I don’t know about anyone else but I have long resented Republicans calling social security an *entitlement* when it was an amount that came out of my check regularly; ie, I PAID for social security and I intend to get it. If there is a problem funding it in the future, how about Republicans get rid of the huge tax breaks they gave to corporations, under Trump, and make THEM pay their fair share?? Also, rather than hopefully being ABLE to retire, Republicans want to change the retirement age to 69! (Add that to some states trying to lower the age where CHILDREN work, presumably at much lower wages, and Republicans just seem to want work horses that will slog along until they die. I would rather try to vote Republicans out of office than put up with them trying to take my hard-earned money that I got from WORKING.
On Wednesday, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) — a caucus that represents 80 percent of House Republicans, including the party’s entire leadership — unveiled a budget that calls for cutting Social Security benefits and establishing that human life begins at conception.
The RSC tried to obscure the implications of its Social Security policy by describing its proposal as an increase in “the retirement age,” and declining to specify what the new age should be.
But that is just an opaque way of describing a large cut in benefits. As Matt Bruenig notes, Social Security does not have a single retirement age: It has 96 different retirement ages, each associated with a different level of benefits.
When lawmakers talk about “raising the retirement age,” they are really calling for an increase in the “full retirement age” — a variable in a formula that determines benefit levels at all 96 retirement ages. Raising the full retirement age to 69 — as the RSC proposed last fall — would translate into a roughly14 percent cut to Social Security benefits, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The RSC’s proposal would not impact existing beneficiaries, but those retiring as soon as 2033 would have to get by on lower monthly incomes.
The RSC budget falsely suggests that its reforms would leave future retirees better off than Biden’s entitlement policies would. The caucus notes that, absent policy change, Social Security’s trust fund will become insolvent by 2033, a development that would trigger a 23 percent cut to benefits, and it claims that simply letting Social Security go bankrupt is Biden’s actual plan.
But this is a description of Trump’s position, not the president’s. The likely GOP nominee has offered no explanation for how he would keep Social Security funded. To the contrary, he has signaled plans for slashing federal tax revenues by trillions of dollars, policies that would make preserving existing benefit levels even more fiscally challenging.
Biden, on the other hand, has called for substantially raising payroll taxes on Americans earning over $400,000 a year in order to sustain Social Security in its current form.
80% of House Republicans released a Budget that:
Cuts Medicare and Social Security while putting health care at risk for millions
- Calls for over $1.5 trillion in cuts to Social Security, including an increase in the retirement age to 69 and cutting disability benefits.
- Raises Medicare costs for seniors by taking away Medicare’s authority to negotiate prescription drug costs, repealing $35 insulin, and the $2,000 out-of-pocket cap in the Inflation Reduction Act
- Transitions Medicare to a premium support system that CBO has found would raise premiums for many seniors.
- Cuts Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by $4.5 trillion over ten years, taking coverage away from millions of people, eroding care for seniors, children, and people with disabilities, and taking us back to the days where people could be denied care for pre-existing conditions and charged more for health insurance simply for being a woman.
Rigs the economy for the wealthy and large corporations against middle class families
- Passes $5.5 trillion in tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and large corporations, including permanently extending tax cuts in the Trump tax law, repealing the minimum tax on billion-dollar corporations the President signed into law, eliminating the estate tax for the wealthiest Americans, providing a massive tax cut for billionaire investors, and making it easier for the wealthy and large corporations to get away with cheating on their taxes.
- Kills jobs and investment in communities throughout the country – including Red States – by eliminating the clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.
- Makes it easier for companies and banks to rip consumers off with unfair and hidden junk fees by eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Raises housing costs by cutting funding for rental assistance, cutting funding for programs that help build housing, and raising mortgage costs for first-time homebuyers.
