ReportWire

Tag: Social Security

  • Social Security disability benefits delays force difficult choices

    Social Security disability benefits delays force difficult choices

    [ad_1]

    Brenda Powell had suffered a stroke and was in debilitating pain when she called the Social Security Administration last year to seek disability benefits.

    The former Louisiana state office worker struggled at times to write her name or carry a glass of water. Powell, then 62, believed she could no longer work, and she was worried about how to pay for medical care with only a $433 monthly pension.

    Although the Social Security Administration agreed that Powell’s condition limited the work she could do, the agency rejected her initial application for Supplemental Security Income. She had the choice to appeal that decision, which could take months or years to resolve, or take early retirement. The latter option would give her $302 a month now but might permanently reduce the full Social Security retirement payment she would be eligible for at age 66 and 10 months.

    “I didn’t know what to do. These decisions are not easy,” said Powell, who lives in Alexandria, Louisiana, about 200 miles northwest of New Orleans. She decided to appeal the decision but take early retirement in the meantime.

    “I had to have more money to pay my bills,” she said. “I had nothing left over for gas.”

    Every year, tens of thousands of people who are disabled and unable to work consider taking early retirement benefits from Social Security. The underfunded federal disability system acknowledges that it is stymied by delays and dysfunction, even as over 1 million people await a decision on their benefits application.

    The United States, which has one of the least generous disability programs among developed Western nations, denies most initial claims, leaving applicants to endure a lengthy appeals process.

    At the same time, Social Security agents may neglect to explain the financial downside of taking retirement benefits too early, said attorneys who help patients file disability claims. The result is a growing population of vulnerable people who feel stuck between a proverbial rock and a hard place — to live with little money while they wait it out or agree to a significantly lower payment for the rest of their lives.

    “They don’t have the luxury of waiting,” said Charles T. Hall, a disability attorney based in Raleigh, North Carolina. “The vast majority of people need the money now, and you can get early retirement benefits in two months or less.”

    In a nation where more than a quarter of residents have a disability, Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs are intended to provide financial help to people who cannot work.

    Retirement experts generally recommend senior citizens tap into their Social Security benefits as late as they can, to maximize the amount of money they receive from the federal government. For someone born after 1960, taking benefits at age 62 — the earliest age people are eligible — instead of 67 reduces each monthly payment by as much as 30% for the rest of a person’s life, said Richard Johnson, a senior fellow and the director of the Program on Retirement Policy at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization.

    Someone who applies for Supplemental Security Income, or early retirement, would get $914 a month if they can prove they are older than 65, blind, or have a disabling medical condition. Social Security Disability Insurance pays an average monthly benefit of $1,483 to those who suffered a disabling injury or illness and paid a federal tax that was deducted from their paychecks in the past.

    Social Security agents will inform people of their ability to obtain early retirement benefits. But they might not explain the downsides, said Sam Byker, CEO and founder of Atticus, a California-based group that connects people seeking disability benefits with attorneys around the country. His organization found that among 2,000 clients seeking Social Security Disability Insurance, 44% were receiving early retirement.

    Disability takes too long, and the decision about who gets approved can seem arbitrary, Byker said. “It cannot be counted on,” he said.

    An initial decision on an application for disability benefits can take an average of over seven months, according to a March letter signed by more than 100 members of Congress. 

    Most callers to the Social Security Administration are unable to reach an agent, and people seeking local field office assistance with an application can wait at least a month for an appointment, the letter said.

    Social Security Administration field office in North Carolina
    More than 1,200 Social Security Administration field offices exist across the country, like this one in Charlotte, North Carolina. People seeking assistance with disability applications can wait at least a month for an appointment.

    Fred Clasen-Kelly


    Earlier this year, acting Social Security Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi warned in a letter to congressional leaders that months-long delays in processing disability applications and phone assistance are likely to worsen in 2023, even as officials vow to improve service over time.

    In a written statement, Social Security Administration spokesperson Darren Lutz acknowledged that wait times are “far too long,” citing inconsistent and insufficient funding, staffing shortages, and other challenges. The agency refused to make officials available for a phone call to discuss the issue in more detail.

    Caught in the tangle of dysfunction are disabled people with little or no income, who often take early retirement because they are struggling to pay for basics like housing, food, and medicine. In some cases, people end up homeless or die waiting for their disability benefits, lawyers told KFF Health News.

    The problems can hit especially hard in the South and Appalachia, since those regions tend to have an older workforce than most other parts of the country, more workers in manufacturing, and people with lower educational attainment who tend to rely more on disability benefits.

    “It is a system in crisis,” said Ida Comerford, a managing partner for the Kenneth Hiller law firm, which handles disability cases in New York, Michigan, and Illinois. “This is not going to cut it. It is the worst I’ve ever seen it.”

    The Social Security Administration said its workers are required to notify applicants about all the benefits they could receive and provide enough details for them to make an informed decision.

    For someone who has no income and no ability to cover their expenses, it might make sense to take early retirement benefits, said Kurt Czarnowski, a former Social Security Administration regional communications director who now works as a retirement consultant.

    If a person has a medical condition that suggests a shorter life span, Czarnowski said, it is probably wise to consider taking the smaller payments now instead of waiting for bigger checks later.

    But there is a huge financial advantage for those who can wait, Czarnowski said.

    People born after 1960 can collect full retirement benefits at age 67. In addition, each year they wait to collect Social Security between ages 67 and 70, their monthly check increases by 8%.

    “Ultimately, it is a longevity decision,” Czarnowski said.

    Hall also said he advises certain clients to take early retirement benefits while applying for disability. If the person wins their disability case, they can still collect full retirement benefits instead of the reduced amount, he said.

    But Byker, of Atticus, said that strategy comes with risk. Most applicants need an attorney to help obtain disability through the lengthy appeals process. But lawyers are less likely to take a client who is already receiving early retirement benefits because that scenario significantly reduces the amount of money they can make on a case, he said.

    More than 60% of applications for Supplemental Security Income are rejected, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research organization. About two-thirds of applications for Social Security Disability Insurance are denied, the group says.

    Six months after she applied, the Social Security Administration notified Powell in a February letter that her Supplemental Security Income claim had been denied. The letter said that while medical evidence shows her condition limits her ability to hold a job, she can do work in keeping with her skills as a finance assistant.

    Lutz, the Social Security spokesperson, said in a written statement that privacy laws preclude the agency from answering questions about Powell’s case. Lutz said the agency uses a “stringent definition of disability.”

    Powell has hired an attorney and filed an appeal, but she doesn’t know when the case will be resolved.

    “I don’t want to say ‘poor, poor me,’” Powell said. “It has not been easy. I don’t wish this on nobody.”

    KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Social Security recipients got an 8.7% COLA for 2023. Forecasts say it may be stingier in 2024.

    Social Security recipients got an 8.7% COLA for 2023. Forecasts say it may be stingier in 2024.

    [ad_1]

    This year, the nation’s 66 million Social Security recipients got their biggest benefit hike since 1981 — an 8.7% cost-of-living adjustment meant to help offset the highest inflation in four decades. But next year’s benefit adjustment is shaping up to be much more meager.

    Based on current inflation trends, retirees and other recipients may get a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) of just 3.1%, according to the Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group for older Americans that closely tracks Social Security. That would make the 2024 COLA the smallest in three years, following this year’s 8.7% hike and 2022’s increase of 5.9%. 

    Inflation has been declining but still remains higher than 3.1%, with consumer prices rising 4.9% at an annual rate in April.

    The 3.1% estimate is based on the 12-month average rate of the inflation index the Social Security Administration uses to adjust benefits annually. That index, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) — a basket of goods and services typically bought by workers — has been criticized as an inaccurate depiction of seniors’ actual spending, given that older Americans tend to spend more on health care than younger workers, noted Mary Johnson, the Social Security and Medicare policy analyst at the Senior Citizens League. 

    “The trend has been a decline in the inflation rate, and that has been the case really since last June,” when price increases hit a 40-year high of 9.1%, Johnson told CBS MoneyWatch.

    She added that a COLA of 3.1% next year may hurt many seniors, especially given that more than half of older Americans said this year’s large COLA hasn’t yet made them whole, surveys by the league have found.


    MoneyWatch: More Americans turn to credit cards amid inflation and rising costs

    04:13

    “About 53% say that their household expenses in 2022 rose by more than 8.7%, so they didn’t feel their COLA adequately covered rising costs in the past year,” Johnson noted. 

    Still, there are several months until the Social Security Administration announces its 2024 adjustment in October. The agency bases its COLA on the percentage increase in the CPI-W in the third quarter compared with the prior year. If there’s no increase between the two figures, there’s no COLA adjustment, the agency says. 

    Loss of buying power

    Over the years, Social Security recipients have lost buying power, partly as the COLA may underestimate medical expenses and other costs that seniors incur, experts say. 

    That can compound over the years, eroding buying power for the oldest retirees in particular, Johnson said. Her analysis found that Americans who retired before 2000, who are now 85 or older, have lost 36% of their buying power in the past 23 years and would require an additional $6,200 annually to fully restore their benefits. 

    “That is a substantial sum of money,” Johnson noted. 

    One proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, would require the Social Security Administration to use the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E), while also giving all recipients an automatic boost of $2,400 a year. However, with the House controlled by Republicans, it’s unlikely that a bill to expand the retirement program would gain traction any time soon. 

    Meanwhile, retirees are already fretting about next year’s COLA, Johnson noted. About half of those surveyed by her group “are concerned the COLA of 2024 will run into the same situation — that it won’t adequately cover their rise in costs,” she noted.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Will the Social Security fund run out — and what will happen if it does? Experts explain.

