Strengthen Social Security Coalition Puts Both Parties on Notice
Thursday 29 July 2010
by: Isiah J. Poole | Campaign for America's Future | Report
More than 60 organizations that represent more than 30 million Americans are banding together to deliver a straightforward message to politicians this fall: Don't mess with Social Security.
"Don't turn Social Security in the scapegoat for the deficit," said AFSCME President Gerald McEntee today at a news conference in Washington's National Press Club launching the Strengthen Social Security campaign. "Don't raise the retirement age. Don't tamper with the COLA (cost-of-living adjustment). If you break the promise that was made to American working families 75 years ago, we'll hold you accountable."
"This is very personal for me and for most Americans," said Justin Ruben, the executive director of MoveOn.org. "I have people in my immediate family who would literally be homeless if it weren't for Social Security. So do millions of other MoveOn members. So, I have one message for the Republicans and Democrats who want to cut taxes for the rich, but then balance the budget on the banks of our parents and grandparents: The 5 million members of MoveOn.org, who live in every state and congressional district, will never let that happen."
The cross-section of organizations includes labor, women's groups, civil rights, senior's groups and other grassroots activist organizations. (The Campaign for America's Future is a steering committee member.) Each has signed onto a statement that includes several key principles:
- Social Security, which has a current surplus of $2.6 trillion, is not the cause of the federal deficit, and thus should not be cut to reduce the deficit.
- Social Security should not be privatized, in whole or in part.
- Social Security is insurance that workers pay for and should not be means-tested.
- Social Security is fully funded for the next 25 years; to fully fund benefits beyond that time, we should ask those who can most afford to pay a little more to do so.
- The retirement age is already going to increase to 67; there should not be another increase because that would be a benefit cut with the greatest hardship falling on older Americans with physically demanding jobs or are otherwise unable to find work.
- The average Social Security benefit, $13,000, should not be reduced, including by changes in the cost-of-living adjustment or the benefit formula.
- In fact, benefits should be increased for those who are most disadvantaged.
The movement is a direct pushback against the White House deficit commission—whose leaders, Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, are united in their belief that future Social Security recipients have to take it on the chin to make up for failed conservative economic policies. The principles, of course, are also in opposition to the stated positions of key leaders in both parties, such as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who recently embraced the unpopular idea of raising the retirement age for Social Security benefits to 69. "Our members immediately made sure he knew what they thought of that," Ruben of MoveOn said. "Any members who repeat these debunked talking points can expect to hear from angry constituents."
Ed Coyle, the director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said the Strengthen Social Security coalition plans to hold "hundreds of community events around the country to mark the 75th anniversary of Social Security," including 62 sponsored by his organization. "Many groups, including the Alliance, will be involved in the 2010 elections, demanding clear, unequivocal answers from the candidates on where they stand on Social Security."
"We're saying enough is enough," said AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. "This can be fixed in the long term very simply, without benefit cuts. The people they're trying to take the money from have already paid two or three times. Wall Street is already back to business as usual; nothing has changed for them. The American public says, 'Let them pay for it this time. Let them help this time. Not us again.'"
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AND REMOVE THE CAP!!!! ALL
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 15:16 β Pat G (not verified)AND REMOVE THE CAP!!!!
ALL INCOME- EVEN ABOVE $90,000 SHOULD PAY THE SOCIAL SECURITY TAX!!!
Make the rich pay on ALL of their income!
That's the way to strengthen Social Security funds.
DEM, hold 'em accountable
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 15:19 β Vic Anderson (not verified)DEM, hold 'em accountable for their Atrocious SELL-OUTS Thus FAR, regardless!
Mobster Clinton also voiced
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 15:25 β Anonymous (not verified)Mobster Clinton also voiced his corrupt support of the raid. In fact, most 'royalty' is on board with the austerity movement. SS is bigger though and Democrats won't be able to pull the sh#t they did with so called reforms of the insurance industry and Wall Street.
