Rules for Budget Talks: 1) Go back to Obama’s Budget figures to start and not use Paul Ryan’s figures. 2) Get rid of Sequestration (will hurt America). 3) AUSTERITY DOESN’T WORK. 4) About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So the government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006. 5)Remind Republicans that $24 billion was lost due to the manufactured Shutdown/Debt Ceiling crises. That comes out of their costs. Maybe they will ok a Jobs Program). 6)**Don’t let Obama sneak the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) through while you are working on the budget reform. This trade agreement puts corporate interests ahead of American interests. It could possibly be the biggest corporate power grab in the history of the United States! 7) Hint: A Tea Party member on MSNBC said that the Medical Device Tax was rejected by them because it is a gift to Wall Street and Big Pharma. Maybe this means they would support letting Medicare bargain for drug prices like the V.A. (saving approximately 48% on costs). Maybe they can also agree that 75% of farm subsidies shouldn’t go to the top 3.8% of producers, agricultural giants like Monsanto, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, while 62% of real farmers get diddly-squat. Also approximately 13 congress critters voted for large farm subsidies, which benefit themselves, while voting against food stamps for poor people. 8) During Obama’s term, spending is actually down and the deficit has been cut in half. 9) Paul Ryan says he is a deficit hawk. Where was the hawk during the Bush spending spree? He just became a hawk after Obama was elected. 10) Congress should address how it is that 30 major corporations paid ZERO income taxes in the last 3 years while simultaneously raking in $160 billion in profits. 10) Keep track of how many items Paul Ryan wants included in the budget that actually help poor people. 11) Our country spends more money on our military than all the rest of the world combined. We need to cut, not increase funding. My #1 issue with the budget deal you are working on is Obama’s addition of CHAINED CPI on Social Security to his 2014 budget. I GOT MOST OF MY INFORMATION FROM AARP. He talks about polls when it’s something he wants the GOP to do but fails to address the people’s wishes, reflected in polls, when it comes to SS, MC/Medicaid. Both programs have ratings in the 70% to 80% range. People want no cuts to the programs. There are also polls which show that a large percentage of people want SS payments increased and are ready to pay in more to do it. Ronald Reagan, said that “Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit”. It should be discussed as a separate measure later on. Obama needs to get Chained CPI out of his budget and out of the discussions now. He always says he wants to make sure that seniors have a “Secure Retirement” and he recently said that one sector should not take the brunt of the decisions on the budget cuts. Social Security is an independent, self-funded program. It is not welfare. The workers and their employers paid for all of it. The current fund has over $2.8 trillion surplus and is good, as is, for approximately 25 years and then it would still be able to pay roughly 75% of benefits beyond that time. Chained CPI doesn’t affect the base payments but does cut the rate of increase, so that SS payments will progressively lower just as the people least prepared for retirement are ready to retire. Pensions are a thing of the past and families are unable to save large amounts due to lower wages. 95% of the wealth during the great recession has gone to the top 1%. The rest of the nations is stagnate. Women, who tend to live longer than men and receive smaller benefits because of their lower lifetime earnings, would be even less able to withstand a benefits cut that gets deeper with each passing year. Today’s already meager COLA is, for most seniors, insufficient to keep up with costs. Also discussed, raising the retirement age, does not work because racial minorities and workers in physically demanding occupations are not living longer. The most popular and my favorite way to fix SS is gradually raising or eliminating the income CAP from $113,700. Let millionaires and billionaires pay the same rate of SS as the rest of us. Most of Medicare’s beneficiaries are getting by on less than $22,500—and 27% of the average SS check goes towards Parts B and D cost-sharing and other Medicare out-of- pocket health care costs—seniors cannot shoulder a SS cut (Chained CPI) AND increased Medicare out-of-pocket healthcare costs. For Medicare cost reductions, we need to reduce prescription drug costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices like the V.A. (saving approx. 48% on costs) and Medicaid. Republicans say “NO”. This shows that the Republicans are not really worried about cost savings in Medicare, but rather making sure their Drug Companies buddies are able to profit. Medicare should improve care coordination and crack down on waste and fraud. Congress should pass the Prime Act, which deals with waste and fraud. Raising the age for Medicare to 67 would shift substantial costs to seniors, states and employers. It would weaken the Medicare program by removing some of the healthiest beneficiaries, and it would disproportionately affect seniors of color and those with lower incomes and less education. If we want to expand the tax base, we should lift/remove the CAP on the current income of $113,700, impose a relatively small tax of 3 cents per $100 traded on Wall Street which would be unnoticed by most investors but would curb market speculators and raise an estimated $352 billion over the next decade. You could save much more money in other, better ways. The White House has said the chained CPI will save $122 billion in benefits over ten years. Leaving aside the fact that Social Security doesn’t affect the deficit (which I discussed previously), here’s what isn’t being done: Close capital gains loopholes: $174 billion. End the Bush tax cuts at Obama’s original $250,000 level, rather than the compromise $400,000 number: $183 billion. Cut overseas military bases by 20 percent: $200 billion. Negotiate with drug companies: $220 billion. Enact “Defense-friendly” Pentagon cuts: $519 billion. End corporate tax loopholes (without being “revenue neutral,” as the President’s proposing): $1.24 trillion. Enact a financial transaction tax on the folks who ruined our economy: $1.8 trillion. Faced with those numbers, the chained-CPI benefit cut is … well, embarrassing.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 03:24:01 +0000
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