By Raul Grijalva
Earlier today I sent a letter to the White House, signed by myself and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Lynn Woolsey, making it clear that we will stand against any potential cuts to Social Security benefits. Whether they come from the president’s debt commission or from members of Congress, any proposals to reduce entitlement benefits — one of the most fundamental bonds between the American people and the federal government — will be dead on arrival in the House of Representatives.
It’s become conventional wisdom that Social Security is in crisis. As the story goes, we can’t afford to ensure our retirees maintain a decent standard of living and we need to slash and burn our way to fiscal “responsibility” or we’ll all fall off a cliff. In fact, Social Security is not funded from the general treasury and does not contribute to the national debt, a point we make clear in our letter. Calls for fiscal austerity often include the disingenuous claim that tax cuts magically pay for themselves — as Sen. Jon Kyl recently suggested — and all we need to do is take money from America’s older citizens and working families to put our checkbook in order. This is nonsense.
What these fiscal hawks don’t tell you is that income above a $106,800 earnings cap is not subject to Social Security payroll taxes. That’s right: anything you earn above that figure doesn’t go into Social Security. Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking this is just a liberal position — it’s an objective fact. Instead of hacking away at one of America’s fundamental promises to its retirees, the debt commission should think about the possibility of having high-wage earners pay the same amount to protect our retirement system as everyone else does.
What else don’t the fiscal hawks tell you? Well, have you heard this one?
After 2037, Social Security will not contribute to the deficit, because it is prohibited by law from taking on debt in order to pay benefits. Instead, if the projected shortfall were to go unaddressed, Social Security would pay reduced benefits, equal to about 75% to 80% of promised benefits, according to the Social Security actuaries and CBO, respectively. This is a situation that Congress must take action to avoid, but it is not the catastrophic collapse that some alarmists warn about. Eliminating this shortfall would require raising revenues equal to about 0.5% to 0.7% of gross domestic product, according to CBO and Social Security, respectively.
Probably not. Instead you’ve probably heard, as GOP House leader John Boehner recently said, that Social Security is flat broke and we need to raise the retirement age to 70 immediately.
This is a fight that the American people are going to win. According to a major new poll just released by AARP, 63 percent of Americans view Social Security as one of the “very most important” programs in the country “and over seven in ten believe that most people on Social Security could not do very well without it” (emphasis in the original). When you hear someone holding forth about Social Security being unsustainable, remember those numbers. We need Social Security now more than ever before, especially given an economic downturn that’s cost several generations trillions of dollars in net worth. These are the times that Social Security was designed to address. A struggling economy shouldn’t mean a financially insecure future for ourselves, our neighbors and our communities. That’s just not the American way.
Thank you for fighting to keep social security. Elderly people can’t work and evan if they try, they aren’t hired in many cases due to their age. Their only income left to support themselves is social security. Thank you for fighting to keep this fundamental right.
1) Do not cut benefits for Social Security. At least twenty Million people rely on Social Security to keep them out of poverty.
2) Do not punish the Working people and the poor for the mistakes that the Rich, the Corporations, Wall Street and the Central Bankers have caused (which is the economic Meltdown of 2008).
I’m in support of your efforts and will help with signing any petitions.
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Hands of Medicare and Social Security!!!!!!!!
Thank you for fighting to keep social security.
It’s one thing to write a letter and send it to the White House and another to follow through.
During the health care we (single payer advocates) spoke out as single payer was “negotiated” to a “public option” competing with private insurers to end with all of the Progressive Caucus giving in to the travesty that is today’s “health care reform.”
Though I’m not from Missouri — “Show Me” means a lot — Speaker Pelosi believes the Progressive Caucus is in her pocket and she hasn’t been proven wrong yet.
Factually correct and admirable sentiments. However, you were equally correct and admirable in your pledges to oppose any so-called health-care reform package that did not include a public option, yet when push came to shove you folded – every single one of you – like a cheap cardboard shelter in a heavy rain.
And despite increasingly strong majorities in both houses of Congress since 2006 you and your Democratic colleagues haven’t managed to change (or even significantly slow down) many of the worst abuses of the Bush years.
Calling yourselves ‘progressives’ has become a tired joke these days, when you only take a strong progressive stances when the leadership allows you to (because your votes aren’t needed to affect the outcome). Until such time as that changes significantly, I’ll be voting Republican, not because I think they’re any better but because I’ve come to realize that there’s no hope in the Democratic party as long as it’s controlled by its current establishment – hence destroying that establishment by any means necessary, including temporarily replacing them with Republicans if that’s what it takes to do so, is now my first priority.
Howard Dean had it exactly right 6 years ago: FIRST reform the Democratic party, THEN reform the country. He didn’t feel comfortable holding to that position after Kerry won the nomination and became Bush Lite, but I have no such reservations.
We still hunger for the change that Obama promised and then abandoned as soon as he took office. And one way or another we’re going to get it, with or without you.
Keep up the good work! It is unconscionable that the deficit reduction committee is working only on s.s. and medicare and not on the extremely expensive weapons system propagated by the defense industry! S.S. has kept so many older persons out of poverty, it’s no wonder why it is such a popular program.
I could not live without Social Security, and this is true of most people who receive it. I cannot believe that the lawmakers of this country want to slash this program even as they give billions to the wealthy bankers and investment corporations whose unethical behavior has brought America to its economic knees, and who, while receiving these billions in taxpayers’ money, are posting record profits and continuing to pay themselves millions in bonuses. It’s disgusting and it makes me sick. Do we not have enough people living on the streets without adding millions more by taking away their ability to put roofs over their heads? It’s incredible, especially since the so-called crisis that Social Security funds are in is so easily laid bare for the falsehood it is. I’m appalled by this whole issue.
Hmmm – I see that it’s not just right-wing sites that feel free to censor (that’s the proper term, since my post was hardly ‘immoderate’) criticism.
Just in case I hit some moderator on a bad day, I’ll resubmit it:
Factually correct and admirable sentiments. However, you were equally correct and admirable in your pledges to oppose any so-called health-care reform package that did not include a public option, yet when push came to shove you folded – every single one of you – like a cheap cardboard shelter in a heavy rain.
And despite increasingly strong majorities in both houses of Congress since 2006 you and your Democratic colleagues haven’t managed to change (or even significantly slow down) many of the worst abuses of the Bush years.
Calling yourselves ‘progressives’ has become a tired joke these days, when you only take a strong progressive stances when the leadership allows you to (because your votes aren’t needed to affect the outcome). Until such time as that changes significantly, I’ll be voting Republican, not because I think they’re any better but because I’ve come to realize that there’s no hope in the Democratic party as long as it’s controlled by its current establishment – hence destroying that establishment by any means necessary, including temporarily replacing them with Republicans if that’s what it takes to do so, is now my first priority.
Howard Dean had it exactly right 6 years ago: FIRST reform the Democratic party, THEN reform the country. He didn’t feel comfortable holding to that position after Kerry won the nomination and became Bush Lite, but I have no such reservations.
We still hunger for the change that Obama promised and then abandoned as soon as he took office. And one way or another we’re going to get it, with or without you.
Please do not call Social Security and Medicare entitlements.
I think they are a kind of insurance plan, not an entitlement.
Welfare in an entitlement.
Corporate welfare in an entitlement.
Government waste is an entitlement.
HR 676 is a solution.
All Americans, including members of Congress, should have the same healthcare coverage.
Health insurance company profits are treated like an entitlement by our government.