"Social Security is fully
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 16:17 β Anonymous (not verified)"Social Security is fully funded for the next 25 years; to fully fund benefits beyond that time, we should ask those who can most afford to pay a little more to do so."
My Generation should not have to pay for older Generations folly. Working class people who are not baby boomers are the ones going to be stuck with this debt. It's a shame. We will never get out of Social Security what we have been, and will be putting in. It's a fucking joke.
Austerity imposed by the IMF will surely target these funds, and it's going to be hell. It's all going to disenfranchise young people, you just watch.
16:17, this is several times
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 16:39 β Tom H in PA (not verified)16:17, this is several times I have seen mention of the IMF imposing restrictions on US. We don't have IMF loans. Can you please post a link that will clear up the notion that any outside agency can impose austerity measures?
Thanks.
We should immediately end
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 17:41 β Anonymous (not verified)We should immediately end the "unified budget" that counts Social Security tax receipts as part of the general tax revenue. These funds were collected to support citizen's retirement years, and should never be counted as general revenue.
The notion that SS
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 18:51 β Giovanna Lepore (not verified)The notion that SS retirement age be increased to 70 is a clear indication that these government and corporate parasites mean to see more of us die before or shortly after we receive the insurance which we have all been paying into so they can steal more of these funds for the reckless wars and for the Wall Street Gambling House.
The baby boomers will be cut
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 19:56 β radline9 (not verified)The baby boomers will be cut out of social security or their benefits will be extremely decreased. It's always been planned this way.
We have to tweak the system
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 22:13 β Norm Robinson (not verified)We have to tweak the system every 20 years or so to account for people living longer. Retirees in the '30s collected for about 9 years. Today's retirees collect for about 19 years. Retiring at 65 was based on Bismark's pension age established over 100 years ago. Inreasing the retirement age to balance income and outgo makes sense, especially when we are reluctant to increase payroll taxes.
SS is the only protective
Fri, 07/30/2010 - 22:31 β Anonymous (not verified)SS is the only protective social benefit million of people have. They have gained it. They deserve it. People are not so stupid to realize that without SS they will starve and be homeless. But I have heard some of them telling that SS will bankrupt. Some of the propaganda against the SS seems to be making some effects. Any initiative against privatizing is welcomed. It is immoral, inhuman, cruel, perverse and corrupt to privatize the SS, because it will create the biggest social debacle we have ever anticipated. Million will end up on the street, plus hunger, poverty, homelessness and reduced life expectancy. We know how efficient are the kleptomaniac whose avarice preclude any human concern. But those who want to destroy to privatize SS will also be affected. Who is going to buy cars, appliances and many other products without money? The only secured winners will the gamblers of Wall Street. They will make billions or trillions out the SS, before they bankrupt it. Well, they may be counting on a bail out.
Opprobrium, and nothing but
Sat, 07/31/2010 - 00:12 β EmeraldGreenSea (not verified)Opprobrium, and nothing but opprobrium for any public figure - any journalist, politician, or academic - whosoever would harm ("Fix") Social Security!
It's gotta be loud. It's gotta be nonstop. It's gotta be consistent. These people have no shame, they have no decency.
SS is more than just
Sat, 07/31/2010 - 00:29 β EmeraldGreenSea (not verified)SS is more than just retirement money. It is the only political power ordinary people truly have.
Ordinary people's votes don't count -- the media rodeoed those along time ago. (Remember: the "culture wars," "Gays, Guns. and God," all the huffing and puffing about Patriotism) But your Social Security money--that's real political power.
AND YOU PAY FOR IT!
AND RICH PEOPLE DON'T PAY INTO IT!