    Will the Social Security fund run out — and what will happen if it does? Experts explain.

    [ad_1]

    It’s no wonder the majority of millennials say they aren’t factoring Social Security benefits into their retirement planning, for years they’ve been hearing that the retirement and disability program is going bust. 

    Their belief is based on projections such as from the most recent Social Security Trustees Report showing that Social Security’s trust fund reserves will be depleted in 2033. That’s one year sooner than the program’s trustees had projected last year, and is partly due to shifts such as slowing economic growth.

    Yet experts say that some Americans, especially younger workers, have misunderstandings about the impact if the trust fund indeed goes bust — a prediction, by the way, that’s by no means a certainty. Even if the trust fund becomes depleted, the Social Security Administration will continue to take in payroll taxes from workers and their employers, allowing the program to pay the majority of benefits, experts note.

    The problem, though, is that if the trust fund runs out of money, the program’s 67 million beneficiaries will experience a benefits cut. And experts say those cuts could prove devastating to millions of older Americans, disabled people and children who receive benefits. 

    What would happen if Social Security ran out?

    The impact of the trust fund’s projected depletion was highlighted by Social Security Administration’s Chief Actuary Steve Goss and Deputy Chief Actuary Karen Glenn on a recent webcast with other actuaries.  

    “At that time [if the trust fund is depleted], there will be an immediate drop in benefits of about 25%,” Glenn said. 

    The system is designed to be progressive, meaning that the Social Security benefits paid to low-wage earners represent a bigger share of their earnings. For that reason, it could hit low-income Americans hardest.

    Currently, retirees who were low earners while working — defined as earning about $30,000 a year while employed — get about 50% of their income replaced from their Social Security benefits, Glenn noted. But that would drop to about 40% of replacement earnings in 2033 if the trust fund runs out of money. 

    High earners, or people who paid Social Security taxes at the earnings cap, about $160,000 a year, would see their replacement rate drop from 25% now to 20% in 2033, she said. 

    “The question is: Do you consider these benefits adequate?” Glenn remarked.

    Deep cut for low earners

    The cut would prove more significant for low earners, an issue given that low-paid workers are less likely to set aside retirement funds or save up for old age than higher-income Americans. They’re also likely to be more dependent on Social Security for that reason. 

    The result would likely lead to a spike in poverty rates for older Americans, predicted Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for the benefits program.

    “Not only would it increase poverty, it would deepen poverty for those already in poverty,” she noted.

    She added, “You would really have to curtail your expenses. You might have to move; you might not be able to afford rent, and have to move in with someone who can take you in, like your adult children.”

    What are the chances that the Social Security fund will run out?

    At the current trajectory, it appears very likely that the Social Security trust fund could run out of money in or around 2033. 

    But that doesn’t mean it will. Lawmakers could make a number of changes that would shore up the trust fund and put it in financial health for 75 years, according to Goss and Glenn. 

    There are a number of proposals, from Democrats, Republicans and bipartisan committees, that tackle the trust fund’s looming crisis. For instance, Republicans have proposed pushing up the retirement age to 70, effectively cutting between 2 to 3 years of benefits for today’s workers — an idea that’s not palatable to most Americans, with three-quarters telling an AP-NORC poll they oppose it.

    Are there other ways to fix Social Security? 

    Other proposals include raising the wage cap on taxes, set at about $160,000 this year. Currently, any income above that amount is exempt from the payroll tax. That means that middle- and lower-income workers shoulder a much bigger tax burden in funding Social Security than the 6% who earn above that amount. Raising the income cap could go a long way toward shoring up the trust fund, experts say.

    Another option is to raise the payroll tax rate slightly, which could also cover some of the solvency issues.

    Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, in February introduced a bill to address Social Security’s looming insolvency. His plan would add $2,400 in benefits each year for retirees, while applying the payroll tax to earnings over $250,000, among other changes. 

    “The changes would have led to 75-year solvency,” Glenn said, citing the Social Security Administration’s analysis of Sanders’ plan.

    What does the Social Security Administration say?

    The program has been shored up by lawmakers in earlier eras, which gives the Social Security Administration confidence that the program could be fixed before the 2033 depletion date, Goss said. 

    “We are very confident that, as has happened in the past, that Congress and the executive branch will step up and make necessary changes so we won’t confront that,” Goss said. 

    But, he said, he’s hoping the changes occur sooner rather than later. Making changes earlier “provides more options,” he noted. 

    Altman of Social Security Works noted that the crisis facing Social Security has been a talking point for far longer than millennials might realize. She’s hopeful that the issues will be fixed, as they have in prior decades.

    “I started working on Social Security in the mid 1970s — I was young and starting my career and I was told I would never get Social Security,” she noted. “I was told I was the victim and it was these greedy geezers who wouldn’t let benefits be cut.”

    She added, “Now, I’m 73 years old and I receive Social Security.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Biden launches 2024 reelection bid

    Biden launches 2024 reelection bid

    [ad_1]

    Biden launches 2024 reelection bid – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    President Biden on Tuesday officially announced his 2024 reelection bid. The president said his campaign will focus on issues including protecting Social Security and access to abortion services. Ed O’Keefe has the latest.

    Be the first to know

    Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.


    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Millions of older Americans are nearing retirement without a penny in savings

    Millions of older Americans are nearing retirement without a penny in savings

    [ad_1]

    If you ask Americans how much they’ll need for a comfortable retirement, they’ll throw out a big number: $1.25 million, to be exact. But in reality, most workers are far from reaching that goal — and there’s a significant chunk of older people who are nearing their golden years without a penny in retirement savings.

    About 27% of people who are 59 or older have no retirement savings, according to a new survey from financial services firm Credit Karma. To be sure, that’s the same share as the overall population, yet boomers have less time to save for retirement given that the generation is now between the ages of 59 to 77 years old. 

    The findings come at a time when lawmakers are discussing the health of the Social Security program, whose trust fund is slated to be depleted in 2033. That would result in a dramatic cut in benefits, with the 67 million retirees who depend on the program receiving only 77 cents for every $1 in benefits — a reduction that would hit the poorest Americans hardest, including those who have nothing saved for retirement. 

    Fewer younger workers are banking on Social Security to supply them with income in retirement, according to a separate study from Natixis Investment Managers. Only about half of millennials believe Social Security will factor heavily into their retirement plans, compared with 9 in 10 baby boomers — which indicates the older generation may be less financially prepared than younger Americans if benefits end up getting cut.

    “With Social Security, you should hope for the best but prepare for the worst,” noted Dave Goodsell, executive director at the Natixis Center for Investor Insight. 

    He added, “What people need to do, the bottom line, is take a minute to step back and say, ‘What do I need to retire, what will my income be,’ and then start saving.”

    Boomers: Dreams versus reality

    Boomers say they need $1.1 million for retirement, but the median retirement savings is $120,000 for that generation, Natixis found. To reach their goal, the typical boomer would need to sock away $186,000 annually, the study noted. 

    About 1 in 5 people over 59 don’t have a retirement account, the highest share of any generation, Credit Karma said.

    The gap between their goals and the reality of their savings could explain why boomers are pushing up their retirement age, Goodsell noted. For instance, boomers now project their retirement age at 70, while millennials believe they’ll step back from work at age 60.

    “Boomers have been trying to adapt, and saying, ‘We’ll work to 70 and get more time’” to save, he noted. 

    Among those planning on working longer is Daniel Fitzpatrick, a senior planning executive who told CBS Evening News earlier this year that he originally expected to retire at 60. Now 64, he’s still working and said he’s pushing back his retirement to age 70 — and plans to work part-time afterwards.

    “The benchmarks move as I get older,” Fitzpatrick said. 

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The millennial plan for retirement: Getting help from their kids

    The millennial plan for retirement: Getting help from their kids

    [ad_1]

    Some millennials are looking ahead to their eventual retirement are taking a page from an earlier era — one before the U.S. created Social Security.

    Fewer than half of millennials say the federal pension program will factor into their retirement planning, compared with 9 in 10 baby boomers, according to a new survey by Natixis Investment Managers. 

    Instead, most of the respondents in that age range (typically defined as those born between 1981 and 1996) say they’ll get through their golden years by tapping their retirement savings. And 1 in 5 millennials told Natixis they’re banking on their kids helping them out financially. 

    From the basement into the garage

    That view of retirement may reflect the reality of retirement today, with Social Security’s trust fund slated to be depleted in 2033, at which point retirees would get only 77 cents for every $1 in benefits, noted Dave Goodsell, executive director at the Natixis Center for Investor Insight. Given such concerns, millennials are banking on multiple streams of revenue and assistance for their old age, including support from children who may not yet be born.

    “Twenty percent of the generation that started in their parents’ basement think they will end up in their kid’s garage,” Goodsell told CBS MoneyWatch.

    He noted that the view may also stem from the growing trend of multigenerational households in the U.S. That issue is driven by partly by economic changes, with multiple generations bunking together to save on expenses, as well as cultural expectations among some groups that families should live together. 

    About half of all 18- to 29-year olds lived with a parent last year, although that includes a growing segment of older adults who are residing with their adult children, according to Pew Research Center. 

    Even so, boomers have starkly different expectations about where their retirement income. Just 2% of boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — expect their kids to help them in their old age, Natixis found. Most are relying on Social Security, as well as their retirement funds and personal savings. 

