In the poll of likely voters, 79% favor increasing Social Security benefits — and funding that increase by having wealthy Americans pay the same rate into Social Security as everyone else. Seventy-seven percent oppose raising the Social Security retirement age to 69, and a whopping 93% favor allowing Medicare to negotiate to bring down the price of prescription drugs.
More on the poll here.
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However, some conservatives in Congress insist that relief for programs like the Older Americans Act be paid for by cutting Medicare and Medicaid. This budgetary sleight-of-hand could trade partial relief for some seniors’ programs by cutting other essential health security programs like Medicare and Medicaid, thus further eroding the tenuous economic situation many older Americans face.
Max Richtman via Huffington Post.
May is Older Americans Month, but the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans are putting a serious damper on the celebration. Yes, candidate Trump promised not to touch Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
But his administration has been actively undermining those pledges. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney — who once called Social Security a Ponzi scheme — questioned the legitimacy of Social Security Disability Insurance — and wouldn’t promise a Presidential veto of legislation to privatize Medicare (a pet project of House Speaker Paul Ryan).
President Trump champions the GOP’s American Health Care Act, which guts
Medicaid, undermines the solvency of Medicare, and allows insurers to
charge older Americans up to five times as much as people in their 20s.
More on this issue here via The Hill.
Do older Americans want bigger Social Security checks and expanded Medicare coverage – or do they want their benefits cut?
That is the fundamental question for seniors and their families with less than two weeks until the mid-term elections. The majority party in Congress has proposed time and again to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits under the guise of ‘entitlement reform.’ Leader Mitch McConnell just attributed the swelling federal debt to retirees’ earned benefits – when the real culprit was the 2017 tax package that mainly benefited the wealthy and big corporations.
The majority party’s 2018 and 2019 budgets would have taken a $500 billion bite out of Medicare and $64 billion from Social Security. And make no mistake – conservative tropes like raising the eligibility age, imposing a more meager inflation formula, and means testing are benefit cuts.
Read more from our op-ed by clicking here.
While the government shutdown has not affected Social Security or Medicare, low income seniors receiving food assistance remain at risk. Some five million older Americans receive grocery vouchers from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and administered by the states.
USDA is one of the federal agencies affected by the government shutdown. Fortunately, January’s SNAP benefits were paid, and the agency issued February’s payments ten days early before it officially ran out of funding last weekend. But this leaves all SNAP beneficiaries – including low income seniors – in a bind for two reasons.
Read more from this blog post by clicking through.
via twitter.
Related Reading:
Trump 2019 Budget Shortchanges Seniors, Poor, Disabled.
- President Trump released an FY 2019 budget today proposing deep spending reductions for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and myriad other federal programs that help older Americans, the poor, and people with disabilities.
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.”
Related Reading:
The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare’s Max Richtman emphasized the importance of talking about improving and expanding Medicare and Social Security, not just protecting them. He described how he talks to seniors across the country who are shocked that Medicare doesn’t cover, hearing, or vision care. Only by highlighting these gaps in coverage can we work to change them.
via Justice in Aging.
via twitter.
Related Reading:
Trump is wrong, Dems are fighting to save Medicare and Social Security.
The majority party is already hard at work on those cuts. Republicans have released a plan that would raise the Social Security retirement age to 70 and impose stingier cost-of-living adjustments — meaning massive benefit cuts for America’s seniors.
The president’s 2019 budget slashes Social Security Disability (SSDI) benefits by a staggering $64 billion over ten years. His budget director once disingenuously claimed that SSDI is not part of Social Security even though the words “Social Security” are in its name.
To win back seniors in 2018 and beyond, Democrats must remind them that Republicans are an existential threat to our cherished retirement and health security programs. In other words, thanks to the GOP, the time for overconfidence in the inevitability of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is over.
via Entitled to Know.
Investment in home and community-based care is popular and must be included in #infrastructure. Now it’s up to Congress to get it done. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/opinion/elder-care-congress.html #HCBS @nytimes