I have read that SS has 3.1
Sat, 07/31/2010 - 00:59 β Anonymous (not verified)I have read that SS has 3.1 TRILLION dollars. Bush used almost one trillion to fund the Iraq & Afghan wars off the books to keep the deficit down. And most of the rest has been spent by Congress. So the U.S. Government has a huge I.O.U. that they want to eliminate by getting rid of Social Security. With more workers paying into SS (at least until the end of 2008) the fund should be growing. I paid my share for 53 years and I want to collect on it now and for the rest of my life.
I hope this isn't too late.
Sat, 07/31/2010 - 01:33 β Stein the Fine (not verified)I hope this isn't too late. Over a year ago I was trying to alert the left media and a few organizations about the danger of the White House's Independent Medicare Advisory Council which has morphed into the "Deficit Reduction Commission". Both Executive Branch creations in their initiating description are designed to be as unaccountable to the U.S. people as possible by being composed of Presidential appointees (the only criteria is that the appointees be "experts" on the deficit or some aspect of the medical system) yet be unable to be removed by anyone including the President who appointed them no matter what they mandate. I use the word "mandate" intentionally because their assignment is to create a yearly package of changes to the budget, including unspecified cost cuts to Medicare and Soc. Sec. (nothing in the authorizing legislation prevents such extreme changes as adding means testing to the programs, cutting out all people who are upper middle class or above) that would be sent to Congress on Dec. 1st and which would become law by default unless a majority unite before Dec. 30th over the winter holidays and vote it down in an up or down vote (no changes permitted) w/o floor discussion or debate. In other words an unaccountable body of mostly corporate vetted "experts" (given Obama's record on Executive branch appointments) is going to dictate this country's laws ostensibly to reduce the deficit. If, by some miracle, the package is actually vetoed by Congress, then the Commission creates an alternative package perhaps in consultation w/ Congressional leaders, that becomes law because the budget has to be reduced by x amount no matter how undemocraticly. Of course military spending is outside their purview so the actions in the Mideast can't be reduced to control the deficit.
How this is Constitutional I can't understand. And how all the media, even those ostensibly on the left wouldn't report on the full extent of the inevitable consequences of allowing such a entity such enormous power is simply horrifying.
But this was allowed to be implemented w/o public debate, and now a bunch of people are petitioning a disempowered Congress to save the social safety net. Where were they when a few folks like myself were crying out into the wilderness not to allow such a likely devastating power grab?? Why weren't they writing to their newspapers and the online media to try to prevent it then?? I notice not even these groups are trying to save Medicare. Apparently everyone has already accepted that it will be slashed as though such cuts would be inconsequential and inevitable. I only hope against hope that this isn't a case of locking the barn door after the horse is gone. It took installing a putative Democrat to accomplish the wet dreams of the neo-cons.
Precisely, anyone who read
Sat, 07/31/2010 - 02:18 β Anonymous (not verified)Precisely, anyone who read Obama's speech to AIPAC understood he was simply posturing for his constituency. They rewarded him- Big Defense and Wall Street - by outfunding McCain. Voting for the Presidency is a pointless ritual; continue to do so if you have faith in mythology.
MoveOn has "moved on " from
Sat, 07/31/2010 - 02:27 β Anonymous (not verified)MoveOn has "moved on " from any credibility. Pro-War MoveOn now points out how attacking SS wouldn't be a good thing. Ok, thanks. Why not ask Bill Clinton why he sees eye to eye with Pete Peterson?
MoveOn's title is adopted from the elites war on Bill Clinton, who, if only guilty of a blowjob, would have been a good President, but his administration did much worse)
"My Generation should not
Sat, 07/31/2010 - 02:42 β AnonymousRick Levy (not verified)"My Generation should not have to pay for older Generations folly. Working class people who are not baby boomers are the ones going to be stuck with this debt. It's a shame. We will never get out of Social Security what we have been, and will be putting in. It's a fucking joke.
Austerity imposed by the IMF will surely target these funds, and it's going to be hell. It's all going to disenfranchise young people, you just watch."
You sound like me 20 years ago. I'm a baby boomer and now collecting SS. The solution is simple as per another response to this article: Remove the cap.
Then neither of us will have to worry.
Living longer does not
Sat, 07/31/2010 - 03:11 β Giovanna Lepore (not verified)Living longer does not equate with working longer--in fact, it means the opposite. Only a society which celebrates the most over rated "work ethic" for the masses, that is, while the wealthy prey on the wealth created by the workers, would equate working with living. And what do these same wealthy corporate leaches--yes, leaches for they underpay their workers so that they cannot save anything and increasingly have difficulty making ends meet--have for older folks? "Retirement" jobs which view the elderly as a source of cheap labor. America is a perverse society with the obscenely wealthy looking every which way on how to rob the poor so they can have even more.
Giovanna Lepore, thank you
Sat, 07/31/2010 - 18:20 β FRTothus (not verified)Giovanna Lepore, thank you for pointing out the crux of the "American Experience", the perverse economic arrangements which are, by the way, similar in many respects to the Third World. But Fish don't know they're in water. You'd have to live outside of the US to see it, I think.
"There is no free lunch for the creature comforts delivered by the corporation. The ravaging of nature, the erosion of economic security, the destabilization of the family, the commercialization of all human relationships, the corruption of democracy, and the dissipation of spiritual meaning in the face of rampant materialism - these are all part of the cost of the corporate system as we know it. And they add up to a very high price to pay for the bounty of the great American shopping mall."
(Charles Derber)
From the article: "Social
Sun, 08/01/2010 - 20:09 β Erich Von Freemason (not verified)From the article: "Social Security, which has a current surplus of $2.6 trillion..."
and: "Social Security is fully funded for the next 25 years..."
There is not one dime in the SS trust fund. All that is there is a promise by the government to tax people in the future.
Social Security, along with Medicare, will bankrupt the US. Fifteen years from now, when the last of the baby boomers retire, 1/3 of the population will be retired. 1/3 of the rest will be children or disabled or otherwise unfit for work. 1/3 of the rest will be an economic burden because they're employed/subsidized by the government. 1/3 of the rest will be semi-literate and incapable of significant economic output. That will leave less than 20% of the population to produce the economic goods that the entire population needs to live off of. But half of their earnings will be required to service the local/state/federal governments' debt, so we're down to 10%. It isn't going to happen. Ten percent of the population cannot produce all of the economic goods needed by that population. Raising taxes and/or printing money won't change anything, as it's not about little green pieces of paper, it's about production of goods and services. There is no way to "strengthen" SS. As a country, we're screwed. Pretending that SS can be fixed is a pipe-dream.
I don't know about where you
Mon, 08/02/2010 - 01:10 β Anonymous (not verified)I don't know about where you live, but here in L.A. there are 100,000 or more Mexican gardeners and day laborers who work for cash or personal checks. There is no SS taken out of their earnings and I'm sure they don't pay taxes on most of it either. I don't mind Mexicans doing the jobs the rest of us don't want to do but there must be a way to make sure they pay taxes and SS like the rest of us. You can bet at the end of the day they will be in line to collect SS benefits.
@1:10, why don't you ask
Mon, 08/02/2010 - 01:37 β Anonymous (not verified)@1:10, why don't you ask their employers about that, for a change?
They need to lower the age
Mon, 08/02/2010 - 01:41 β Anonymous (not verified)They need to lower the age for social security if there is not going to be enough jobs for the middle-aged.
This is common sense, right? Duh ...
Just like they need to lower the age for Medicare (at the least -- though they should simply open it for the entire country) .. Duh ...
But as usual, we live in one of the stupidest countries on earth.
People who swallow this propaganda about social security *must go* must be truly morons.
I'm in Washington state
Mon, 08/02/2010 - 01:46 β JM (not verified)I'm in Washington state where there are no jobs but a lot of "comfortable" people, boastfully with white families who have been here 3-5 generations (which makes them more entitled than anyone else).
