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#politics #donald trump #trump #republicans #budget #health care #seniors #retirement #retirees #retirement crisis #entitlements #entitlement reform #earned benefits #elderly #older americansMore you might like
Republican presidential candidates’ rationale for raising the retirement age, that we’re all living longer, holds true for those with multiple diplomas, homes in safe neighborhoods and a plan for golden-age leisure. In other words, for the wealthy.
via Bloomberg.
Presidential Candidates Who Have Proposed Raising the Retirement Age:
Gov. Jeb Bush
Gov. Chris Christie
Dr. Ben Carson
Donald Trump
Carly Fiorina
Sen. Rand Paul
Sen. Ted Cruz
Sen. Marco Rubio
Gov. Mike Huckabee
Raising the Retirement Age IS a benefit cut.
Donald Trump doesn’t really have policy positions these days. He has policy moods. Humors. Flirtations, perhaps. He’s revised his stance on the minimum wage, obliquely suggested that he’d maybe consider defaulting on the U.S. debt before walking it back, and asked for assistance rewriting his tax plan. Now it appears he’s getting a little wobbly on entitlements.
via SLATE.
Related Reading:
- Trump Campaign Admits They’re Open to “Entitlement Changes”.
- In other words, candidate Trump will continue to promise no cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the campaign trail. However, President Trump clearly has a very different plan.
- Trump 2.0 on Social Security.
- Simply put, the differences between Presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2000 and candidate Donald Trump in 2016 are h-u-u-u-g-e.
By choosing Governor Mike Pence as his running mate, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump will send a very clear message to America’s seniors that their priorities will hold little weight in a Trump administration. During his decade-plus tenure in the U.S. Congress, Mike Pence consistently voted in favor of legislative efforts to cut benefits in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He has a long history of blaming earned benefit programs for America’s economic woes and supporting middle-class benefit cuts to protect tax cuts for the wealthy. Few members of Congress have an anti-seniors voting record as consistently strong as Mike Pence.
via Entitled to Know.
Boomers are crowding the retirement turnstiles just as safety nets may get a haircut from a Republican Congress fixated on an Obamacare repeal that could whack Medicare and Medicaid. And although President-elect Trump has defended entitlements, a key advisor once called for privatizing Social Security.
U.S. President Donald Trump will unveil an executive order on Thursday aimed at strengthening the Medicare health program for seniors by seeking to improve its fiscal position and offer more affordable plan options, administration officials told Reuters.
The order, which Trump will discuss during a visit to a retirement community in Florida known as the Villages, is the Republican president’s answer to some Democrats who are arguing for a broad and expensive expansion of Medicare to cover all Americans, plans that Republicans reject.
It follows measures rolled out in recent months by the administration designed to curtail drug prices and correct other perceived problems with the U.S. healthcare system, though policy experts say those efforts are unlikely to slow the tide of rising drug prices in a meaningful way.
via Reuters.
Related Reading:
Seniors Won’t be Fooled by Trump’s Medicare
Publicity Stunt.
Medicare Cuts
Despite candidate Trump’s promising older people “not to touch” their earned benefits, the president proposes to slash Medicare by $846 billion over ten years, which would accelerate the insolvency of the Medicare trust fund. So far, Congress has rejected these cuts, but if the President wins re-election, all bets are off.
Medicare Advantage Bias
Bloomberg reports that the President will use his Florida appearance to promote private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. This would be consistent with the administration’s unabashed advocacy for Medicare Advantage over traditional Medicare.
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump promised not to touch Medicare or Social Security, but Trump’s selection of Tom Leppert to lead the “landing team” at the Social Security Administration may suggest Trump’s administration could move in a different direction.
via Talking Points Memo.
Related Reading:
- The Trump Conundrum: He Can’t Keep His Promise to Seniors While Also Repealing Obamacare.
- The problem for President-elect Trump is that the American people fully
expect his administration to now keep that campaign
promise. Unfortunately, preserving Medicare and Social Security benefits
could be among the first of his promises to go. Trump and Republican
leaders in Congress have vowed the repeal of the Affordable Care Act will be one of their first acts.
Indeed. Despite the tension between Ryan and then-candidate Donald Trump, Ryan is now aglow—if not over Trump, himself, at least with the prospect of using his presidency to enact a long-dreamed-of plan to privatize Medicare. There seems to be no concern for the harm it would do to the recipients.
via Alternet.
Related Reading:
The Trump Conundrum: He Can’t Keep His Promise to Seniors While Also Repealing Obamacare.
Donald Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail that he would not cut Social Security or Medicare, and in his first budget as president, he is sticking to that promise. But congressional Republicans don’t believe Trump will stand by his pledge forever ― in fact, they’re counting on him to break it.
via Huffington Post.
Related Reading:
- Trump Snubs Seniors in Speech to Congress.
- He did not even utter the words “Social Security” or “Medicare” in his entire hour-long address.
Flashback Post:
Less than two months from Election Day, President Donald Trump on Thursday night stepped up his rhetoric about Social Security and other federal benefit programs by warning Democrats want to “destroy” them.
The president had not focused on the federal retirement, disability, and survivors’ benefits program at previous political rallies. But as the midterm elections near, he debuted some new — and sharp — lines at a rally in Billings, Montana.
He accused Democrats of wanting to “turn America into Venezuela,” which plunged into an ongoing economic and political crisis stemming from unsustainable social programs launched by Hugo Chavez’s government. “I don’t think so.”
via Roll Call.
Related Reading:
Trump is wrong, Dems are fighting to save Medicare and Social Security.
These are classic examples of Trumpian projection because the exact opposite of what the president said is true. Far from “protecting” Social Security and Medicare, President Trump and Republicans in Congress have been actively working to undermine them.
In fact, GOP Congressional leaders promised to “reform” (which really means “cut”) Social Security and Medicare to help pay for trillions of dollars in Trump tax cuts benefiting the wealthy and big corporations.
No one was really surprised when House Speaker Paul Ryan lined up behind the rest of the GOP party leadership to endorse Donald Trump. It’s also not too surprising that Ryan is confident Trump will support the Ryan/House agenda, regardless of his pesky campaign promises to leave seniors’ programs alone.
via Entitled to Know.