    Social insecurity

    One of the biggest generational differences in retirement planning stems from views on Social Security, with millennials’ skepticism stemming from a crescendo of concern about the health of the old-age fund. About 8 in 10 millennials believe that Social Security benefits will be “dramatically” reduced by the time they retire, compared with 4 in 10 boomers, Natixis found.

    “We have heard for a number of years the threat that Social Security will ‘go bankrupt,’ and that weighs heavily in an individual’s mind,” Goodsell said. 

    Baby boomers are retiring in force, pushing up the number of Social Security beneficiaries at a faster clip than the number of younger workers replacing them. But advocates for the program point out that it could be shored up without cutting benefits, such as by eliminating the income cap on the tax that funds Social Security payments. In the current year, any income over $160,200 is exempt from the Social Security tax. 


    Social Security benefits fall short despite increase

    02:27

    To be sure, It’s not only millennials who are worried about Social Security, with a recent Allianz Life survey finding that 3 in 4 adults say they’re not banking on the program in making financial plans for their retirement. 

    But such views may ultimately hurt Social Security rather than helping its viability. For instance, if younger voters assume the program is bound to collapse, they might be less likely to vote for policy makers who would take the steps to shore it up and ensure it remains intact for future generations. 

    $186,000 per year 

    Every generation appears far from reaching their retirement goals, according to the Natixis data. Although millennials think they need almost $900,000 in retirement income to step back from work, the generation’s median account balance is just $32,000. To reach their larger savings goal, they’ll have to save an average of $35,000 per year, Natixis calculated. 

    That may seem daunting, but it’s not impossible. For one, millennials with a retirement plan squirrel away more of their income than either boomers or Gen Xers do, contributing 16% annually compared with less than 10% per year for the older generations, Goodsell noted. noted. 

    Many boomers also may not be able to sock away enough money to afford their retirements, at least not in the style they prefer. Boomers say they need $1.12 million for their golden years, but have a median retirement account balance of $120,000. To reach their goal, the typical boomer would have to save $186,000 annually, Natixis said.

    “Boomers have been trying to adapt and saying I’ll work past 67 1/2 — we’ll work to 70 and get more time to work as much as we can,” Goodsell said. “It’s kind of scary.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Social Security trust fund could face shortfall within a decade — and earlier than expected, officials say

    Social Security trust fund could face shortfall within a decade — and earlier than expected, officials say

    [ad_1]

    The trust funds paying for Social Security and Medicare are facing financial challenges, the trustees of the funds said in their annual reports, released Friday. Republican lawmakers and the White House have been in a war of words over the budget and the future of entitlement programs.

    “Social Security and Medicare are two bedrock programs that older American rely upon for their retirement security,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen following a meeting of the Boards of Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds Friday. “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring the long-term viability of these critical programs so that retirees can receive the hard-earned benefits they’re owed.”

    The Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, one of the funds that pay for Social Security, will be able to make full payments until 2033. That’s one year sooner than last year’s report projected. The fund would then become depleted and benefits moving forward would have to be cut by 23% — paying 77% of current total benefits. In contrast, the Disability Insurance Trust Fund, which also pays for Social Security, is projected to be able to pay 100% of all scheduled benefits until at least 2097.

    Together, the trust funds would be able to pay 100% of total Social Security benefits until 2034, a year earlier than projected in last year’s report. Then, the funds would be able to cover 80% of scheduled benefits.

    The projected long-term finances of the trust funds are both worse than last year, as the trustees reassess their expectations for the economy.

    Retiring baby boomers are pushing up the number of Social Security beneficiaries much faster than the number of covered workers who are replacing boomers at work, which means Congress will need to modify scheduled benefit levels or payroll tax levels by 2033, officials said.

    “Social Security is not in crisis. The newly released Social Security Trustees Report shows that the program’s financial position remains largely unchanged,” said  Laura Haltzel, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. Policymakers, she said, “have a decade to consider and enact policies that would fill the gap between promised benefits and those payable with tax revenues.”

    The cap on the maximum taxable income for Social Security is affecting revenues, officials said. When the law capping that amount at $160,200 was passed in 1983, the expectation was that 90% of income would be below that and subject to tax. But since then, the highest income earners — roughly the top 1-6% — have had income increase substantially. Now, only 82% of all covered earnings income is taxed, which has led to a substantial reduction in the amount of revenue coming into the trust.

    While retirees receiving Social Security received an 8.7% cost of living adjustment this year because of inflation, administration officials said average wages increased 8.9%, which helped boosted revenues for that trust fund.

    For Medicare, however, the new report shows the trust fund that pays for Part A will be able to pay 100% of scheduled benefits for three years more than last year’s report, until 2031. At that point, the fund, which covers care such as hospital stays and hospice, would become depleted and be able to pay 89% of total benefits. That timeline is due to lower projected health spending.

    The deficit in the trust fund that pays for Medicare Part A could be fixed with an immediate reduction of spending by 13% or by increasing the standard payroll tax rate of 2.9% to the amount of the deficit: 3.52%, administration officials said. Other more gradual corrections could also be taken.

    And the trust fund that pays for Medicare Part B is adequately financed into the indefinite future. While the costs are steadily rising to meet demand, unlike other trust funds, it’s financed through premiums and federal contributions that are automatically adjusted. And expenditures for Medicare Part B as a share of GDP are also projected to be lower than previously estimated, partially due to lower health spending. Expenditures for drugs from that fund are projected to be a much lower share of GDP because of the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats last year.

    Roughly 65 million Americans receive Medicare benefits, including some 57 million ages 65 and older and 7.9 million people with disabilities. About 66 million Americans receive Social Security.

    Sarah Ewall-Wice

    CBS News reporter covering economic policy.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Social Security cost-of-living adjustment could be 3% — or lower — next year

    Social Security cost-of-living adjustment could be 3% — or lower — next year

    [ad_1]

    Seniors and millions of others on Social Security get an annual cost-of-living adjustment (or COLA) that’s geared toward aligning their monthly checks with inflation. Next year, that COLA could be 3% — or even lower — based on recent inflationary trends, according to an early estimate from the Senior Citizens League. 

    The estimate is based on the 12-month average rate for the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), a basket of goods and services typically bought by workers, according to Mary Johnson, the Social Security and Medicare policy analyst at the Senior Citizens League. 

    That 12-month average has been declining, even when inflation increased month-to-month as it did in January, she noted. Although inflation trends could change, price increases are now easing despite remaining well above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2% annually. 

    “Based on February inflation data, the COLA looks like it will be below 3% and could fall into the 2% or even lower range by the third quarter if that 12-month average continues to decline,” she said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch, adding that her group will issue an official forecast for the 2024 COLA in May.

    The Social Security Administration says it bases its COLA on the percentage increase in the CPI-W in the third quarter compared with the prior year. If there’s no increase between the two figures, there’s no COLA adjustment, the agency says. 

    “It’s important to remember that inflation was at the highest level in 40 years in 2022,” Johnson noted. “For there to even be a COLA [in 2024], inflation would have to exceed that.”

    She added, “There is every chance that won’t happen. I will be happy if there is a modest COLA, and then we end the year with inflation finally going negative and prices drop to a more typical growth pattern.”

    Smallest since 2020?

    A 3% COLA would amount to the smallest adjustment since 2020, prior to the surge in prices in 2021 and 2022 that has strained household budgets and eroded Social Security recipients’ purchasing power. People on Social Security received a COLA of 8.7% in 2023, the biggest in four decades, yet some seniors say that hasn’t been enough to keep them ahead of inflation.

    “Food prices have remained high and problematic,” Johnson noted. “Housing inflation is still working its way through the system.”

    She added, “I’m hoping to find some improvement in buying power, but the slow moderation in prices may not have too much of an effect so early in the year.”

    Inflation around the U.S. rose at an annual rate of 6% in February, cooling from the prior month yet still stubbornly high. The CPI-W rose at an annual rate of 5.8% last month, according to the latest government data.

    Johnson, whose forecasts tend to be accurate within a few tenths of a percentage point of the official COLA, said she relies on available data from the U.S. Labor Department for the CPI-W to project inflation, rather than on estimates from the Fed or other economists.

    Economists expect inflation in 2023 to average 4%, according to forecasts gathered by financial-data company FactSet. Many expect inflation to ease over the course of the year, with Goldman Sachs forecasting that inflation will drop to an annual rate of 3.7% in December.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Biden and Trump agree on one big thing | CNN Politics

    Biden and Trump agree on one big thing | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Joe Biden and Donald Trump are bizarrely on the same page on the top issue so far in the 2024 White House race, as they aim huge, possibly campaign-defining swings at Republicans who they claim will shred retirement benefits.

    The current and former presidents – bitter rivals who agree on little else – are both forcing their foes into political retreats and attempts to whitewash past support for changes that could cut Medicare and Social Security payouts.

    Their strategy is reinforcing a truism of presidential election campaigns that candidates who even entertain the notion of “reforming” these cherished entitlement programs for seniors are playing with fire.

    With typical bluntness, Trump has blasted his potential top rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as a “wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy” after he voted, as a member of the US House, for non-binding resolutions that would have raised the age at which most seniors can collect their benefits to 70. As a 2012 congressional candidate, he supported privatizing Social Security, CNN’s KFile has reported. But trying to ease his vulnerability on the issue, DeSantis insisted in a Fox News interview last week: “We’re not going to mess with Social Security.”

    Despite his own proposed cuts to these programs as president, Trump has kept up the attacks. “We’re not going back to people that want to destroy our great Social Security system – even some in our own party; I wonder who that might be – who want to raise the minimum age of Social Security to 70, 75 or even 80 in some cases, and who are out to cut Medicare to a level that will be unrecognizable,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference last Saturday.