I was reading a conversation on another newspaper (local and pretty boring stuff) where they argued about "illegals" down in Los Angeles.
Do you know when they *suddenly* dropped the subject. When one of the participants shared that he'd gone down to L.A., and run a business for X number of years in drywalling using illegal Mexican labor (he didn't say that he knowingly did that, but it was pretty clear). Then he headed back up to his generations of white folk in Washington (where they don't produce jobs) and retired on the money he'd made.
One thing I'm very
Mon, 08/02/2010 - 02:17 β Madera (not verified)One thing I'm very uncomfortable about with Obama, have been for some time though I voted for him, is his emphasis on youth. Yes, there was a very inspiring element in his youth appeal, or use of student body activism to fuel his campaign, but it bordered dangerously on another kind of youth emphasis that fosters divisions in our society based on age. I'm not referring to some kind of Nazi youth movement the way the tea party might capitalize on such a notion. I don't mean that. But in terms of destroying social security coupled with a lack of willingness to produce jobs for the middle-aged. In Europe you don't see this kind fo exclusiveness in hiring because people are older. He seems to capitalize on this kind of prejudiced thinking. I am also very uncomfortable with the way he repeatedly retires people or basically tells them it's their time to go. It's one thing to retire people but if they don't have the money to retire and they can't go into jobs you're basically telling them to go drop off a fucking cliff. He seems kind of out of it in this respect. And the fact that the Democrats as a group overall are, too, is another reason why I can't be bothered with them either, in addition to the Republicans. Obama is making his reelection campaign with David Plouffe on an appeal to first time voters. They rely very heavily on a youth group. I remember this too in their excellent video. While it was excellent, every character in this kind of Coca Cola appeal was under 35. So it was a little disturbing to me as well. An unsettling thing jsut under the surface movement of the water.
Dear Anonymous on 8/2 at
Thu, 08/05/2010 - 19:30 β Frances in California (not verified)Dear Anonymous on 8/2 at 1:41: They needed to lower the age for Medicare to ZERO and liquidate all the gold-bricking middle-men insurance parasites . . . but they didn't.
Erich von Freemason, you
Thu, 08/05/2010 - 19:33 β Frances in California Again and This Time I'm Angry (not verified)Erich von Freemason, you lying scum. Pete Peterson paying you to lie like this? Soc Sec doesn't need "fixing"; and it definitely doesn't need raiding by greedy Wall St gamblers like you probably are. Stop justifying your addiction to wealth with false Republican talking-points
OK, Anonymous (coward) young
Thu, 08/05/2010 - 19:43 β Frances in California Again - Really Mad Again (not verified)OK, Anonymous (coward) young slacker on 7/30 at 16:17 - I'm nearing 60 and have paid into Social Security since I was 17. You can bill your benefits directly to Steny Hoyer for all I care.
Thu, 08/05/2010 - 19:33 β
Tue, 08/10/2010 - 09:29 β Erich Von Freemason (not verified)Thu, 08/05/2010 - 19:33 β Frances in California Again and This Time I'm Angry (not verified)
What exactly do you disagree with? Do you think that SS has a big vault full of cash that it's going to use to pay benefits? Or, do you think that the population isn't aging? Facts are facts. There is NO MONEY in the so-called SS trust fund; it's just a big IOU that future taxpayers will be on the hook for. And the aging population is going to reduce the percentage of people who create all the things that make up the economy, while requiring that more of that shrinking productive output be devoted to their needs. This isn't about political ideology or not caring about old people... it's simple demographics. Anybody who says that there will still be SS and medicare in 20 years is delusional. You can't get blood from a stone. No tax policy or monetary policy can create something out of nothing. If you think I'm wrong, then explain how 10% of the population will be able to produce everything that 100% of the population requires. Please be specific. And spare me, "take all the money from the rich," because it's not about money, it's about resources, both natural and human; it's about increasingly limited economic output combined with increasingly growing economic need.