1. Religious Education
2. Capitalism
3. The Tax Bill (the part congress played in it)
4. Healthcare
5. SNAP
6. Government Assistance (Other)
7. Veteran Wave
8. Where Democrats Stand
2. Capitalism
3. The Tax Bill (the part congress played in it)
4. Healthcare
5. SNAP
6. Government Assistance (Other)
7. Veteran Wave
8. Where Democrats Stand
9. Candidates
10. GOTV and Nancy
10. GOTV and Nancy
I have been collecting these articles throughout the year. The part in green is a direct quote from the article in the link before or after it. I also very specifically stuck to reliable news sources. Actual fact based news sources like Politico, CBS News, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The LA Times and others.
Government Assistance (Other):
Last week, I talked about SNAP. But, there are other forms of government assistance that people rely on to live.
FACT: The minimum wage is still a poverty wage. You can make the minimum wage and qualify for government assistance. If you don't like people receiving government assistance, vote for the democrats who want to make the minimum wage a living wage. Then people won't need government assistance!
FACT: Most people receiving government assistance do work. The rest legitimately can't. A massive amount of proof has to be provided before they even consider you for government assistance. It also needs to be re-provided each year.
FACT: These programs were created because of the basic economical understanding, when the poorest among us are doing well, we all do well. These aren't "entitlement" programs. A word made famous by the retiring Paul Ryan. A many who has shown he feels entitled to certain benefits at the expense of those who need help! This is the government helping those who need it most. It's how FDR helped us out of the Great Depression.
June 20, 2018
The House Budget Committee is aiming
to pass the blueprint later this week, but that may be as far as it goes this
midterm election year. It’s not clear that GOP leaders will put the document on
the House floor for a vote, and even if it were to pass the House, the budget
would have little impact on actual spending levels.
Nonetheless the budget serves as an
expression of Republicans’ priorities at a time of rapidly rising deficits and
debt. Although the nation’s growing indebtedness has been exacerbated by the
GOP’s own policy decisions – including the new tax law, which most analyses say
will add at least $1 trillion to the debt – Republicans on the Budget Committee
said they felt a responsibility to put the nation on a sounder fiscal
trajectory.
The House Republican budget,
entitled “A Brighter American Future,” would remake Medicare by giving seniors
the option of enrolling in private plans that compete with traditional
Medicare, a system of competition designed to keep costs down but dismissed by
critics as an effort to privatize the program. Along with other changes, the
budget proposes to squeeze $537 billion out of Medicare over the next decade.
The budget would transform Medicaid,
the federal-state health-care program for the poor, by limiting per-capita
payments or allowing states to turn it into a block-grant program – the same
approach House Republicans took in their legislation that passed last year to
repeal the Affordable Care Act (the repeal effort died in the Senate). Changes
to Medicaid and other health programs would account for $1.5 trillion in
savings.
Social Security comes in for more
modest cuts of $4 billion over the decade, which the budget projects could be
reached by eliminating concurrent receipt of unemployment benefits and Social
Security disability insurance.
The budget
also proposes a number of other cost-saving measures, some of which could prove
unpopular if implemented, such as adding more work requirements for food stamp
and welfare recipients and requiring federal employees – including members of
Congress – to contribute more to their retirement plans. It relies on rosy
economic growth projections and proposes using a budgetary mechanism to require
other congressional committees to come up with a combined $302 billion in
unspecified deficit reduction.
“We're going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said during an appearance on Ross Kaminsky's talk radio show. "... Frankly, it's the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that's really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”
Ryan's remarks add to the growing signs that top Republicans aim to cut government spending next year. Republicans are close to passing a tax bill nonpartisan analysts say would increase the deficit by at least $1 trillion over a decade. Trump recently called on Congress to move to cut welfare spending after the tax bill, and Senate Republicans have cited the need to reduce the national deficit while growing the economy.
“You also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn't the driver of our debt. The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said last week.
While whipping votes for the tax bill, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) attacked “liberal programs” for the poor and said Congress needed to stop wasting Americans' money.
“We're spending ourselves into bankruptcy,” Hatch said. “Now, let's just be honest about it: We're in trouble. This country is in deep debt. You don't help the poor by not solving the problems of debt, and you don't help the poor by continually pushing more and more liberal programs through.”
“What’s coming next is all too predictable: The deficit hawks will come flying back after this bill becomes law,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the ranking Democrat on the finance committee, during a speech on the tax debate. “Republicans are already saying 'entitlement reform' and 'welfare reform' are next up on the docket. But nobody should be fooled — that’s just code for attacks on Medicaid, on Medicare, on Social Security, on anti-hunger programs.”
On the Senate floor during the tax debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked Rubio and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) to promise that Republicans would not advance cuts to Medicare and Social Security after their tax bill. Toomey said that there was “no secret plan” to do so, while Rubio said he opposed cuts to either program for current beneficiaries. However, neither closed the door to changing the programs for future beneficiaries.
Amid all the hand-wringing over Republican plans to eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid and repeal the Affordable Care Act, it shouldn't be overlooked that the GOP has the knives out for Social Security too.
The latest reminder comes from Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Tex., chairman of the Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee. Johnson on Thursday uncorked what he termed a "plan to permanently save Social Security."