    A few days later, another Republican hopeful gave both Biden and Trump a new opening to exploit.

    Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was forced to make clear Thursday that her striking and unspecific call the day before for raising the retirement age was only supposed to refer to Americans currently in their 20s, who are in effect a half century away from drawing their pensions. But her clarification won’t protect the former ambassador to the United Nations from Trump, who is splitting his party down the middle, yet again, by pouncing on competitors who have voiced traditional conservative orthodoxy on cutting or changing the programs. Biden is sure to also highlight Haley’s remarks as he claims only he can thwart a secret GOP agenda to kill off the vital programs.

    “I guarantee you, I will protect Social Security and Medicare without any change. Guaranteed,” the president vowed in Philadelphia on Thursday. “I won’t allow it to be gutted or eliminated as MAGA Republicans have threatened to do.”

    Biden browbeat Republicans during his “State of the Union” address last month to confirm on camera that they support shoring up Social Security and Medicare. And he’s anchoring his likely reelection bid on the most forceful campaign by a Democratic candidate in years on the issue. Some of his attacks are fair; others take statements by GOP leaders out of context. But they’re still potent – since both he and Trump know that when conservatives are explaining that they don’t plan to cut Medicare or retirement benefits, they are usually trying to dig out of a losing position.

    And Biden has public opinion on his side. A Fox News poll last month, for instance, showed that Democrats are preferred over Republicans to better handle Medicare (by 23 points) and Social Security (by 16 points). No wonder Biden seems to relish this particular political battlefield.

    The odd confluence of approaches – from a former president who sought to overturn an election and a successor who sees his administration as vital to saving democracy – says so much about each man’s political instincts, backgrounds and campaign strategy. It is also reflects the shifting character of the Republican Party, which Trump has torn from its corporate, ideologically pure conservative roots to build a new coalition that includes working class voters, often in the Midwest, that Biden is battling hard to win back.

    In one sense, possibly the most thorny domestic issue of the years to come should, of course, have a place in a presidential campaign. But when candidates use it to inflame their political bases, it only makes it harder to address in government. This is especially the case with entitlements since they cut into the DNA of each party and have defined the dividing lines between them for decades – at least until Trump came along and took over the GOP.

    Ever since the New Deal reforms of Franklin Roosevelt, who was president from 1933 to 1945, Democrats – through presidents Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama and Biden, especially – have sought to use government power to secure the living standards and health care of less well-off and elderly Americans. Republicans, from 1980s President Ronald Reagan onwards, have increasingly sought to find ways to shift the burden of some of this care to the private sector and to reduce or eliminate government’s role in an attempt to whittle away the New Deal reforms of FDR and the Great Society program of LBJ, who was president in the 1960s. They have often paid a heavy price. Republican President George W. Bush’s failed attempt to partially privatize Social Security contributed to a disastrous second term. And Trump still rails against former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who promoted a similar plan.

    While raising the alarm about threats to social programs for seniors might be a shrewd political tactic – especially in mobilizing older voters more likely to show up at the polls – it usually does nothing to address the program’s increasingly dire solvency challenges.

    The latest Congressional Budget Office projection found that Social Security’s retirement trust fund could be exhausted by 2032. At that point, with fewer workers paying into the program and with a rapidly aging population, benefits could be cut by at least 20%, CNN’s Tami Luhby reported. Medicare is even more precarious since its hospital insurance trust fund, known as Part A, will only be able to fully pay scheduled benefits until 2028, its trustees said in their most recent forecast.

    Biden, who released a new budget on Thursday that will help shape the message of his likely reelection bid, has proposed a plan to raise taxes on people earning more than $400,000 a year to shore up the program and would expand the range of drugs for which its managers can negotiate prices. He says the move would keep Medicare solvent until 2050 and would involve no cuts in benefits. The president also wants to target those who earn more than $400,000 with increasing payroll taxes to secure Social Security for the future. There is an infinitesimal chance, however, that the Republican-led House will agree to tax increases, so Biden’s plan represents more a device to deliver a political message than a viable plan.

    Despite warning his fellow Republicans to avoid cutting these programs, it’s unclear how Trump would save them if he wins back the White House – and doing nothing isn’t an option. And while other Republicans insist they don’t want to cut benefits or raise taxes, it’s unclear how they can square the circle.

    Florida Sen. Rick Scott has now excluded Social Security and Medicare from his proposal for all spending programs to be reviewed every five years. His original plan, released when he was leading the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, sparked the ire of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who quickly identified it as a political liability. That hasn’t stopped Biden from repeatedly claiming that it represents Republican policy.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has, meanwhile, said that cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “completely off the table” in what he insists must be negotiations with Biden over raising the government’s borrowing limit later this year. But that position has put him in a bind because it means that in order for the GOP to honor their pledge to slash spending, they will probably have to take aim at other social programs that could also prove unpopular with voters.

    America is not the only country staring down a crisis.

    French President Emmanuel Macron sparked nationwide strikes and protests with his plan to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62. Even China’s Communist Party is struggling as a falling birthrate threatens to inflict severe costs on the world’s most dynamic emerging economy.

    Back in the US, whoever wins the 2024 elections for the White House and Congress, there seems no easily identifiable solution to safeguard these vital programs on which millions of Americans depend. And time is running out.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Not touching Social Security could lead to 20% benefit cut within a decade | CNN Politics

    Not touching Social Security could lead to 20% benefit cut within a decade | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and House Republicans have promised not to touch Social Security in their battle over cutting spending to address the nation’s debt ceiling crisis.

    While that vow is intended to indicate support of the popular entitlement program, it could actually lead to financial disaster.

    Tens of millions of senior citizens and other recipients could see their benefits slashed by at least 20% within a decade. The latest Congressional Budget Office projection found that Social Security’s retirement trust fund would be exhausted by 2032.

    “There’s a sense in which doing nothing does not preserve Social Security but affects the benefits that are not able to be paid out,” CBO Director Phillip Swagel said at a Bipartisan Policy Center event last month.

    Social Security has long been on shaky financial ground. As the US population ages, there are fewer workers paying into the program and supporting the ballooning number of beneficiaries, who are also living longer. In all, nearly 66 million retired workers, their dependents and survivors, disabled workers and their dependents receive monthly payments.

    Forecasts on when Social Security’s retirement and disability trust funds may be depleted differ by a few years. Social Security’s trustees last year pegged the date at 2035 if Congress doesn’t act.

    However, the entitlement program is also one of the third rails of American politics, so elected officials are hesitant to suggest any changes that could lead to benefit cuts.

    “Pretending this isn’t a problem, that this isn’t current law, is dishonest,” said Gordon Gray, the director of fiscal policy at the right-leaning American Action Forum. “And it is a choice – a number of policymakers are making this choice. And it is a major financial risk to the retirement benefits of tens of millions of Americans.”

    The last time Congress enacted a major overhaul, in 1983, Social Security was only months away from being able to pay full benefits. At that time, Democratic lawmakers who controlled the House agreed with Senate Republicans and GOP President Ronald Reagan to increase payroll taxes and gradually raise the normal retirement age from 65 to 67, among other reforms.

    While Biden has promised to strengthen Social Security and defend it from any cuts by Republicans, he has yet to lay out his vision for protecting the program. Ahead of his full budget release this week, the president on Tuesday unveiled a plan to bolster a key Medicare trust fund – which could be depleted as soon as 2028 – by raising taxes on higher-income earners and allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for even more drugs.

    There are several ways to put Social Security on more solid financial footing, though each has its opponents on Capitol Hill and in the White House. Lawmakers could raise the early retirement age, currently 62, or increase the normal retirement age again. They could hike the payroll tax rate, now 12.4% split between the employer and worker, or lift the cap on income subject to the levy, currently $160,200. Congress could also change the formula of the annual cost-of-living adjustment so it ramps up more slowly.

    However, it’s unlikely anything will be done in the near term, in part because of the current lack of bipartisanship in Washington, said Gary Engelhardt, economics professor at Syracuse University.

    “It’s only going to be more expensive, the longer you wait,” he said. “But Americans have a penchant for waiting to do things politically. So I just feel like nothing’s going to happen in the short run.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • One way to fix Social Security?

    One way to fix Social Security?

    [ad_1]

    Social Security is heading for a funding cliff, with its trust fund reserves potentially becoming insolvent by 2033 — an outcome that would mean beneficiaries would face a 25% shave on their monthly checks. But there is a way to fix most of the funding shortfall, policy experts say: “Smash the cap.”

    That refers to the Social Security tax cap, a feature of the program since it was launched in the 1930s following the Great Depression. Essentially, any income over the earnings cap isn’t subject to the Social Security payroll tax, which is 6.2% for workers and an additional 6.2% for employers. 

    In 2023, the tax cap stands at $160,200, which means any income above that amount is exempt from the payroll tax. As a result, middle- and lower-income workers bear a much greater tax burden in funding Social Security than the 6% of Americans who earn above the threshold, according a new analysis from the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. 

    “If you make over that cap, like 6% of the population does, you could be paying 1% of your income or even less than that,” noted Sarah Rawlins, program associate at CEPR. 

    Yet a middle-income worker earning less than the $160,200 cap in 2023 will pay an effective tax rate that is six times higher than the millionaire’s tax burden, she noted. 

    That’s why the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a federal agency that provides financial analyses of policy issues, calls the Social Security tax cap “regressive” — middle- and low-income workers pay a much greater share of their income toward the program than the rich. 

    Eliminating or lifting the tax cap could help stabilize Social Security’s trust fund by providing more revenue to the program, Rawlins said. A December analysis by the CBO found that eliminating the cap for earnings over $250,000 would keep the trust fund solvent through 2046.


    Millions of Americans nearing retirement without savings

    02:22

    Meanwhile, some lawmakers are proposing changes that include both getting rid of the tax cap and other changes to address Social Security’s funding challenges. Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, in February introduced legislation that would stabilize the trust fund for the next 75 years.

    Among their plans: Lift the tax cap for people earning $250,000, and add the Social Security tax to investment and business income, which is currently exempt from the tax. 

    Raise the retirement age?

    Others oppose raising taxes on higher-income Americans as the answer to fixing Social Security. Last year, the Republican Study Committee, a group of House conservatives, proposed lifting the retirement age for claiming Social Security to age 70, up from today’s full retirement age of 66 to 67 years old. 

    While House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said Social Security won’t be on the chopping block during the ongoing debt ceiling debate, pushing the retirement age higher isn’t a new approach. For instance, the full retirement age was 65 until 1983, when changes to the program took into account the fact that Americans were living longer and the retirement age was raised to 66 or 67 (depending on one’s birth year).

    Americans’ longer lifespans are part of the argument that Republican lawmakers make in favor of lifting the Social Security retirement age: the “miracle” of longer life expectancy means that workers can wait to get their benefits, according to Republican Study Committee’s documents. 

    Regardless of whether people can actually work until they are 70, raising the retirement age is effectively a benefits cut because today’s workers would lose out on between three and four years of benefits. Based on the average Social Security benefit for retirees, raising the retirement age to 70 would equate to a loss of at least $65,000 in payments for the typical beneficiary. 

    Still, with a divided Congress, for now it’s unlikely that either the Democrats or Republicans could push through their changes to stabilize Social Security. 

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump Claims Ron DeSantis Gets Off on Killing Old People in Wheelchairs

    Trump Claims Ron DeSantis Gets Off on Killing Old People in Wheelchairs

    [ad_1]

    Earlier this week, we learned that in his new memoir, The Courage to Be Free, Ron DeSantis has a number of very nice things to say about Donald Trump. Unfortunately for the governor of Florida, his would-be 2024 opponent has not returned the favor, and by “not returned the favor,” we mean Trump has decided to follow up his recent suggestion that a 20-something DeSantis groomed high school girls…by claiming the guy will send seniors to an early grave if elected president.

    On Tuesday, Trump logged on to Truth Social and told his followers: “Great Poll numbers are springing forth for your favorite President, me, against Ron DeSanctus (& Biden). I guess people are finding out that he wanted to CUT SOCIAL SECURITY & RAISE THE MINIMUM AGE TO AT LEAST 70, at least 4 times. LIKEWISE WITH MEDICARE, WANTED BIG CUTS. HE IS A WHEELCHAIR OVER THE CLIFF KIND OF GUY, JUST LIKE HIS HERO, failed politician Paul Ryan, the FoxNews ratings destroyer who led Mitt Romney’s Presidential Campaign down the tubes. GLOBALIST’S ALL! WE WANT AMERICA FIRST!!!”

    Trump isn’t right about a lot of things, but he is correct in his claim that former House Speaker Paul Ryan famously dreamed of gutting Medicare and Social Security, as well as Medicaid and other key aspects of the social safety net—which he once described as a “hammock that lulls able-bodied people into complacency and dependence.” Sadly for Ryan, not enough people in Congress wanted to commit political suicide, and he retired before he could get the job done.

    As for DeSantis, the Florida governor has been less direct than Ryan about his lust for doing away with programs millions of people rely on (and in many cases, pay into). But it’s not hard to see where his head’s at, since he:

    • Per Semafor, “Voted for a series of budget resolutions crafted by the conservative Republican Study Committee that would have voucherized Medicare for new beneficiaries, slowed Social Security cost-of-living increases, and raised the retirement age for both programs” during his time in Congress;
    • Received, according to The Washington Post, “a 0 percent rating from the Alliance for Retired Americans, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO,” and said during debt-limit negotiations in 2013 that Social Security and Medicare should be part of the negotiations;
    • Commented the same year: “I think we need to restructure some of these entitlements”;
    • Said in 2012: “I support what Ryan is trying to do in terms of reforming entitlements.”

    And what of Trump’s position on all this? Well, he is currently painting himself as a defender of Medicare and Social Security and, according to Ryan, refused to pursue cuts to “entitlements” while in office because they weren’t popular. However, the ex-president apparently forgets that in 2019, he reportedly discussed gutting Medicare as a potential “second-term project.” Or that, in 2020, he was asked if such cuts would ever be on his “plate,” and responded, out loud: “At some point they will be.”

    [ad_2]

    Bess Levin

    Source link

  • How an old debate previews Biden’s new strategy for winning senior voters | CNN Politics

    How an old debate previews Biden’s new strategy for winning senior voters | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    In pressing Republicans on Social Security and Medicare, President Joe Biden is reprising one of the most dramatic moments of his long career.

    During the 2012 vice-presidential debate, Biden engaged in a nearly 11-minute exchange with GOP nominee Paul Ryan over Republican plans to reconfigure the two massive programs for the elderly, several of which Ryan had authored himself.

    Biden and many Democrats felt he had won the argument on stage. Yet on Election Day, Ryan and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney routed Biden and President Barack Obama among White seniors, and beat them soundly among seniors overall, exit polls found.

    That outcome underscores the obstacles facing Biden now as he tries to recapture older voters by portraying Republicans as threats to the two towers of America’s safety net for the elderly. While polls consistently show that voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to safeguard the programs, GOP presidential nominees have carried all seniors in every presidential election back to 2004 and have reached at least 58% support among White seniors in each of the past four contests, exit polls have found. Democrats have likewise consistently struggled among those nearing retirement, older working adults aged 45-64.

    Those results suggest that for most older voters, affinity for the GOP messages on other issues – particularly its resistance, in the Donald Trump era, to cultural and racial change – has outweighed their views about Social Security and Medicare. Those grooves are now cut so deeply, over so many elections, that Biden may struggle to change them much no matter how hard he rails against a range of GOP proposals that could retrench or restructure the programs.

    Biden’s charge that Republicans are threatening the two giant entitlement programs for the elderly – which triggered his striking back and forth exchanges with GOP legislators during the State of the Union – fits squarely in his broader political positioning as he turns toward his expected reelection campaign.

    As I’ve written, the 80-year-old Biden, at his core, “remains something like a pre-1970s Democrat, who is most comfortable with a party focused less on cultural crusades than on delivering kitchen-table benefits to people who work with their hands.” As president he’s expressed that inclination primarily through what he calls his “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America” – the planks in his economic plans, such as generous incentives to revive domestic manufacturing, aimed at creating more opportunity for workers without a college degree. Politically, Biden’s staunch defense of Social Security and Medicare, programs critical to the economic security of financially vulnerable retirees, represents a logical bookend to that emphasis.

    “We all know that whose side you are on is a critical debate point for every election and this debate over Social Security and Medicare really helps crystallize whose side Biden is on versus whose side Republicans are on in a very effective way for him,” said Democratic pollster Matt Hogan, who helped conduct an extensive series of bipartisan polls during the 2022 campaign measuring attitudes among seniors for the AARP, the giant lobby for the elderly.

    From Franklin Roosevelt through Hubert Humphrey and Tip O’Neill, generations of Democrats have framed themselves as the defenders of the social safety net for seniors against Republicans who they say would unravel it. Biden showed how comfortable he was stepping into those shoes during his 2012 vice-presidential debate with Ryan, then a young representative from Wisconsin who Romney had selected as his running mate.

    Nearly 30 years Biden’s junior, Ryan was an unflinching advocate of restructuring Social Security and Medicare to reduce costs over time. In particular, Ryan was the principal supporter of a conservative plan to convert Medicare, the giant federal health insurance program for the elderly, into a system called “premium support.” Under that proposal, Medicare would be transformed from its current structure, in which the government directly pays doctors and hospitals who provide care for beneficiaries, into a voucher (or “premium support”) system, in which the government would provide recipients a fixed sum to purchase private insurance. Ryan had also drafted proposals to partially privatize Social Security by allowing workers to divert part of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts, a change that would have reduced the tax dollars flowing into the system and eventually required substantial cuts in guaranteed benefits.

    For nearly 11 minutes during the debate in October 2012, moderator Martha Raddatz of ABC skillfully guided Biden and Ryan through a heated, but civil and substantive, discussion of Social Security and Medicare’s future. Ryan insisted that changes were needed to preserve the programs’ long-term viability and that current seniors and those near retirement would not see their benefits reduced.

    Biden appealed openly to the Democrats’ historic image as the programs’ protectors and condemned Ryan and the GOP for wanting to partially privatize them. At one point in the debate, Biden declared: “we will be no part of a [Medicare] voucher program or the privatization of Social Security.” A few moments later, he insisted: “These guys haven’t been big on Medicare from the beginning. And they’ve always been about Social Security as little as you can do. Look, folks, use your common sense. Who do you trust on this?”

    At the time, Democrats felt Biden had at least held his own, restoring the party’s momentum after Obama’s surprisingly listless performance eight days earlier in his first debate against Romney. And Democrats through the rest of the campaign railed against the Republican ticket as a threat to Social Security and Medicare.

