SEARCH
Coalition Launches Drive to Fight Social Security Cuts |
|
AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita contributed to this report.
As Social Security turns 75 years old Aug. 14, the nation’s most successful social program likely will be under attack by the federal budget deficit commission, which, by all accounts, is considering benefits cuts and raising the retirement age.
Today, more than 60 groups, including the AFL-CIO, announced the creation of the coalition Strengthen Social Security…Don’t Cut It. The group is launching a major mobilization to push back the commission’s phony assertions, backed by the Wall Street spin machine, that claim Social Security is a major component of the budget deficit and is teetering on the brink of disaster.
In a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the group outlined plans to build support in Congress to fight benefits cuts and press candidates this election to pledge to fight any move to raise the retirement age or privatization scheme. Says Ed Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans:
The Strengthen Social Security campaign unites everyone here to improve—not weaken—Social Security. We are united against any cuts in benefits, such as increases in the retirement age, and to any form of privatization of Social Security.
We will stand united if the commission calls for any cuts to Social Security. We are launching a major lobbying campaign for Congress to block their recommendations.
Speaking at the press conference, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that raising the retirement age is:
a benefit cut, plain and simple. It is a cut that is unnecessary and one that Americans can ill-afford.
He also says it unfairly singles out workers in demanding physical occupations,
workers like my father who spent his life in the mines and couldn’t work another day by the time he qualified for Social Security—and those older workers who may no longer be able to find work due to age discrimination.
Social Security benefits are the largest source of retirement income for most retirees. For six of 10 seniors, Social Security represents more than half of their income. In addition, nearly one-half of older unmarried women and widows, and one-third of all beneficiaries, have little other than Social Security and rely on its monthly benefit for 90 percent or more of their retirement income. Says Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW):
Social Security is the mainstay for millions of older women. Every year, a major share of the nearly 24 million women age 62 and older who receive benefits are kept out of poverty because of Social Security. Often that monthly Social Security check is their only income.
A new Gallup Poll out today shows that by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans oppose raising the retirement age and, by an even bigger margin, say the best way to strengthen Social Security is to ensure the wealthiest pay their fair share.
Currently, all workers pay the Social Security payroll tax on the first $106,000 of their earnings. Earnings above $106,000 are exempt from the Social Security payroll tax. That means a grocery clerk or warehouse worker pays a bigger chunk of income to Social Security than a hedge fund manager. By a 67 percent to 30 percent margin, the public supports raising the Social Security payroll tax to cover all earnings.
Also taking part in the press conference, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee says the deficit commission is trying to
turn Social Security into a scapegoat for the deficit. Social Security is not the problem.
Social Security—with a $2.6 trillion surplus projected to grow to $4.3 trillion by 2023—is not the cause of the nation’s deficit. Says O’Neill:
The fiscal commission should address the real causes of the deficit—unfunded wars, irresponsible tax breaks for the wealthiest, and an economic crisis caused by financial regulatory failures.
This fall, says Coyle, coalition members will be “demanding clear, unequivocal answers from the candidates on where they stand on Social Security.”
As McEntee warns congressional candidates:
If you break promise from 75 years ago, we will hold you accountable. Keep your hands off our Social Security.
12 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
There is nothing broken with Social Security. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!
The cry that “there’s no money left for entitlements” is perhaps
true only because Obama has given trillions of dollars to Wall Street, bankers! Obama has expanded the Profit Wars in Afghanistan. etc.
End the wars for profit, end the privatization of the Federal government, shut down the 700 foreign bases, end the “entitlements” of the privatized CIA, to stop the looting of government by gangster corporations to generate billions and trillions of dollars to fund the needs of the people.
Obama, like the Bush/Cheney gang, hate “entitlements” for the people’s needs. Thus public education is being destroyed. Public Health care is being destroyed for working people. States have to shut down schools, libraries, and layoff home health care workers.
If there is any funding problem at all with Social Security, simply double the low “cap” on Social Security taxes to include
more Middle Class income earners, who are probably going to need Social Security in the future as middle class jobs are being cut, homes are being foreclosed, pension plans being looted and destroyed, etc.
Let the bloated millionaires and billionaire politicians (California Republican candidate for governor!), millionaire propagandists Limbaugh and Beck (30 million a year!), scream forever about raising taxes.
The economic inequality gap in the United States expands yearly. The minimal and essential needs of the people… to maintain a sustainable society and infrastructure… requires the restoration of progressive taxation, continually under attack since Reagan.
The corporate media babble, punditry, and politicians of both parties against Social Security and Medicare are simply self serving lies.
