Republicans Eye Social Security Phase-out, Seek to Gut Earned Income Program

Republicans' Warrant to Destroy Security Security, SSA Trustees Are Trump Loyalists

Commentary

Scariest fourteen words in politics are: I'm from the Republican Party and I'm here to save Social Security and Medicare.

Republicans have for decades expressed desire to phase out Medicare and Social Security, and call it, entitlement reform, (Krugman, New York Times) (Krugman, New York Times).

Now, Republicans are squealing, again as they have for many years, they want to save Social Security. They call it reform again.

Writes Paul Krugman in June:

Whatever you may have heard, Social Security isn’t in danger of going bankrupt.

What we’re facing, instead, is potential political crisis. Congress and the White House could easily take action to sustain America’s retirement system. But given the current state of our politics, there’s no guarantee that they will. ... 

So don’t believe Republicans’ gaslighting that it will be necessary to cut Social Security benefits. All that is necessary to preserve Social Security is political will to raise taxes on the wealthy and a sensible immigration policy.

Today, "Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) call for Republicans to act on Social Security reform if they keep control of Congress in 2027 is getting pushback from Senate Republicans who warn it’s a bad political message heading into November."

"Yet, a trustees’ report that the popular retirement program will become insolvent sooner than expected has lit a fire under lawmakers in both parties to call for reforms such as raising the cap on payroll taxes, 'means testing' beneficiaries, raising the retirement age, and creating personal accounts to invest in the stock markets," reports Alexander Bolton.

First, the Social Security trustees are all Trump loyalists, extremists who will follow any and all of Trump's dictates.  

Trump and Republican-led Congress are intentionally trying to bleed and starve the Social Security Trust Funds, and then tell you they have no choice but to gut the most popular earned-income, social program in history.

It's like choking and starving someone to use a sick metaphor, and then declaring this person is unsustainable, insolvent and cannot live, so sorry.

From the Social Security Administration:

The Board of Trustees is comprised of four members who serve by virtue of their positions with the federal government: Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury and Managing Trustee; Frank J. Bisignano, Commissioner of Social Security; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services; and Keith E. Sonderling, Acting Secretary of Labor. The two public trustee positions are currently vacant.

Means testing means the government will investigate all of your assets and determine whether you get benefits from Social Security system that you paid into all of your life. 

Implementing means testing would usher in a radical, new attack on the Social Security system.

Republicans also advocate raising the retirement age before you can accept Social Security benefits.

Corporate media remains a hostile force against Social Security.

By law, Social Security has its own dedicated revenue streams (payroll taxes) and legally distinct trust funds from the U.S. Treasury. 

Any politician, such as Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (R) who says we need to cut Social Security benefits, which has funded the rest of government spending for decades, is lying.

"The argument being used to cut Social Security is that because we have a significant deficit problem and a $14 trillion national debt, [in 2011] we just can’t afford to maintain Social Security benefits. This argument is false. Social Security, because it is funded by the payroll tax, not the U.S. Treasury, has not contributed one nickel to our deficit," warned Bernie Sanders back in 2011. "In fact, according to a very recent study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Social Security has a $2.5 trillion dollar surplus and can pay out every penny owed to every eligible American for the next 27 years until 2038." 

As Paul Krugman noted in 2015, "[N]o, Social Security does not face a financial crisis; its long-term funding shortfall could easily be closed with modest increases in revenue." (New York Times)

But our money is looked upon as potential windfalls by predatory Wall Street, and the media corporations who do Wall Street's bidding, want our money, your money.

Republicans surveilling your money should frighten the hell out of you. 

I have no idea if Democrats are up to the challenge of stopping the Republicans.

Paul Ryan Eyes Social Security and Medicare for Destruction

Scott Walker, a ridiculous figure, teared up awed at the 2012
Republican Convention, listening to Paul Ryan speak.
Walker and Ryan share a cocoon, sheltered from reality.

One problem among many with Paul Ryan and Scott Walker is these life-long politicians living on public monies have never had a real job.

This adds to Ryan and Walker's lack of empathy for working families, as Ryan targets social earned insurance benefits, Medicare and Social Security.