    But on election day, those arguments did not translate into gains for Obama and Biden among seniors or the older working adults (aged 45-64) nearing retirement. As Hogan noted, the newly passed Affordable Care Act, which generated some of its funding through savings in Medicare, was extremely unpopular at the time among older voters. Obama and Biden not only lost seniors and the older working age adults, but actually ran slightly more poorly among both groups in 2012 than they did in 2008.

    In fact, no Democratic presidential nominee since Al Gore in 2000 has carried most seniors in a presidential campaign; Obama in 2008 was the only one since Gore to carry most of the older working age adults. Among older Whites, the Democratic deficit is even more pronounced: the Republican presidential nominee has carried around three-fifths of both White seniors and those nearing retirement in each of the past four elections. Biden in 2020 slightly improved on Hillary Clinton’s anemic 2016 performance with both groups, but still lost to Trump by 15 percentage points among White seniors and by 23 points among the Whites nearing retirement, according to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN. Biden performed especially poorly among older Whites without a college degree – an economically stressed group heavily reliant on the federal retirement programs.

    Estimates by Catalist, a Democratic targeting firm, and the Pew Research Center likewise found that Trump in both 2016 and 2020 beat his Democratic opponents among both seniors and the older working adults. Like the exit polls, the Catalist data show the Republican nominees carrying about three-fifths of White seniors and older working adults in each of the past three presidential elections.

    The story is similar in congressional contests. In House elections, the exit polls found Republicans winning all seniors and older working adults comfortably in the 2014 and 2022 midterm campaigns and narrowly carrying them even in 2018 when Democrats romped overall. In all three of those midterm congressional elections, Republicans carried about three-fifths of the near retirement White adults, while they also reached that elevated threshold among White seniors in both the 2014 and 2022 campaigns.

    Republicans have maintained these advantages with older voters despite polls showing that most Americans trust Democrats more than the GOP to protect Social Security and Medicare, and that most Americans, especially seniors, oppose the intermittently surfacing GOP proposals to partially privatize both programs.

    Politically, “Democrats have used Social Security and Medicare really a lot over the past two or three decades, maybe four decades,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “The payoff has been a lot less than Democrats have generally thought it would be.”

    Could this time be different for Biden and the Democrats? Congressional Republicans have certainly provided plenty of evidence for his claim that they still hope to restructure the programs. The proposed 2023 budget by the Republican Study Committee, the members of which include about three-fourths of House Republicans, reprises the ideas of converting Medicare into a premium support system and establishing private investment accounts under Social Security, while also raising the retirement age for both programs and reducing Social Security benefits over time. And although Florida Sen. Rick Scott renounced the idea late last week, his “Rescue America” agenda did include a proposal to require Congress to reauthorize all federal programs, including Social Security and Medicare, every five years.

    These ideas have precipitated an unusual degree of open Republican dissension. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly, and unreservedly, denounced the Scott plan until the Florida senator backed off. Trump recently released a video in which he declared the GOP should not cut “a single penny” of Social Security or Medicare benefits – which put him directly at odds with the three-fourths of House Republicans in the Republican Study Committee. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, bending more toward Trump’s position, seems unlikely to incorporate into the GOP budget plans the RSC’s most sweeping changes in Social Security and Medicare.

    Kessler believes Biden may succeed where other Democrats have failed at hurting the GOP with the issue, and he argued that the conspicuous Republican infighting demonstrates they share that concern. “We are watching a high-profile battle that I’ve never really seen before on these issues in the Republican Party,” Kessler said. “And part of it is clearly they think it’s a problem when they didn’t years ago. If they think it’s a problem, maybe it’s a problem.”

    Stuart Stevens, who served as Romney’s chief strategist in the 2012 campaign but has since become a fierce critic of the Trump-era GOP, also believes the party could face more risk over its entitlement agenda than it did back then. The reason is that he thinks the idea of sunsetting Social Security and Medicare every five years, even if Scott is trying to jettison it, may prove more immediately tangible and understandable to voters than Ryan’s complex ideas of partially privatizing both programs.

    “The question I always ask myself in campaigns is ‘are you talking about something the other side doesn’t want to talk about?’” Stevens said. “That’s probably a good sign that they are losing on the issue.”

    Whether Biden proves more effective than other recent Democrats at attracting older voters around Social Security and Medicare will likely pivot on whether seniors believe the GOP genuinely would cut the programs if given the power to do so, argued Robert Blendon, a professor emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health, who specializes in public attitudes about the social safety net. “If the senior community actually believes that it’s being threatened it really would affect their votes,” he predicted. But, he added, “as long as they are not threatened, the other values of seniors on top issues more and more correspond with Republicans.”

    There’s no doubt about the second half of that equation. Polling has consistently found that older Whites, in particular, are more receptive than their younger counterparts to hardline Trump-era GOP messages around crime, immigration and the broader currents of racial and cultural change: for instance, about half of Whites older than 50 agree that discrimination against Whites is now as big a problem as bias against minorities, a far higher percentage than among younger Whites, according to a new national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. Older Whites are also more likely than younger generations to lack a college degree or to identify as Christians, attributes that generally predict sympathy for GOP cultural and racial arguments.

    Through the 21st century, those cultural and racial attitudes among older White voters have consistently trumped any concerns they may hold about the Republican commitment to Social Security and Medicare. Despite Biden’s impassioned articulation of the case against the GOP, that didn’t change even in 2012 when Republicans placed on their national ticket a vice presidential nominee who directly embodied the GOP aspirations to reconfigure and retrench those programs.

    Even small changes in seniors’ preferences could have a big impact in closely balanced states with a large retiree population like Arizona and Pennsylvania. But the entrenched GOP advantage among older voters over the past two decades suggests Biden’s hopes in 2024 may pivot less on improving with the “gray” than maximizing his vote among the “brown”: the diverse, younger generations that recoil from the same Republican messages on culture and race that electrify so many older Whites.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Social Security and Medicare: Troubling math, tough politics | Long Island Business News

    Social Security and Medicare: Troubling math, tough politics | Long Island Business News

    [ad_1]

    It seems no one wants to cut Social Security or Medicare benefits.

    Not President Joe Biden, who is already telling voters his upcoming federal budget proposal will “defend and strengthen” the programs. Not Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has declared cuts to the programs off the table in negotiations to raise the federal debt limit.

    There’s just one glitch with these declarations: Social Security won’t be able to pay out its promised benefits in about a dozen years, while Medicare won’t be able to do so in just five years. Economists have done the projections and say both programs will drive the national debt higher in the decades to come, forcing teeth-gritting choices for the next generation of lawmakers.

    Here’s a breakdown of the dilemma, the potential fixes and the harsh politics around Social Security and Medicare:

    THE CHALLENGE

    It’s a math problem that requires a political solution.

    Payroll taxes largely fund Social Security and Medicare. They generally get deducted from workers’ paychecks, which is why Biden, a Democrat, says people are merely getting back what they’ve already paid into the system.

    But as more baby boomers age and retire, there are more beneficiaries and not enough tax revenue to fund the programs. Payroll taxes are expected to generate $1.56 trillion this year, but the combined costs of Social Security and Medicare are likely to be $2.16 trillion, according to a Congressional Budget Office report last week. The office warned in its report that Social Security benefits may need to be cut even earlier than past projections, beginning in 2032.

    CBO Director Phillip Swagel said Friday at a Bipartisan Policy Center event that “benefits today are being paid in full as promised, drawing down on the Social Security trust fund.” But when the government is unable to pay full benefits, “that’s a challenge,” he said.

    The number of people enrolled in Medicare has more than tripled to roughly 65 million since its inception in 1966. More than 10 million new retirees and disabled people joined in just the past decade, according to data from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.

    The shortfall in tax revenues combined with a rising number of recipients would eventually lead to Social Security’s trust fund being unable to fully pay benefits in 2035, a Social Security and Medicare trustees report predicted last June, though the CBO said it could happen sooner. Medicare’s trust fund would be unable to pay full benefits starting in 2028.

    This forces the inevitable choice of whether to shore up the trust funds’ finances or reduce people’s benefits. Continued delays by Congress and the president in addressing this math problem could narrow the number of potential fixes.

    WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS?

    There is basically some combination of four options:

    — Raise taxes.

    — Change benefits such as the eligibility age.

    — Cut costs.

    — Rely more on general revenues to cover the gap, which could mean higher budget deficits or cuts to other programs.

    Biden took a step last year with his Inflation Reduction Act, which would allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices on a handful of drugs and charge drug companies when they raise the price of drugs faster than inflation. The law also makes vaccines free, caps monthly out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 and limits out-of-pocket drug expenses at $2,000 starting in 2025.

    The CBO said the prescription drug components of the law would save $237 billion over 10 years, prompting some Republican lawmakers to say it was a spending cut that would dig into pharmaceutical companies’ profits, forcing them to limit how much they spend developing new treatments. But the law aims to lower the cost people pay for medication, rather than ax benefits.

    Democrats are also trying to rein in spending on the increasingly popular -– and expensive -– Medicare Advantage program, a network of private insurance plans that are reimbursed by the government. Recently, 70 Democrats signed a letter to the president asking his administration to crack down on scams and wasteful spending in the program, which federal investigators say has cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

    Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has pushed legislation that would create bipartisan committees to look at ways to salvage the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. The bill has gone nowhere but has limited bipartisan support, including from Senate Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Warner of Virginia.

    Payroll taxes were capped last year at $147,000 — meaning no one paid the taxes after surpassing that threshold. In 2019, Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., proposed a bill that would reinstitute the payroll tax at earnings above $400,000.