Followers of GOP habits won't be surprised to learn that it achieves this goal entirely through benefit cuts, without a dime of new revenues such as higher payroll taxes on the wealthy. In fact, Johnson's plan reduces the resources coming into the program by eliminating a key tax --another way that he absolves richer Americans of paying their fair share, while increasing the burdens of retirement for almost everyone else.
The act would cut way back on cost-of-living increases for retirees. It would do this by cutting out cost-of-living raises entirely for retirees earning adjusted gross income of more than $85,000 ($170,000 for couples) starting in December 2018, and using the chained consumer price index to calculate the COLA for all others. (The income threshold would be adjusted for inflation.)
Johnson asserts that the chained CPI is "a more accurate measure of inflation," but he's blowing smoke. There are no grounds to say the index, which was heavily promoted a few years ago by yet another gang associated with Peter G. Peterson, is more accurate than the index used today. If anything, it understates price increases in housing and healthcare, which have especially
pronounced impacts on the household budgets of seniors. Conservatives like it for one reason: It grows more slowly than the regular CPI, so it's cheaper. As we explained a few years ago, using the chained CPI is a benefit cut, and one that gets larger year by year. Period.
Johnson asserts that the chained CPI is "a more accurate measure of inflation," but he's blowing smoke. There are no grounds to say the index, which was heavily promoted a few years ago by yet another gang associated with Peter G. Peterson, is more accurate than the index used today. If anything, it understates price increases in housing and healthcare, which have especially
pronounced impacts on the household budgets of seniors. Conservatives like it for one reason: It grows more slowly than the regular CPI, so it's cheaper. As we explained a few years ago, using the chained CPI is a benefit cut, and one that gets larger year by year. Period.
Johnson would also cut benefits for the spouses and children of retired and disabled workers by pegging them to average wages, rather than to the wages actually earned by the worker. This pares the benefits for families earning more than the average.
Finally, the measure also raises the full retirement age, which is now pegged to reach 67 by 2022, to 69 by 2030. this means that workers taking early retirement, which is permitted as soon as age 62, would face a steeper cut in annual benefits for starting early. Johnson would increase the age up to which delayed retirement credits may be earned to 72, from 70. Workers who can afford to put off claiming Social Security will reap the great rewards from this maneuver; by their nature, they tend to be wealthier people who have the resources to live on while deferring Social Security.
February 2018,
Republicans are finally okay with paid maternity leave. If women are collecting
social security early to do it. But, women already make less and contribute
less. This screws them over in retirement. Another price to pay for being a
mother. This turns social security from a
social safety net almost into a separate account to take from as desired.
Millions of
retirees rely on modest checks from the program, which was created from a bill
signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. Treating Social Security as
something that can be borrowed against suggests that it can be treated as an
individual account rather than a social insurance program. That could open the
door to privatizing the accounts, some experts said, an idea that was floated
during George W. Bush’s administration.
“This is a
significant philosophy shift that doesn’t look at it like an insurance program
where we are all in it together, but an individual asset you can tap to pay for
your individual needs,” said Kathleen Romig, senior policy analyst at the
liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The proposal
would also begin to reshape Social Security into something more akin to 401(k)
accounts: Account holders can borrow against their 401(k), or even drain it in
a financial emergency (albeit with a penalty), leaving them with less savings
for retirement.
Social
Security, in contrast, cannot be touched and is often viewed as the last
standing leg in the three-legged stool of retirement, when personal savings are
not enough and pensions are increasingly rare.
To be eligible
for the proposed program, a new parent would need to have a minimum amount of
earnings in the years before claiming the benefit, similar to the formula used to qualify for Social
Security disability benefits, according to the proposal from the Independent Women’s Forum.
The size of the
benefit would be calculated borrowing a formula from Social Security. A
26-year-old woman earning $31,000, for example, might receive roughly $1,175 a
month in Social Security parental benefits, which replaces about 45 percent of
her income, for up to 12 weeks.
The cost would
come later, in the form of a reduced retirement benefit. Exactly how the
reduction would be calculated is not yet entirely clear, said Andrew Biggs, a former
principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration who helped
devise the proposal and who is now at the American Enterprise Institute, a
conservative think tank. But roughly speaking, he said, a 12-week leave would
most likely translate to a benefit cut of 1.5 percent.
The proposal
says that a parent’s Social Security check would be delayed, not cut, to offset
the amount gained during the paid leave.
Ms. Lukas said
that delaying Social Security would not be a problem for most people:
“Sixty-seven is really late middle age, and many people are really happy to
continue working.”
Yet many
workers do not have a choice. And while life expectancies have increased,
better-paid and more educated people tend to live longer than those who earn
less.
As of now, the
proposal covers new parents but not workers who are recovering from an illness
or need to care for other family members. It also does not provide job security
for people who take leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act does both those
things, but the leave is unpaid, and only about half of workers qualify for it.
The Family Act, a bill sponsored in the Senate by Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New
York, would create a new fund within the Social Security Administration. Employers and employees would each contribute 0.2 percent of their wages for 12
weeks of paid parental, family or medical leave.
Republicans
generally object to proposals that would raise taxes, but any paid leave plan would need to be
paid for. The question now facing policymakers is whether to turn to Social
Security payments, the last guaranteed safety net for many retirees, to do so.
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