Ryan and Walker have no connection to real people carving out a living, so they live in bubbles.

So we add a trillion to the debt with a tax cut for the wealthy, then we cut Medicare to pay for it. Wouldn’t it be simpler for seniors to just write a check to the Koch Brothers? https://t.co/nviAEJSntm

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 8, 2017

See also:

Paul Ryan, are you listening?

"Today’s tax cuts have no bipartisan support. They have no intellectual grounding, no body of supporting evidence.

The rot afflicting the G.O.P. is comprehensive — moral, intellectual, political and reputational.”https://t.co/EJjNsgSsJz

— Stop the Speaker PAC (@StopTheSpeaker) December 8, 2017

Ryan and Walker Are Both Battered by Provincialism and Narcissism

Update: Ayn Rand would have been proud: Freedom Caucus Majority Backs Paul Ryan for House Speaker (New York Times). Look out Social Security and Medicare, there's a new speaker in town.

Scott Walker and Paul Ryan are not Wisconsin's finest.

Not towering intellects. Not dedicated public servants. Not civil rights activists. Not teachers, or writers or artists, handymen. One could on.

No, Walker and Ryan are victims, suffering from personality disorders, extreme even for lifelong politicians.

Witness the megalomaniacal Walker's 2016 run for the presidency marked by delusions of grandeur of a historical figure on a march to save the United States, as ordered by god (Mal Contends). The journey lasted 70 days, (Johnson, Washington Post).

Walker's political BFF, Paul Ryan, looks to abort his qualified run for the Speaker of the House after 24 hours (Marshall, Talking Points Memo (TPM)).

Turns out House rightists, the Freedom Caucus, are offended by Walker's demands. Notes TPM's Marshall:

Caucus co-founder Matt Salmon compared Ryan's demands for family time to 'interviewing a maid for a job and she says, ‘I don’t clean windows, I don’t do floors, I don’t do beds, these are the hours I’ll work.'

Ryan's pronouncement that he "cannot and will not give up my family time," is not resonating with every American family lacking Ryan's entitlements and privileges. Moreover, Ryan's penchant to lie, exposed repeatedly by Paul Krugman, is becoming conventional wisdom.

Ryan's vainglorious ideal of a Speaker Ryan with his demands of loyalty and more power may have lasted less than a hurried hump day.

Walker and Ryan are not students of history.

No, they're just a couple of corrupt politicians from Wisconsin who made the transformation from being astonished their schemes have gone on as long as they have, to being a baleful type of political figure who actually believes aides' press releases and the fawning accolades and obsequious praise that come with taking money, following orders and forgetting the people of Wisconsin whom they were elected to represent.

Ryan will become a laughing stock fast.

Paul Ryan as House Speaker Would Destroy Social Security, Medicare

Republicans want to kill Social Security. The Democratic
Party nominee for the presidency all but guarantees victory
by standing up for Social Security against GOP attack, which
would be led by prospective House Speaker Paul Ryan.
- Image from August 15 Email from the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

Updated - Paul Ryan—Six Reasons Why He's Everything That’s Wrong With the GOP

"I cannot and will not give up my family time," demands Speaker-in-waiting Paul Ryan.

Too bad Ryan is not a supporter of expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act, and works avidly against working parents.

Other Americans want to spend time with their families as well.

"Ryan seeks to preserve his own balance between his work and his family, he’s pushed policies that would make doing so more difficult for others, particularly poor parents," notes Bryce Covert in ThinkProgress.

Ryan gets to take off from the office, courtesy of the tax payers, whenever he wants, so his demands ring a bit shrill. As does Ryan's war against Social Security and Medicare.

"Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and 'shareholder value' the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one. If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be 'forced' to make 'hard choices' - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked," wrote Mike Lofgren, who retired on June 17, 2011 after 28 years as a Republican Congressional staffer. (TruthOut)

Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House would launch an epic battle against Social Security and Medicare, citing the the long list of Republican lies.

Ryan's Congressional pension is already set, so why not, and Ryan rakes in a lot of campaign cash this way.

"Paul Ryan (R-Wis) rank[ed] first in the House with an estimated [campaign] net worth of $5,531,036 in 2013," notes Open Secrets.

