For too long, Washington’s fiscal hawks and conservative ideologues have monopolized the conversation about our nation’s safety net programs.
Max Richtman via Huffington Post.
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Max Ritchman, President and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare: “America’s seniors understand all too well that our nation faces a retirement crisis and improving Social Security benefits is vital to keeping millions from poverty. Rep. Linda Sanchez’s ‘Strengthening Social Security Act’ makes several important improvements for seniors by: phasing out the payroll tax cap so that the wealthy pay their fair share, creating a Cost of Living adjustment for the elderly and boosting benefits for all retirees including widows/widowers. NCPSSM strongly supports this legislation and applauds Congresswoman Sanchez for doing the right thing for America’s seniors and their families.”
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via twitter.
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Opportunity and Peril on Social Security’s Anniversary.
After more than eight decades of providing workers and their families with financial security upon retirement, disability or death, fiscal hawks continue their assault on the program, calling for “entitlement reform” – which really means benefit cuts, raising the retirement age, and privatization.
Discussions about Social Security in politics and the media often focus on its role as a retirement program that provides vital protections to seniors. But the fact is that Social Security provides vital retirement, disability, and survivors’ insurance for all generations of Americans. In addition to significantly reducing senior poverty, Social Security is the nation’s largest children’s program and lifted 6.9 million Americans under age 65 out of poverty in 2014. And no generation has a greater stake in the fight to protect and expand Social Security benefits than today’s young workers, the millennial generation.
via Talk Poverty.
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There is a misconception that Social Security is just for “old people” when in fact, about 4.4 million American children receive approximately $2.7 billion in Social Security benefits each month because at least one of their parents is disabled, retired or deceased.
Learn more here.
Few political advisors would suggest running on a platform of open hostility toward the elderly. Most families include an older person, after all, and everyone who lives long enough will become older themselves someday.
Seniors vote in greater numbers, too.
via Huffington Post.
Related Reading:
- In Vogue: Boosting Social Security.
- For too long, Washington’s fiscal hawks and conservative ideologues have
monopolized the conversation about our nation’s safety net programs.
Their misleading messages and PR campaigns, funded by billionaires like
the Koch bothers and Pete Peterson, are designed to undermine public
confidence in the Social Security program.
To ease the retirement crisis, Social Security benefits must be strengthened rather than cut. For that reason, the National Committee has endorsed H. Res. 393, the resolution introduced by Representatives Jan Schakowsky, Doris Matsui and Patrick Murphy which supports boosting Social Security.
via NCPSSM.
For months, conservative think-tankers who undermine the value of Social
Security, deny the existence of a national retirement crisis and the
need to boost benefits have been banging their drum for benefit cuts
especially hard. Why? Because a scarcely reported CBO report on Social Security replacement rates
(now you see why we don’t usually share these kind of stories) claimed
Americans received more in benefits than previously believed or reported
by Social Security actuaries.
via Entitled to Know.
‘We’re hopeful to come up with entitlement reform and deficit reduction plans in the first 30 days,’ said newly elected House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows.
via Roll Call.
Related Reading:
- In the Fight for Retirement Security, It’s 2005 All Over Again… But Ten Times Worse.
- Senate
GOP leader Mitch McConnell has perpetuated the myth that
Social Security and Medicare have “driven the [national] debt,” going
so far as to call these cherished entitlement programs “the single
biggest threats to our future."
Seniors have earned their benefits and many don’t have much else to live on. For more than one-third of retirement beneficiaries, Social Security constitutes at least 90 percent of income. Half of people aged 65 to 74 have no retirement savings. Without Social Security, almost half of the elderly would live in poverty.
American families know first-hand what this looming retirement crisis feels like. About half of households age 55 and older have no retirement savings and a third of current workers aged 55 to 64 are likely to be poor or near-poor in retirement.
via Entitled to Know.
Seniors went to Capitol Hill earlier this month to tell Congress why their current #SocialSecurity benefits are inadequate. Boost Social Security Now! https://www.ncpssm.org/campaigns/boost-social-security-now/ @RepJohnLarson