review it. But I hope a public statement is coming. Otherwise, I’ll be bitterly disappointed. Just my opinion.
has the gun control vote (for what it’s worth) tomorrow, and there will be a lot more haggling before the budget gets anywhere near the Senate. I’m OK with her biding her time but I’ll keep a close eye on what she does in crunch time.
What Obama should do now is publicly acknowledge that cutting Social Security is unpopular and that nobody wants to do it. Then he should declare that he will never again even consider cutting entitlements. The Republicans have come out against it. So have the Democrats. So it makes no sense to have anyone even discuss it as a serious proposal.
If this is played right, it could actually be a way for Obama to force the Republicans to give up on cutting Social Security or Medicare for a few years. I don’t actually think that was his goal, but he might as well as go for it now. He can at least pretend that his goal was to take entitlement cuts off the table by getting the Republicans to come out against them.