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GOP Poverty Plan Would Hurt Some of Most Vulnerable Children

The House GOP poverty plan would eliminate Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for 1.3 million severely disabled children in poor families, vaguely proposing to re-orient SSI to provide services instead.  Eliminating these modest but critical benefits, however, would hurt some of America’s most vulnerable children and damage their prospects for future success. While vital, the services are a supplement, not a substitute, for cash assistance.  What’s more, many SSI children already receive these services through existing special education, early intervention, and health care programs.

via Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Related Reading:

Speaker Ryan Releases Poverty Plan – Thankfully, No One Listened.

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Big promises, no details, and wrong on the facts when it comes to Trump on Social Security‬.

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Funds from revenue are transferred back and forth between the funds (called “reallocation”) as necessary for the government to pay the bills. In fact, it has been done routinely 11 times since 1968.

via Time Goes By.

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Social Security Targeted on Day One of New Congress

We’ve written before about the GOP strategy to force broad Social Security benefit cuts while simultaneously demonizing America’s disabled. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) raised the alarm about attempts to politicize what has always been a routine and non-partisan legislative solution to balance the Social Security Trust Funds:

“Reallocation has never been controversial, but detractors working to privatize Social Security will do anything to manufacture a crisis out of a routine administrative function. Modest reallocation of payroll taxes would ensure solvency of both trust funds until 2033. But if House Republicans block reallocation, insurance for disabled Americans, veterans, and children could face severe cuts once the trust fund is exhausted in 2016.”

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Social Security, in more ways than one the mother of all U.S. entitlement programs, has been the dragon that conservatives have succeeded in slashing, but never slaying, over its 80-year history.

via Talking Points Memo.

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Senator Rand Paul demonizes the disabled, claiming most are fakers.

Read more of his ridiculous claims by clicking here or the graphic above.

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Republicans didn’t prohibit the transfers, sometimes called “reallocation,” but the new policy does say that transfers must “improve the overall financial health of the combined Social Security Trust Funds.” And as TPM’s report added, “While that language is vague, experts say it would likely mean any reallocation would have to be balanced by new revenues or benefit cuts.”

via MSNBC.

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The new House Budget Committee chairman hinted Monday that he had big plans for Social Security reform in the next two years, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

A week after the House voted on a rule that critics say could force a manufactured crisis in the disability program in late 2016, a potential leverage point for Republicans aiming for changes, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) told a conservative audience that he wanted his committee to tackle Social Security.

via Talking Points Memo.

Related Reading:
Social Security Targeted on Day One of New Congress.

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Senate Democrats are urging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to refuse to go along with the House GOP’s plan to force a battle over Social Security in the next two years.

In a letter sent Monday to McConnell, a group of Democrats called the Republican ploy “audacious.” The House adopted a rule last week that will prevent the routine transfer of tax revenue between the retirement and disability funds, upping the chances of a crisis for the latter in late 2016.

via Talking Points Memo.

Related Reading:

• Social Security Targeted on Day One of New Congress.

• “This provision would make it more difficult to simply rebalance the two funds as has been successfully done 11 times in the past (reallocations have been made in each direction between the two funds) – forcing benefit cuts or tax increases to the Social Security program.”

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To improve that balance, Congress would have to cut benefits, raise taxes, or find another way to put both the retirement and disability funds on firmer footing. Lawmakers have in the past transferred funds from the retirement to the disability fund, and vice versa, nearly a dozen times.

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A group of Democrats in the U.S. Senate came out against a rule Monday that blocks Congress from shifting Social Security funds to prevent a cut to disability insurance next year.

via Huffington Post.

Related Reading:
“This provision would make it more difficult to simply rebalance the two funds as has been successfully done 11 times in the past (reallocations have been made in each direction between the two funds) – forcing benefit cuts or tax increases to the Social Security program.”

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Over the course of the last several decades, when the disability-insurance program runs short on funds, Congress transfers money from elsewhere in the Social Security system to prevent benefit cuts. It’s never been especially controversial – in fact, it’s been done 11 times over the last seven decades.

via MSNBC.