No facts needed on policy from Paul Ryan and the Republicans (Krugman, New York Times) (Krugman, New York Times).

GOP arguments about urgency for action are still fallacious, kill Medicare and Social Security to save them, and stop allowing Americans who pay into Medicare and Social Security to become "dependent" (to quote Ryan) on their earned benefits from Medicare and Social Security.

As Paul Krugman notes last August, "[N]o, Social Security does not face a financial crisis; its long-term funding shortfall could easily be closed with modest increases in revenue," (New York Times).

Ryan like his friend, Scott Walker, does not like it when constituents publicly challenge him, no matter Ryan's obsession with phasing out Medicare and Social Security (Mal Contends).

Paul Ryan is lifelong politician, immediately becoming a GOP aide after college in 1992, and then serving in Congress beginning in 1999 (Ballotpedia), all health and pension benefits and salary paid by the American tax payers, and Paul Ryan is living large.

Democrat Who Stands Up for Social Security Wins the Presidency

Republicans still want to kill Social Security. The Democratic
Party nominee for the presidency all but guarantees victory
by standing up for Social Security against GOP attack.
- Image from August 15 Email from the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

Republican presidential candidates want to phase out Medicare and Social Security, and call it entitlement reform (Krugman, New York Times) (Krugman, New York Times).

Nothing new there, GOP arguments about urgency for action are still fallacious, kill Medicare and Social Security to save them.

As Paul Krugman notes this morning, "[N]o, Social Security does not face a financial crisis; its long-term funding shortfall could easily be closed with modest increases in revenue." (New York Times)

What is equally clear is that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders want to protect and expand Medicare and Social Security (Yahoo News), and this is a winning message, reinforcing every other issue message fighting for the working class of America against the One Percent who want to destroy Medicare and Social Security.

"The argument being used to cut Social Security is that because we have a significant deficit problem and a $14 trillion national debt, we just can’t afford to maintain Social Security benefits. This argument is false. Social Security, because it is funded by the payroll tax, not the U.S. Treasury, has not contributed on nickel to our deficit," warned Bernie Sanders back in 2011. "In fact, according to a very recent study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Social Security has a $2.5 trillion dollar surplus and can pay out every penny owed to every eligible American for the next 27 years until 2038."

Earned-income, social insurance programs that are the most successful in American history are threatened by Republicans who will not give up their decades-long effort to kill Medicare and Social Security because of their perverse ideology.

As Krugman, a Medicare and Social Security champion and debunker of Republican attempts to kill the programs, writes today:

The issue in question is the future of Social Security, which turned 80 last week. The retirement program is, of course, both extremely popular and a long-term target of conservatives, who want to kill it precisely because its popularity helps legitimize government action in general. As the right-wing activist Stephen Moore (now chief economist of the Heritage Foundation) once declared, Social Security is 'the soft underbelly of the welfare state'; “jab your spear through that” and you can undermine the whole thing.

But that was a decade ago, during former President George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize the program — and what Mr. Bush learned was that the underbelly wasn’t that soft after all. Despite the political momentum coming from the G.O.P.’s victory in the 2004 election, despite support from much of the media establishment, the assault on Social Security quickly crashed and burned. Voters, it turns out, like Social Security as it is, and don’t want it cut.

The same popularity in a healthy democracy would have all candidates of every party clamoring to protect Social Security from attack.

Yet Republicans—Walker, Ryan, Bush, Cruz, Paul and Rubio—won't back down. Neither should Clinton and Sanders.

Notes Krugman:

It’s remarkable, then, that most of the Republicans who would be president seem to be lining up for another round of punishment. In particular, they’ve been declaring that the retirement age — which has already been pushed up from 65 to 66, and is scheduled to rise to 67 — should go up even further.

Thus, Jeb Bush says that the retirement age should be pushed back to “68 or 70”. Scott Walker has echoed that position. Marco Rubio wants both to raise the retirement age and to cut benefits for higher-income seniors. Rand Paul wants to raise the retirement age to 70 and means-test benefits. Ted Cruz wants to revive the Bush privatization plan. 

Here are the facts of Social Security as noted by the National Priorities Project in one image: