Social security – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Social Security Under Attack

David Posnett — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 02:04:18 +0000

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2020/08/12/489401/trumps-plan-defund-social-security/

The Social Security Act was signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, on August 14, 1935, to function as a “federal safety net for elderly, unemployed and disadvantaged Americans,” while legislating that it cannot spend more than it receives through payroll taxes.

More than just a retirement program, it provides important life insurance and disability insurance protection as well. Over 64 million people, more than 1 in every 6 U.S. residents, collected Social Security benefits in June 2020.

One-third of all retirees are dependent on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income, and over 60 percent depend on it for more than half of their income. About 61 million people are enrolled in Medicare.

Social Security and Medicare are both funded entirely through payroll taxes paid into “The Social Security Trust Funds” Every penny paid out must be paid with money coming in now and in the future from payroll taxes. There are no other funding sources.

We know the Republican Party, in its chronic itch to defund entitlement programs, has sought to cut Social Security, even though it operates at a very efficient administrative cost of around 2 percent.

Last month, due to his administration’s disastrous response to COVID-19, Trump signed an executive order delaying some payroll taxes until next year — but would then require payroll taxes to be doubled from January through April 2021 to restore losses.

However, within this executive order, Trump also asks his treasury secretary to “explore avenues, including legislation, to eliminate the obligation to pay the taxes deferred.” He was sounding an early call to scratch the itch and de-fund Social Security, along with Medicare.

And then, out campaigning more recently after his payroll tax delay order, Trump said: “If I win, I may extend and terminate. In other words, I’ll extend it beyond the end of the year and terminate the tax.”

If he were, in fact, to “terminate” the payroll tax, Trump would effectively leave the Social Security system with no ongoing funding at all. That means no Social Security and no Medicare benefits, since all funding of the system will have been terminated.

The Social Security Administration’s chief analyst, Stephen Goss, recently stated that if Trump’s (Republican) plan goes into effect, “we estimate that [the Disability Insurance] Trust Fund asset reserves would become permanently depleted in about the middle of calendar year 2021,” and that “the Social Security Trust Fund would become permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023 with no ability to pay [Old-Age and Survivors Insurance] benefits thereafter.”

What does this mean for us if Trump, with his Republican majority, win?

What else does it mean?

James Ewing

Published as a letter to the editor in the Southampton Press this week.

Zeldin is Lying about your Healthcare

David Posnett — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 05:33:34 +0000

In his robocalls Zeldin uses a local physician to assure patients and constituents that he and the Republicans are not about to

deny insurance for pre-existing conditions
will not touch medicare
will not abolish social security

The physician, Dr. Vacirca, identifies himself and his practice twice in the robocall. He said Zeldin supports care for patients with pre-existing conditions and supports Social Security and Medicare, while [the democratic oponent] Gershon supports “socialist-style, government control” health care that will drive up taxes and bankrupt Medicare.

Jessica Waterbury, a patient of Dr. Vacirca, said she found Vacirca’s relationship with the Zeldin campaign “troubling.”

“Now that this information has come to light, I am more than dismayed, and do not want the money that paid for my treatment going to someone who is willing to take away protections for pre-existing conditions (like my cancer), and who voted against the individual market for health insurance,” Waterbury said.

Mitch McConnell disaggrees with Zeldin:

Republicans Will Take on Obamacare and Entitlements if They Win in Midterms, Mitch McConnell Says. By Nicole Goodkind On 10/17/18 at 5:31 PM

“…after indicating that he would like to cut spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Reuters that if Republicans win the Senate this November, they will once again take up their fight to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

McConnell … clarified his desires to cut spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs,”

Nothing surprising about these devious maneuvers. The Republican mojo has been clear for a while:

1st hand out a huge tax cut for the super rich that fund the Rep. party.

2nd complain about the deficit they created and blame it on Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare and Social Security

3rd repeal Obamacare and cut all the social programs drastically

Zeldin Supports GOP Shenanigans

David Posnett — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 16:56:01 +0000

Published as Letter to Editor, The East Hampton Star

Fiscal Chicanery

July 10, 2018

Dear David,

If you are under any illusions about congressional Republicans’ intentions to undermine the financial security of American families, just take a look at their new budget plan. Barely six months after passing a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy that swelled federal deficits by almost $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee issued a plan on June 17 that bemoans the “irresponsible imbalance” of the federal budget.

With stunning hypocrisy, the document states, “The federal government is spending more than it takes in. This increasing disparity is largely due to mandatory . . . spending, which includes safety-net programs like Medicare and Social Security. . . .” The plan then proposes to cut Medicare spending by $537 billion through partial privatization.

This is fiscal chicanery, pure and simple, and Lee Zeldin is fully on board with it. In November, let him know you are not on board with it. Vote for Perry Gershon, Democrat, and you will be voting for a representative who will work for real tax reform that helps middle class families and small-business owners, rather than tax reform that further lines the pockets of the 1 percent and large corporations.

Sincerely,

CAROL DEISTLER

A Catholic Nun Schooled Paul Ryan in Humility Last Night

David Posnett — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 19:53:04 +0000

From Esquire.com

It was a Biblical beatdown.

Getty

While the president* was fastening on his Serious World Leader face Monday night, Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, was facing a carefully tailored audience at a CNN “town hall” in Racine. Because Ryan is the biggest fake to hit Congress since the King of the Cranks, Ignatius Donnelly, there was the usual nonsense and prevarication. (Chait puts paid here to Ryan’s outright mendacity concerning healthcare. Alas, Jake Tapper, who otherwise did a good job, whiffed on this one.) But my favorite moment came when Ryan was confronted by a Dominican nun who challenged him to square his zombie-eyed granny-starving with his Catholicism. What followed was pure Ryan, which is to say dishonest, cowardly, patronizing, and totally unmoored from either self-awareness or actual reality. Gaze in awe.

(This, by the way, is the second time this year that CNN has handed Ryan this kind of platform. I do not know why that is.)

QUESTION: Good evening, Mr. Speaker. I know that you’re Catholic, as am I, and it seems to me that most of the Republicans in the Congress are not willing to stand with the poor and working class as evidenced in the recent debates about health care and the anticipated tax reform. So I’d like to ask you how you see yourself upholding the church’s social teaching that has the idea that God is always on the side of the poor and dispossessed, as should we be.

RYAN: Spoken like a great Dominican nun. Look…

Patronizing? Check.

Sister, you may — this may come as a surprise to you, but I completely agree with you. Where we may disagree is on how to achieve that goal. As you know, we all exercise prudential judgment in practicing our faith. And for me, the preferential option for the poor, which is something that’s a key tenet of Catholic faith, that means upward mobility, that means economic growth, that means equality of opportunity. That to me means working with this guy over here at Gateway Tech to make sure that we can close the skills gap, to make sure that every person who wants a career and job can get the benefits.

The budget produced by the House Of Representatives—Paul Ryan, Speaker—would cut education and job training programs by 25 percent.

We actually just passed this bill in July. Before that, we passed another skills bill. That means to me taking this 20th century poverty program that we have, which is — we’re in the 32nd year of the war on poverty. Trillions spent, and guess what? Our poverty rates are about the same as they were when we started this war on poverty 32 years ago.

No outside events have occurred since 1985 that might account for this. Also, Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty in his State of the Union address in 1964, which is 53 years ago. Again, nothing has happened in the intervening years that might account for the difficulty in waging this war.

So the status quo isn’t working, Sister. And what I think we need to do is change our approach on fighting poverty instead of measuring success based on how much money we spend or how many programs we create or how many people are on those programs, you know, measuring on inputs. Let’s measure success in poverty on outcomes. Is it working? Are people getting out of poverty?

CNN

Well, since, for example, the House budget cuts food stamps by almost $200 million from the food stamp program, one way people might get out of poverty is by starving to death. You will note, by the way, that we are now a loooooonnnng way from the 25^th chapter of Matthew.

And what I believe, when you look at it that way — actually, I have a commission that Patty Murray and I set up that’s underway right now to focus on these measurements. We need to make sure that we bring people into the workforce. The poverty — the poor are being marginalized and misaligned in many ways because a lot of the programs that we have, well intended as they may be, are discouraging and dis-incentivizing work.

OK, so here is what I don’t get. First of all, a great many poor people work their asses off, and in the private sector, too, and they’re being patronized by a guy who hasn’t spent 15 seconds in the private sector since he went away to college. His family got rich building roads on government contracts. His father died, and he went through high school on Social Security’s survivor benefits, a program that the budget proposed by the president* would eviscerate. Since then, he’s been a congressional aide and a congressman. My question is that, when he was going through high school on my nickel, and the nickels of millions of other Americans, including the poorer ones, why wasn’t he “disincentivized”? How did he avoid the terrible trap of the government “hammock”?

We were just — no, it’s true. We were just talking about it. We were just talking about tax reform. And I was telling you about these successful small businesses in Wisconsin, they got a 44.6 percent tax rate. That’s not the highest tax rate payer. I mean, Aaron Rodgers, who deserves every salary, is not the highest tax rate payer in this state. You know who it is? It’s a single mom getting $24,000 grand in benefits with two kids who will lose 80 cents on the dollar if she goes and takes a job.

Surely you recall that passage from the gospels where Jesus talks about lowering the top rate and doing away with estate taxes. (It was in the small print, and in Aramaic, at the bottom of the scroll.) And, anyway, the budget proposed by the House of Representatives—Paul Ryan, Speaker—would cut programs that would benefit that “single mom” by over $3 trillion.

We have to fix that. And that is why we have to fix it not by just kicking people off callously…

I’m sorry, but I have to stop here. This guy is still fighting for a policy that the Congressional Budget Office says would kick 30 million Americans off their health insurance. Maybe Ryan plans not to do this “callously.” Maybe he’s going to hand out balloons and lollipops. And, anyway, wasn’t this supposed to be about the gap between his policies and the teachings of his faith? I wish that nun had a ruler.

Health of Suffolk County Hospitals?

David Posnett — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 23:38:58 +0000

From the East Hampton Press (Jan 25th)

How will our hospitals do with repeal of the ACA? As reported in the East Hampton Press, repeal of Obamacare is predicted to hurt local Suffolk hospitals. About 150,000 people in Suffolk County are at risk of losing health insurance. Robert Chaloner, CEO of Southampton Hospital predicts a sharp rise of uninsured people, crowded ERs, longer wait times, and of course less federal dollars to offset losses. NY State is a Medicaid expansion state. Such states have seen a 34% reduction in uncompensated care costs in clear distinction to those states that did not accept Medicaid expansion (Kaiser CMU analysis of the Medicare Cost Reports 2013/2014). This will disappear with repeal of the ACA.

What does this mean for our local hospitals? I took a look at the financials (Annual Reports) of 9 of them. Together they employ 17,000 people and their combined yearly revenue is $4,719,000,000 (2015) most of which goes into employee salaries and therefore raises the standard of living and the economy in Suffolk County. Four of these hospitals (Peconic Bay, Brookhaven, Stony Brook and Southside in Bay Shore) are designated “safety net hospitals” as they serve over 40% of out-patients (and over 35% of in-patients) that are either on Medicaid, or on Medicare/Medicaid, or are uninsured. These hospitals are most likely to suffer big time. By comparison, Robert Chaloner, quoted in last week’s report, and Southampton Hospital might have it easy, as their profit margin is still relatively high (7.5% in 2014). I note that financial leverage (liabilities/assets) is high among several Suffolk county hospitals ranging from 0.6 to 1.2 (while the national average is 0.46 for non-profit general hospitals). This too represents a risk.

In NY City 16 hospitals have closed since 2003 and another dozen are in precarious financial condition. Throughout the State, there are hospitals that are teetering. They are often “safety net hospitals”. According to New York’s Department of Health Commissioner, “nearly half [of] New York’s 227 hospitals are financially distressed.”

The brewing storm after repeal of the ACA will likely dwarf the many complaints about Obamacare. Just listen to Congressman Zeldin who can’t stop complaining, but has not provided any constructive solutions to save our hospitals and the related local medical economy, which includes salaries for hospital health-care workers, including doctors.

David Posnett MD

Concerns of older 50+ New Yorkers

David Posnett — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 16:43:07 +0000

Social Security and “leadership” are front and foremost concerns for older 50+ New Yorkers! Read this interesting 2016 research survey by AARP:

http://www.aarp.org/research/topics/economics/info-2016/2016-ny-registered-voters-presidential-primary.html