“Deficit reduction” must not be on the backs of poor and working people! Read this article linked below for a socialist perspective from the World Socialist Web Site.
US: Cuts in Social Security, Medicare to pay for bank bailouts
By Tom Eley
14 May 2009
A government report made public Tuesday indicates that Social Security and Medicare will deplete their trust funds more quickly than previously forecast. This has sparked new demands from within the US financial elite for substantial cuts in the two entitlement programs, which pay retirement and medical benefits for tens of millions of working class Americans.
The report was issued by the programs’ trustees, a group of four Obama administration officials headed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Because regressive payroll taxes on workers’ earnings fund the two programs, mounting unemployment has worsened the projections. Since December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have been lost, and the official unemployment rate now approaches 9 percent.
Even by its alarmist critics’ own admission, Social Security is not about to collapse under its own weight. It would deplete its funds by 2045, thirty years from now, according to the trustees’ report. For years, Social Security funds have been used to pay directly or indirectly for reactionary federal budget priorities—including tax cuts for the rich, bank bailouts, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
…
The Obama administration has shelled out hundreds of billions, no strings attached, to the biggest financial institutions, under the false rationale that this would “kick-start” lending and generate jobs. All told, between direct cash infusions, loans, and guarantees on debt, Washington has handed over around $10 trillion to Wall Street in less than a year. In comparison, Medicare would need $13 trillion and Social Security $5 trillion over the next 75 years to remain solvent, according to the report. In other words, retirement benefits and healthcare benefits for several generations of the elderly could be secured at the cost of one year’s bailout of the financial aristocracy.
…
Ensuring the best health care and a secure retirement for all is not a technical, but a political question. The looming attack on Social Security and the transparent bankruptcy of Obama’s health care “reform” are dictated by powerful financial interests who believe that workers should work until they can work no longer, and that thereafter they should expect little or nothing in the way of public assistance or medical care to maintain themselves. That is considered too costly.
…
Read the full article here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/ssmd-m14.shtml
To those of you who blame Obama for the bailout, please read this timeline. Obama wasn’t even elected, much less in office. He did support the bailout, however, because it looked like the whole economy was going to collapse. If there was no bailout, we’d probably all be out of work, sitting at our computers, blaming Obama for not doing something.
- March 11, 2008: The Federal Reserve announces a rescue package to provide up to $200 billion in loans to banks and investment houses and let them put up risky mortgage-backed securities as collateral.
—March 16: The Fed provides a $29 billion loan to JPMorgan Chase & Co. as part of its purchase of investment bank Bear Stearns.
—May 2: The Fed increases the size of its loans to banks and lets them put up less-secure collateral.
—July 11: Federal regulators seize Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac, costing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. billions to compensate deposit-holders.
—July 30: President Bush signs a housing bill including $300 billion in new loan authority for the government to back cheaper mortgages for troubled homeowners.
—Sept. 7: The Treasury takes over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, putting them into a conservatorship and pledging up to $200 billion to back their assets.
—Sept. 16: The Fed injects $85 billion into the failing American International Group, one of the world’s largest insurance companies.
—Sept. 16: The Fed pumps $70 billion more into the nation’s financial system to help ease credit stresses.
—Sept. 19: The Treasury temporarily guarantees money market funds against losses up to $50 billion.
—Sept. 29: The Fed makes an extra $330 billion available to other central banks, boosting to $620 billion the amount available to the Fed through currency “swap” arrangements, where dollars are traded for foreign currencies. It also triples to $225 billion the amount available for short-term loans to U.S. financial institutions.
—Oct. 3: President Bush signs the $700 billion economic bailout package. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says the money will be used to buy distressed mortgage-related securities from banks.
—Oct. 6: The Fed increases a short-term loan program, saying it is boosting short-term lending to banks to $150 billion. It says that by year’s end, $900 billion in potential overall credit will be outstanding. It also says it will begin paying interest on reserves that banks keep with the Fed in hopes of coaxing banks into keeping more money on deposit at the central bank.
—Oct. 7: The Fed says it will start buying unsecured short-term debt, so-called “commercial paper,” from companies.
—Oct. 8: The Fed cuts its benchmark interest rate a half percentage point, to 1.5 percent. It follows a one-quarter point cut on April 30 and a three-quarter-point reduction on March 18.
—Oct. 8: The Fed agrees to lend AIG $37.8 billion more, bringing total to about $123 billion.
—Oct. 14: The Treasury says it will use $250 billion of the $700 billion bailout to inject capital into the banks, with $125 billion provided to nine of the largest: Bank of America Corp., which received $15 billion; Bank of New York Mellon Corp., $3 billion; Citigroup Inc., $25 billion; Goldman Sachs Group Inc., $10 billion; JPMorgan Chase & Co., $25 billion; Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., $10 billion; Morgan Stanley, $10 billion; State Street Corp., $2 billion; and Wells Fargo & Co., $25 billion. The $10 billion for Merrill has been deferred until its purchase by Bank of America closes.
—Oct. 14: The FDIC says it will temporarily guarantee up to a total of $1.4 trillion in loans between banks.
—Oct. 21: The Fed says it will provide up to $540 billion in financing to provide liquidity for money market mutual funds.
—Oct. 29: The Fed cuts its benchmark interest rate to 1 percent, matching the low point reached in 2003. The rate hasn’t been lower since 1958.
- Nov. 3: The election.
The Republicans have attempted to destroy SSI sense 1935. I read a book called the ” The Family”. A faith based org that Coburn, Inhofe and quite a few Republicans belong to in Washington. This org was started by the religous right for the sole purpose of throwing out Labor Laws and Social Programs that FDR put in place in the 1930’s. The “Family” is Dangerous to the working familys in the US, because God’s on there side.
Top 5 Social Security Myths
Myth #1: Social Security is going broke.
Reality: There is no Social Security crisis. By 2023, Social Security will have a $4.6 trillion surplus (yes, trillion with a ‘T’). It can pay out all scheduled benefits for the next quarter-century with no changes whatsoever.1 After 2037, it’ll still be able to pay out 75% of scheduled benefits—and again, that’s without any changes. The program started preparing for the Baby Boomers’ retirement decades ago.2 Anyone who insists Social Security is broke probably wants to break it themselves.
Myth #2: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
Reality: This is a red-herring to trick you into agreeing to benefit cuts. Retirees are living about the same amount of time as they were in the 1930s. The reason average life expectancy is higher is mostly because many fewer people die as children than they did 70 years ago.3 What’s more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly—since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half.4 But those intent on cutting Social Security love this argument because raising the retirement age is the same as an across-the-board benefit cut.
Myth #3: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.
Reality: Social Security doesn’t need to be fixed. But if we want to strengthen it, here’s a better way: Make the rich pay their fair share. If the very rich paid taxes on all of their income, Social Security would be sustainable for decades to come.5 Right now, high earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,000 of their income.6 But conservatives insist benefit cuts are the only way because they want to protect the super-rich from paying their fair share.
Myth #4: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs
Reality: Not even close to true. The Social Security Trust Fund isn’t full of IOUs, it’s full of U.S. Treasury Bonds. And those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.7 The reason Social Security holds only treasury bonds is the same reason many Americans do: The federal government has never missed a single interest payment on its debts. President Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market—which would have been disastrous—but luckily, he failed. So the trillions of dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are separate from the regular budget, are as safe as can be.
Myth #5: Social Security adds to the deficit
Reality: It’s not just wrong—it’s impossible! By law, Social Security’s funds are separate from the budget, and it must pay its own way. That means that Social Security can’t add one penny to the deficit.8
Defeating these myths is the first step to stopping Social Security cuts. Can you share this list now?
Sources:
1.”To Deficit Hawks: We the People Know Best on Social Security,” New Deal 2.0, June 14, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89703&id=22140-3622808-9ybxFAx&t=4
2. “The Straight Facts on Social Security,” Economic Opportunity Institute, September 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89704&id=22140-3622808-9ybxFAx&t=5
3. “Social Security and the Age of Retirement,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89705&id=22140-3622808-9ybxFAx&t=6
4. “More on raising the retirement age,” Washington Post, July 8, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89706&id=22140-3622808-9ybxFAx&t=7
5. “Social Security is sustainable,” Economic and Policy Institute, May 27, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89707&id=22140-3622808-9ybxFAx&t=8
6. “Maximum wage contribution and the amount for a credit in 2010,” Social Security Administration, April 23, 2010
http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/240
7. “Trust Fund FAQs,” Social Security Administration, February 18, 2010
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html
8.”To Deficit Hawks: We the People Know Best on Social Security,” New Deal 2.0, June 14, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89703&id=22140-3622808-9ybxFAx&t=9
I think this is IMPORTANT
if you want to save Social Security from the people who want to cut it, do not begin by calling to raise their taxes. There is no need to raise their taxes and much danger in calling for it: they would rather kill Social Security.
