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I think any budget that we pass out of the House must include entitlement reform
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.
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New Poll Shows Majorities Do Not Support GOP Proposals for Social Security and Medicare.
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Asked Monday if the Trump administration would address “entitlement reform,” White House chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow said it will “probably” look at “larger entitlements” next year. Entitlement reform generally refers to changes or cuts to large government social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or food stamps.
via CNBC.
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Trump Advisor Re-Affirms Commitment to Cutting Social Security & Medicare.
- This aligns with comments from National Republican Congressional Committee chair, Rep. Steve Stivers, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and several other key GOP members about the need to pay for last year’s tax cuts by ‘reforming’ Social Security and Medicare. ‘Reforming,’ of course, means cutting and privatizing.
The political right has predictably pounced on the recently-released Social Security Trustees report to call for “entitlement reform” – code for cutting the program. Once again, they are using projections about Social Security’s long-term finances to justify raising the retirement age, reducing COLAs, and cutting benefits. This should not come as a surprise. In the wake of the Trump/GOP tax giveaway to billionaires and big corporations, prominent Republicans all but said that future retirees would be asked to pay the price.
Read the full blog post by clicking here.
Millions of Americans who rely on Social Security can expect to receive their biggest payment increase in years this January, according to projections released Thursday by the trustees who oversee the program.
But older Americans shouldn’t get too excited…
…“Opponents of Social Security may once again try to use this report as an excuse to cut benefits, including raising the retirement age,” said Max Richtman, who heads the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. “We must, instead, look to modest and manageable solutions that will keep Social Security solvent well into the future without punishing seniors and disabled Americans.”
via Associated Press.
The 2017 OASDI Trustees Report confirms that the Social Security Trust fund is stable and healthy for now, but faces challenges in the future if corrective action is not taken.
via Trustees Say Social Security is Sound for Next Two Decades.
Medicare advocates celebrated Ryan’s announcement, noting that he will leave Congress without accomplishing his lifelong goal of reforming Medicare.
“House Speaker Paul Ryan’s retirement from Congress lifts a very dark cloud that has hung over older Americans for nearly two decades,” Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare said in a statement.
“During that time, Speaker Ryan has been the Privatizer-in-Chief on Capitol Hill – advocating to turn Medicare into a voucher program and to gamble retirees’ Social Security benefits on the whims of Wall Street.”
via The Hill.
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Farewell to Paul Ryan and His Insidious
“Entitlement Reforms.”
- As America’s Privatizer-in-Chief, he spearheaded attempts to turn Medicare into a voucher program and to gamble retirees’ Social Security benefits on the whims of Wall Street.
- He passed legislation in the House to cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid by imposing per capita caps and turning it into a block grant program.
QUICK: Will the Trump administration tackle entitlement reform?
KUDLOW: Well, we’ve already tackled a big part of the newest entitlement, namely Obamacare. As far as the larger entitlements, I think everybody’s going to look at that probably next year. I don’t want to be specific, I don’t want to get ahead of our own budgeting, but we’ll get there.
This aligns with comments from National Republican Congressional Committee chair, Rep. Steve Stivers, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and several other key GOP members about the need to pay for last year’s tax cuts by ‘reforming’ Social Security and Medicare. ‘Reforming,’ of course, means cutting and privatizing.
Read more from this post by clicking here.
After wading through a stack of scholarly studies about older Americans and debt, my read is that the researchers are plenty worried.
They’ve found that owing money is pushing people in their 60s and beyond to delay retirement, postpone filing for Social Security (so their eventual benefits will be higher) and add stress to their lives.
Ohio State University’s Donald Haurin, Cäzilla Loibl and Stephanie Moulton just released an especially fascinating paper on the relationship between debt and financial stress for older Americans. In it, they described what they found to be a hierarchy of debt, stress-wise.
Credit card debt, they noted, is the most stressful type, with the strongest impact on older adults’ working longer and delaying filing for Social Security. Stress resulting from a $1 increase in credit card debt, they said, is the equivalent of stress due to a $14 to $20 increase in mortgage debt.
via Forbes.
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Our education initiative, Delay & Gain, helps you with one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make: retirement.
Delayed claiming past the early retirement age of 62 results in bigger monthly benefit checks for life. Waiting until after the current full retirement age of 66 yields even greater gains — up to 44% more than early claiming.
But I feel from all the budgets that I’ve passed, normalizing entitlement reform, pushing the cause of entitlement reform and the house passing entitlement reform, I’m very proud of that fact. But yeah, of course more work needs to be done, and it really is entitlements. That’s where the work needs to be done, and I’m going to keep fighting for that.
Speaker Paul Ryan via Politico.
Related Reading:
Seniors Relieved as America’s Privatizer-In-Chief Heads for the Exits.
- House Speaker Paul Ryan’s retirement from Congress lifts a very dark cloud that has hung over older Americans for nearly two decades. During that time, Speaker Ryan has been the Privatizer-in-Chief on Capitol Hill – advocating to turn Medicare into a voucher program and to gamble retirees’ Social Security benefits on the whims of Wall Street.
“But at the end of the day…we’ve got to have entitlement reform and that is why we keep pushing for our health care reform and that’s why we keep pushing for entitlement reform.” - Speaker Paul Ryan
This is no surprise to us. Speaker Ryan has been trying for years to cut earned benefit programs.
We have been keeping track of Congress’ actions on earned benefits and health care.
Click here to view our Congressional timeline.
Lumping Social Security and Medicare together and calling them ‘entitlements’ is also telling. These are earned benefits, not entitlements, which American workers have contributed to throughout their working lives. Conservatives have long used the word 'entitlements’ to make those earned benefits seem like welfare.
via Entitled to Know.