    Last year, members of the House Republican Study Committee proposed raising the age at which someone could qualify for Social Security and Medicare. Right now, people can access their full Social Security benefits at 67, an age minimum that’s increased by two years since the program was first established nearly 90 years ago. You must be at least 65 to access Medicare.

    Last year, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., laid out a plan to require Congress to reconsider all federal laws every five years — leading to criticism by Biden that Social Security and Medicare would be cut. That idea has received an ice-cold reception with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, saying it will “not be part of our agenda.”

    After several months of flak, Scott on Friday revised his plan to specifically exclude Social Security and Medicare.

    The CBO has also laid out nearly 60 policy options that could save the federal government billions of dollars on Medicare, including higher monthly premiums for some older and disabled adults.

    THE POLITICS ARE TOXIC

    In his State of the Union address, Biden got boos from GOP lawmakers when he said that some Republicans want to cut spending for the programs. It led to an improvised standing ovation for seniors as both parties on the spot committed to avoiding any cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

    Put simply, voters like low taxes and generous benefits. This means it can be politically suicidal to overhaul either program. Any change can be used against a lawmaker seeking reelection, especially as 2024 looms. For the past two weeks, Biden has been giving speeches in key states such as Wisconsin and Florida in which he warned that some Republicans would gut the programs, despite the GOP denials.

    Why are the politics so bad?

    It’s because of the composition of the electorate. AP VoteCast found that nearly six in 10 voters in last year’s midterms were older than 50. Of that group, three in 10 were 65 or older. This means that a dominant bloc of voters already benefit from these programs or are on the verge of doing so.

    REFORM IS POSSIBLE

    Go back 40 years to 1983.

    President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, and House Speaker Tip O’Neill, a Democrat, struck a deal to extend the life of Social Security, which was facing insolvency. The amendments to the program raised the retirement age, delayed the cost-of-living adjustment by six months and mandated that government employees start paying into Social Security, among other changes.

    When Reagan signed the law on April 20, 1983, he said: “This bill demonstrates for all time our nation’s ironclad commitment to Social Security. It assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half a century ago. It assures those who are still working that they, too, have a pact with the future.”

    In the 1984 elections, there was little political fallout. Reagan won a second term in a landslide, while Democrats held onto the House.

    THIS IS A GLOBAL PROBLEM

    It’s not just the U.S. There’s pushback in other countries amid efforts to restrain costs tied to an aging population.

    There have been repeated protests in France over French President Emanuel Macron’s plans to raise the minimum retirement age for a full state pension from 62 to 64. Nearly 1 million people marched in Paris, Nice, Marseille, Toulouse, Nantes and other cities on Feb. 11, with Parisian police officers saying they arrested eight people for violations that included vandalism and possession of a firearm.

    In the Chinese city of Wuhan last week, seniors belted out the communist anthem “The Internationale” in protest of the government cutting health care benefits.

    In a recent analysis for the International Monetary Fund, Harvard University’s David Bloom, an economics professor, and Leo Zucker, a research assistant, said that aging worldwide creates “a colossal set of health, social, and economic challenges in the coming decades.” They warned about the costs of inaction if there are not enough workers to fund health care benefits for older people, leading to more disease and a lower quality of life.

    [ad_2]

    The Associated Press

    Source link

  • Republican senator warns Congress must take action now to protect Medicare and Social Security | CNN Politics

    Republican senator warns Congress must take action now to protect Medicare and Social Security | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota offered Sunday a stark warning about the future of Social Security and Medicare if Congress fails to take action now.

    “In the next 11 years, we have to have a better plan in place than what we do today. Or we’re going to see – under existing circumstances – some reductions of as much as 24% in some sort of a benefit. So, let’s start talking now because it’s easier to fix it now that it would be five years or six years from now,” Rounds told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    In recent days, President Joe Biden has made a forceful argument against Republicans by highlighting his support for Social Security and Medicare. The president has specifically seized on a proposal from GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida to sunset federal legislation – including Social Security and Medicare – every five years and require Congress to pass them again.

    Referencing his “spirited debate” with Republicans at the State of the Union, Biden called Scott’s proposal “outrageous” and vowed he would veto such a plan during a speech in Florida last week.

    “The very idea the senator from Florida wants to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every five years I find to be somewhat outrageous. So outrageous that you might not even believe it,” he said, pulling out a pamphlet detailing Scott’s plan.

    Scott told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week that his proposal is intended to eliminate wasteful spending and help ensure the government can “figure out how to start living within our means.”

    “I want to make sure we balance our budget and preserve Medicare and Social Security, and I’ve been clear all along,” he said.

    Rounds also stressed Sunday that Republicans want to better manage Medicare and Social Security in order to improve the programs – not strip them from the American people.

    “We think that there are possibilities out there of long-term success without scaring people and without tearing apart the system and without reducing benefits. But it requires management. And it requires actually looking at and making things better,” he said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fact check: Breaking down Biden’s exchanges with Republican senators over Social Security and Medicare | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Breaking down Biden’s exchanges with Republican senators over Social Security and Medicare | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden has gone on the attack over Social Security and Medicare.

    In speeches and tweets this week, Biden and his White House have singled out particular Republican senators – notably including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin – over proposals from those senators that could affect the retirement and health care programs.

    The Republican senators have responded forcefully, accusing Biden of deceiving the public about where they stand. Here is a fact-check of the exchanges.

    Biden and his White House targeted Lee on Wednesday over a video clip of Lee saying, “I’m here right now to tell you one thing that you probably have never heard from a politician. It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it.” The clip has gone viral on Twitter this week; a second viral clip features Lee saying moments later, “Medicare and Medicaid are of the same sort and need to be pulled up.”

    The videos are authentic, though Biden didn’t tell his Wednesday speech audience in Wisconsin they are from more than 12 years ago – an event in 2010, when Lee was running for the Senate but before he was first elected. And as Lee noted in Wednesday tweets responding to Biden, Biden didn’t mention that Lee added at the same 2010 event that current Medicare beneficiaries should have their benefits “left untouched” and that “the next layer beneath them, those who will retire in the next few years, also probably have to be held harmless.”

    Still, while Biden could have included more context, he was accurate in saying Lee had called for Social Security to be phased out.

    And while Lee said in a tweeted statement on Wednesday that, during his 12 years as a senator, he has not called for “abolishing” Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits, only for “solutions to improve those programs and move them toward solvency,” he has supported benefit cuts. For example, he has endorsed various proposals over the years to raise the Social Security retirement age.

    Since last year, Biden has criticized Scott over particular components of what Scott calls his “12 Point Plan to Rescue America.”

    In the State of the Union address on Tuesday and in speeches on Wednesday and Thursday, the president referred to a part of Scott’s plan that says, “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” Biden correctly asserted that “all federal legislation” would include Social Security and Medicare, which do not currently require congressional re-approval.

    Scott responded by accusing Biden of being dishonest and confused. Scott argued on Twitter on Wednesday that while his plan does say that “all” federal legislation should sunset in five years and become subject to a new vote by Congress, “This is clearly & obviously an idea aimed at dealing with ALL the crazy new laws our Congress has been passing of late.”

    But the plan itself doesn’t say that.

    The plan’s official text, which remains online on a dedicated website, says “all federal legislation,” period, should be sunset in five years – not all recent legislation, all crazy legislation or all legislation except for the laws that created Social Security and Medicare. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected Scott’s plan last year, McConnell too said that the plan “sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”

    Last year, Biden sometimes overstated the support for Scott’s sunset proposal among congressional Republicans, which appears very limited. Biden has been more precise in his speeches this week, attributing the proposal to Scott himself or accurately saying in the State of the Union that “some” Republicans – “I’m not saying it’s a majority” – support it.

    Biden may have created an inaccurate impression, however, by mentioning the sunset proposal during the section of the State of the Union in which he discussed the battle over the debt ceiling. There is no indication that House Republicans are pushing this proposal as part of the current debt ceiling negotiations with the Biden administration, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has, more generally, said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “off the table” in these negotiations.

    Scott, in turn, has tossed a false claim into the debate with Biden this week by repeatedly accusing the president of having cut billions from Medicare in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act did not cut Medicare benefits; rather, it allowed the government and seniors to spend less money to buy prescription drugs – and, in fact, simultaneously made Medicare benefits more generous to seniors. The claim of a Medicare cut was repeatedly debunked last year, when Scott and a Republican campaign organization he chaired used it during the midterm elections.

    On Friday afternoon, the day after McConnell told a Kentucky radio station that Scott’s proposal will be a “challenge” for Scott’s own 2024 re-election campaign in a state with a large population of seniors, Scott announced he is introducing a new bill that would make it more difficult for Congress to make any cuts to Social Security and Medicare and that would send the Inflation Reduction Act’s $80 billion in Internal Revenue Service funding to Social Security and Medicare instead.

    This week and in numerous previous speeches, Biden has castigated Johnson for saying last year that Medicare and Social Security should be treated as discretionary spending, which Congress has to approve every year, rather than as permanent entitlements.

    Biden has accurately cited Johnson’s remarks this week. Here’s what Johnson told a Green Bay radio show in August: “We’ve got to turn everything into discretionary spending, so it’s all evaluated, so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. Because, again, as long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.” When Johnson faced criticism for those remarks at the time, he stood by them and said that was his consistent longtime position.

    Johnson, however, claimed Wednesday that Biden was “lying” when the president discussed Johnson’s comments shortly after saying that some Republicans want to “cut” Social Security. Johnson has repeatedly said that his proposal to require annual approval for Social Security spending, and to “fix” and “save” Social Security in light of its poor fiscal shape at present, does not mean that he wants to put the programs on the “chopping block” or even to “cut” it.