Social Security can pay for itself. That is, you can pay for your own Social Security. Current projections show that a tax raise, for you, that amounted to twenty cents per week each year would pay for Social Security forever. This is while your wages are going up about ten dollars per week each year. And it goes to pay for your longer expected retirement. It’a a good deal. Don’t get greedy. Because the other side is even greedier, and they will see you work until you die in the traces before they will let you raise their taxes.
FDR set up Social Security so that it would be insurance for workers paid for by workers “so no damn politician can take it away from them.” Don’t let them take it away.
Our Republican legislators have salivated over Social Security for decades. No, there is absolutely NO need to cut benefits/end Social Security. Not long ago, we had a massive Social Security surplus, and our government assured us that it was more than would ever be needed. Gov decided to “borrow” much of this money, giving plenty of assurances that it would be repaid in full well before the Boomer generation retired. Historically, our government has a poor record of keeping promises, however, and many fought against allowing government to take this money.
Republican legislators have not given up, and every few months, the old alarms about Social Security “going broke” return. The reason is to convince the public that, as long as things are so hopeless, it’s time to close out the program and use the remaining funds for “more urgent” matters.
There is no reason to steal our money from Social Security. Government’s greatest costs have been: wars of choice (the US has been engaged in war more often than not since the end of WWll); “tax relief” for corporations (which left us with fewer, not more, jobs); our prison system (the US imprisons a greater percentage of its population than any other nation, often for offenses that receive NO prison time in the more advanced nations). At least putting a moratorium on any one of these three things would guarantee the continued, long-term viability of Social Security.
I AM A WOMAN
YRS OLD. I HAVE WORKED UNTIL APRIL OF 2009, AND CONTRIBUTED TO SOCIAL SECURITY FOR MANY MANY YEARS. I DEPEND ON MY SOCIAL SECURITY MORE NOW BECAUSE ALL THINK ANY ONE 80 OR OLDER IS NO GOOD. WHAT DO THOSE WHO WANT TO STOP OR DECREASE SOCIAL SECURITY(REPUBLICIANS)AHT DO THEY WANT TO DO HAVE US ALL DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!MAYBE THE BIG WIGS SHOULD ALL GIVE UP THEIR HUGH SALARIES AND LIVE LIKE THE REST OF US AND WORK FOR A CHANGE!!!!!!!!!INSTEAD OF GO TO COCKTAIL PARITIES AND ETC. WEVANS@SMIG.NET
I agree with WEEPAT, my name is Pat also. And I live on Social Security, not very well, I might add. Go without a lot, like food at the end of the month.
If the stupid politicians were taken off the dole, and quit being so darn greedy, we wouldn’t be in this trouble. Quit giving ANYTHING TO ILLEGALS AND send them home. Quit giving to ANYONE BUT AMERICANS, and guess what, the problems would be solved. Hillary just gave billions to AFGHANISTAN????? WHY? WHY?
They live and work among us. You can not tell by looking at them exactly where they might be from, but they don’t seem to be from Arizona, that’s for sure – they are called aliens, but they are not from another planet, they are from somewhere else on this planet, in fact, they a homo sapiens, just like us, so they are pretty much the same as us and want the same things – like a job, education, health care, food, shelter, and hope for a brighter future for their families.
Maybe I did not learn enough in school, but I do remember learning that America was built by immigrants – that is, immigrants, and slaves who were kidnapped in chains by the “civilized” “Christian” empires of Portugal, Spain, England, Belgium and Holland.
Death enemies of the Labor Movement seek to use issues such as frequent violation by immigrants of US civil law as a wedge to divide our unions and weaken us as further attacks are launched. There is an explosion of far-right, racist armed terrorist groups across our country, feeding off of the racism that has been fostered by the anti-immigrant movement. RIGHT NOW, THEY ARE FORTHRIGHTLY THREATENING TO KILL THE FEDERAL JUDGE.
All of us must realize that if this threat is not taken on now, it will be harder and harder later. We must all unite to preserve our unions, because that is all we have to fight the bosses – we can see clearly that the politicians care more about what the very rich think than what workers are going through.
Today, from raiding the Social Security Trust Fund, Government Owes Social Security $2.5 Trillion that Congress has taken to make the deficit look smaller. They have issued worthless IOUs to cover their crimes. Yet, Washington continuously attacks the senior citizens security one way or another.This fight by the AFL-CIO is one of the greatest efforts yet to protect deserving Americans from dire poverty. Thank you AFL-CIO!
As I understand the Funds taken from social security surplus were not covered by IOU’s they were replaced with interest bearing Treasury Bonds.