Thursday, December 29, 2016

If You Think Trump Will Protect Social Security And Medicare From Paul Ryan, Don't Bother To Read This

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Our friends at Social Security Works aren’t beating around the bush. They have a very direct, very stark message about the American social safety net. “President-elect Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan,” they wrote their members this week, “are getting their ducks in a row – preparing to destroy Medicare and Social Security in Trump’s first 100 days in office. Even though Trump ran on a promise to protect Medicare and Social Security, he is appointing people who believe just the opposite – and they’re not shy about saying so.”
Donald Trump’s new pick for Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), has said about Medicare:

“We have to end Medicare as we know it.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Trump’s pick as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has said about his desire to dismantle Social Security:

Whether it’s means testing, whether it’s increasing the age of eligibility …. All those things ought to be on the table and discussed.

These two future members of the Trump administration – both on record calling for the complete dismantling of Medicare and Social Security – will have extreme power over administering both programs. I can’t sugar coat this. Medicare and Social Security are in grave danger.

Before Congress left town, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) – Chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee – introduced a bill that would, on average, cut Social Security benefits by 27% for the majority of recipients. He’d do this through a “greatest hits” of Social Security cuts including raising the retirement age, slashing cost-of-living adjustments and changing the benefit formula.

Republicans have their road map all laid out. Now they’re just waiting for the New Year to implement the most dangerous overhaul of our earned benefits in history.


If Johnson’s proposals pass the House and Senate— almost certain in the House and not unlikely in the Senate— and then get signed by Trumpanzee, more than two-thirds of Social Security beneficiaries will see, on average, a 27% cut in benefits. This is how that breaks down:
Raising the retirement age to 69 (equivalent to a 13.5 percent across-the-board cut)
Changing the benefit formula (9 percent average cut)
Slashing the cost-of-living adjustment (13 percent average cut)
Some long-lived beneficiaries could see cuts of up to 74 percent!
Eliminates the taxation of benefits on high earners-- giving a tax cut to those who need it least while reducing revenue back into the Social Security trust fund
Is there anything Democrats can do to stop this? In the House, not a thing. Maybe the feeble Democratic minority in the Senate, led by self-serving compromiser Chuck Schumer, can figure out a way to thwart the Republicans… but I wouldn’t;’t count on it. What I would count on is the good sense of American voters in 2017 and 2018 to defeat the Republican majority in the House and put a check on the extremism of Paul Ryan, Tom Price, Sam Johnson, Mike Pence, Mick Mulvaney, et al. The Democrats have to win a net of 24 Republican-held seats in the 2017 special elections and in the 2018 general. I have no faith in the DCCC being able to wipe their own asses but if Americans move fast and steadily, the DCCC can be rendered irrelevant to an historical slap down of a dual-party political establishment run amok. Blue America is busy recruiting strong, progressive candidates, for the special elections and for the general. Please keep track of the candidate on ths page that pops up when you tap the thermometer— and please support them early and often. We really need to put a brake on Trumpism, not matter how much you we loath the Debbie Wasserman Schultzes, Steny Hoyers, Chuck Schumers are the rest of the crooks “on our side.”


Goal Thermometer

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8 Comments:

At 11:09 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you think the current Democrap party gives a shit about SSI and Medicare, you needn't read this either.

obamanation TRIED to cut SSI but boner lacked even a single ball to accept. $hillbillary was all for it too, you should know... in spite of her campaign rhetoric.

And the Ds are intimate with wall street, led by the fraud scheme known as goldman-sachs, and wall street has had a YOOOOOGE boner over the trust fund for decades. Ds might run on saving SSI, but what they will do is hand it over to the crooked casinos on wall street.
And whatever the Ds do to/for Medicare will take care of the corporate insurance and phrma entities first, second and third. Any crumbs left over might be seen by the old and infirm... or not.

 
At 11:50 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Feeble Democratic Senate majority?

 
At 12:42 PM, Anonymous Hone said...

You did not specify their plans for Medicare. Uh, do I really want to hear them? I am at a total loss. All the schmucks who voted for this asshole did not realize the extent of what he would do in cahoots with the disgusting and evil Republicans. Stupid, stupid, ignorant deplorables, the whole lot of them. I am so angry at them! Hillary had that "deplorables" right and I am glad she said it because it is TRUE. They did not realize the consequences of their votes when Trump's entire history is a nightmare of disgusting behavior and screwing everyone left, right and sideways for his own benefit. This was clear to anyone who bothered to follow the news, I mean anything vaguely resembling the real news. Even the pussy grabbing crap did not perturb them enough. This is who this man is, a horrible, immoral human being. A liar, a cheat and a con man. An ignorant, impulsive, vindictive narcissist. His voters had their heads up their asses. Now he will screw us all, except of course the 1%. He will sink Americans, America and the world. Only fools bought into the make America great again nonsense. And the Republicans have raised their ugly heads and shown they are worse than ever imagined. Who the hell among working people would belong to this party? They are anti democracy and have done and would do anything to win. Voter suppression and gerrymandering are their modus operandi.

A bleaker New Year I cannot imagine.

 
At 1:50 PM, Anonymous rationarevolution said...

I generally agree with this. Yes, the Dems do suck, but right now we don't have time to mess around with that. Right now we have to get the Republicans out of power ASAP, no matter what, even if it is with crappy Dems.

But what we really need to be doing is what was mentioned here, which is a tea Party type effort to get real progressives into the party. Anyone who thinks that 3rd parties are a solution right now is in la-la land. It's a two party system, and there is only one party with anywhere near the footprint needed to even try to counter the Republcians.

Sadly, but true, the Dems are our only hope. The real effort needs to be put into transforming the Dems, not useless protest votes that will just result in continued Republican dominance.

See my article here on the state of the electoral system in America: http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/stolen_election.htm

 
At 2:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You're actually expecting the Democrats to do something other than to use this as a talking point to raise money from the rubes and then claim success when they agree to most of the Republican agenda that coincidentally also favors their own Wall Street backers? That's quite funny. After all these years of neoliberal Democrats you think people would have learned by now...

 
At 9:07 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

To Rational..., if dems are our only hope, we truly have no hope. To maintain any hope is both insane and delusional... or is that redundant.

 
At 11:28 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

With the Democrats, there is no hope. How many times do you have to be fooled and lied to before you get it?

The Republicans are essentially the fossil fuel industry, and the Democrats are essentially the vulture capitalists. They are at war with each other over who will dominate the global economy, and the fossil fuel industry is on the defensive. Winning is everything to these people, and no strategy or tactic is off the table.

Because this is how their enemy fights, the vulture capitalists have to adopt similar strategies and tactics. Weight of global momentum is on their side.

Neither side cares a single damn about any of us.

 
At 1:35 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

We're screwed. We'll be lucky if we're not all killed in a major nuke exchange w/ Russia. As far as the economy goes, I would bet we're in a Trump-Recession, by the first quarter of 2018.

 

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