    “The Democrats have been accusing me, since the first time I ran for office, of wanting to end Social Security, wanting to cut it, wanting to gut it, wanting to – I’ve never said that. I’ve always been consistent: I want to save it,” he said in a radio interview this week.

    It’s impossible to definitively fact-check this particular dispute without Johnson specifying how he wants to “fix” and “save” the program. His office did not respond to a CNN request for comment.

    White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates noted in an email to reporters on Thursday that, though Johnson accused Biden this week of lying about his stance on Social Security, Johnson also said in interviews this week that Social Security is a “legal Ponzi scheme” and that “Social Security might be in a more stable position for younger workers” if the government had proceeded with Republican President George W. Bush’s controversial and eventually abandoned proposal in the mid-2000s to allow workers born after 1949 to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts in which they could buy into the stock market and make other investments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics

    Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Sen. Rick Scott has emerged as Joe Biden’s top Republican foil in the days since the president’s State of the Union address, with the White House seizing on a year-old Scott proposal that even GOP leaders recognized at the time as politically toxic.

    As a spending fight looms in Washington and Biden moves toward his 2024 reelection bid, the White House is attempting to make Scott the poster child for the president’s accusations that Republicans are seeking to cut entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

    Scott has responded by accusing Biden of lying, airing a misleading ad that alleges Biden cut Medicare and lambasting the president in a barrage of television interviews.

    Biden traveled Thursday to Florida – where Scott was a health care executive and two-term governor – on the latest leg of his post-State of the Union tour.

    The trip was designed in part to stoke a fight with Scott after Biden in his speech Tuesday night seized on the first-term senator’s proposal to sunset all federal programs – including Social Security and Medicare – every five years unless Congress extends those programs.

    Biden’s assertion that some Republicans are seeking to change entitlement programs was met with jeers from Republican lawmakers, who have said spending cuts should be part of any proposal to raise the debt ceiling.

    The president continued pressing that message Wednesday in Wisconsin, telling union workers, “A lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare.” He waved a pamphlet with Scott’s proposal as he spoke.

    Ahead of Biden’s speech Thursday in Tampa, White House aides placed copies of Scott’s proposal on every seat.

    In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday, Scott said Biden has misrepresented the proposal he put forward ahead of the 2022 midterm elections while serving as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP.

    “Nobody believes that I want to cut Medicare or Social Security. I’ve never said it,” Scott said.

    Scott said his proposal is intended to eliminate wasteful spending and help ensure the government can “figure out how to start living within our means.”

    “I want to make sure we balance our budget and preserve Medicare and Social Security, and I’ve been clear all along. So what I want to do is get rid of wasteful programs that we never review up here,” he said.

    But Scott’s proposal would sunset all federal legislation – including the two entitlement programs – every five years and require Congress to pass them again.

    Long before he was a US senator, Scott had first-hand experience dealing with America’s federal health care programs – and it became the source of much criticism as he entered the political arena.

    In the 1980s, Scott founded Columbia Hospital Corporation by purchasing a pair of distressed Texas hospitals. He later merged his company with Hospital Corporation of America to create Columbia/HCA, becoming the largest for-profit hospital chain at the time and gaining notoriety on Wall Street for what appeared like cost-cutting in an industry with ballooning expenses.

    In 1997, federal agents unveiled a sweeping investigation into Columbia/HCA that would roil the company for years. On the day the FBI swooped in to seize records from 35 of its hospitals across six states, Scott shrugged off the probe. “It’s not a fun day, but … government investigations are a matter of fact today in health care,” he said on CNN.

    The investigation would unearth what the US Department of Justice later called the “largest health care fraud case in U.S. history.” According to a press release, Columbia/HCA schemed to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE, the military’s health care program, of hundreds of millions of dollars. The company pleaded guilty to criminal conduct, including charges related to fraudulent Medicare billing and paying kickbacks to doctors, and it ultimately agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines, damages and penalties.

    Scott was pushed out as CEO amid the turmoil. He was never charged with a crime, though much of the alleged financial abuses took place during his watch. His time in the corporate world made Scott a wealthy individual, which he would lean on in 2010 when he decided to kickstart a political career by entering the race for Florida governor.

    Scott’s time at the helm of Columbia/HCA was the subject of negative ads from both Republicans and Democrats, but he fended them off with a self-funded campaign that flooded the airwaves with a jobs-focused message. He told the St. Petersburg Times that “mistakes were made” at his former company and that he had “learned hard lessons,” but he also said during a debate that he was “proud of the company I built.” Regardless of the controversy, the little-known Scott defeated a GOP favorite for his party’s nomination, and Floridians narrowly elected him governor that fall.

    During his eight years leading Florida, Scott fought off attempts to extend safety net benefits to Floridians. He frequently challenged the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act and blocked expansion of Medicaid in Florida. In his first year as governor, he signed a bill to cut unemployment payments and tied benefits to the state’s unemployment rate.

    Democrats continued to make Scott’s time at Columbia/HCA an issue, to no avail. Scott eked out a reelection victory in 2014. He then narrowly unseated longtime Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in 2018 after spending more than $70 million of his own money on his campaign.

    Marching to the beat of his own drum, Scott declined to be sworn in with his class in January 2019. Instead, he waited until his term as governor had ended and flew to Washington for a separate ceremony. For a time, it made him the country’s most junior senator, but he nevertheless soon found himself in party leadership.

    Scott and other Republicans are aggressively pushing back against Biden’s assertions that the GOP is seeking to cut spending on entitlement programs.

    However, Republican leaders have long recognized Scott’s proposal to sunset all federal programs after five years as rocky political terrain.

    The tense relationship between Scott and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell burst into public view during the 2022 election cycle as Republicans sought to retake the Senate.

    Scott, as NRSC chairman, released a platform called “Rescue America,” which would have subjected all federally elected officials to a term limit of 12 years and closed the Department of Education, amid a slew of other initiatives. It would also have required millions of low-income and middle-class Americans to pay income taxes, which was later dropped in a revised version of the plan.

    And, in what Democrats immediately recognized as an opening to accuse Republicans of attempting to undercut popular programs, Scott’s plan proposed sunsetting all federal legislation in five years – unless Congress extended it.

    McConnell quickly disavowed Scott’s plan, seeking to make clear that the Florida senator did not speak for Senate Republicans.

    “Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda,” McConnell said at a news conference last March. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”

    Their frosty relationship did not improve as the 2022 election cycle continued, as the two battled over which candidates to support in primaries and in the general election, and Republicans ultimately fell short of winning a majority.

    After the election, Scott challenged McConnell for the top Senate Republican post but lost.

    The Florida senator said last week that he saw McConnell’s decision to remove him from the Senate Commerce Committee as retribution.

    “He didn’t like that I opposed him because I believe we have to have ideas – fight over ideas,” Scott said on “CNN This Morning.”

    When pressed Thursday by CNN’s Collins about why his proposal left open the opportunity for the government to cut funding for Social Security and Medicare, Scott repeatedly referenced a policy proposal from then-Sen. Biden in 1975 to sunset federal legislation periodically.

    Scott said Biden’s old proposal does less to protect entitlements for seniors than the senator’s plan from last year because “he proposed it year after year after year to reduce Medicare and Social Security. Year after year. I’ve never done that. I don’t believe in that.”

    Asked Thursday about the 1975 proposal mentioned by Scott, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “A bill from the 1970s is not part of the president’s agenda.”

    “The president ran on protecting Medicare and Social Security from cuts. And he reiterated that in the State of the Union,” she said.

    A new ad from Scott released this week in advance of the president’s visit to Florida says that “Joe Biden just cut $280 billion from Medicare” – a claim that was previously debunked when Scott and the NRSC made it in 2022.

    Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is expected to reduce Medicare prescription drug spending by the federal government by $237 billion, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office estimate, because the law allows the government to spend less money to buy drugs from pharmaceutical companies and not because it cuts benefits to seniors enrolled in Medicare. The law makes Medicare’s prescription drug program substantially more generous to seniors while also saving them money.

    Scott, in his interview with Collins, also defended his recent call for Biden to resign, labeling him “a complete failure.” He said his resignation calls did not specifically stem from Biden’s use of his proposal as an avenue to attack Republicans but expressed his displeasure with the president’s repeated references to his plan.

    “He lies about what I want to get done, and I don’t appreciate it,” Scott said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Sen. Mike Lee Skewered Over Fake Shock When Biden Accuses GOP Of Targeting Social Security

    Sen. Mike Lee Skewered Over Fake Shock When Biden Accuses GOP Of Targeting Social Security

    [ad_1]

    Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is becoming a Twitter poster boy thanks to his feigned look of utter disbelief when President Joe Biden accused the Republicans of aiming to destroy Social Security during his State of the Union address.

    The fake faces Lee cranked out were a particular tour de force given that he has also been captured on video flatly vowing to destroy Social Security — and Medicare and Medicaid. He has declared it’s his “objective” as senator to “pull” Social Security “up from the roots and get rid” of it.

    Progressive PAC MeidasTouch posted juxtaposed scenes of Lee’s pretend reaction and his earlier speech, which drew a flood of attacks. Followers loved the “gotcha” grab.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene shouts

    Marjorie Taylor Greene shouts

    [ad_1]

    Marjorie Taylor Greene shouts “liar” at Biden during State of the Union address – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    During his State of the Union address, President Biden said, “Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” prompting boos from Republicans and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to shout “liar” at the president.

    Be the first to know

    Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.


    [ad_2]

    Source link