On May 26, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed into law a plan that will give the Green Mountain State the nation’s first single payer system. To be implemented in stages, the government-administered system offers a uniform benefits package to all 620,000 Vermonters.
“It will produce savings of 24.3 percent of total health care expenditures between 2015 and 2024,” according to Harvard economist William Hsiao, who guided Vermont legislators in drafting the historic legislation.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Health care: The right of every American
By Senator Bernie Sanders
The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee healthcare as a right to its people. Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much per capita on healthcare and, in a wide number of instances, our outcomes are not as good as others that spend far less.
It is time that we bring about a fundamental transformation of the American healthcare system. It is time for us to end private, for-profit participation in delivering basic coverage. It is time for the United States to provide a Medicare-for-all, single payer health coverage program.
Under our dysfunctional system, 45,000 Americans a year die because they delay seeking care they cannot afford. We spent 17.6% of our gross domestic product on healthcare in 2009, which is projected to go up to 20% by 2020, yet we still rank 26th among major, developed nations on life expectancy, and 31st on infant mortality. We must demand a better model of health coverage that emphasizes preventive and primary care for every single person without regard for their ability to pay.
It is certainly a step forward that the new health reform law is projected to cover 32 million additional Americans, out of the more than 50 million uninsured today. Yet projections suggest that roughly 23 million will still be without insurance in 2019, while healthcare costs will continue to skyrocket.
Twenty-three million Americans still without health insurance after health reform is implemented? This is unacceptable.
And that is why, this week, Representative Jim McDermott and I are announcing the re-introduction of the American Health Security Act, recognizing health care as a human right and providing every U.S. citizen and permanent resident with healthcare coverage and services through a state-administered single payer program. Let’s face it: Until we put patients over profits, our system will not work for ordinary Americans.
It is incomprehensible that drug companies still get away with charging Americans twice as much, or more, than citizens of Canada or Europe for the exact same drugs manufactured by the exact same companies. It is an outrage that insurers still often hike premiums 20%, 40% and 60% a year on individual policy holders; and some insurers still spend 40 cents of every premium dollar on administration and profits while lavishing multimillion-dollar payouts on their CEOs.
I am very proud that my home state of Vermont is now taking big steps to lead the nation in healthcare by moving forward on a plan to establish a single payer healthcare system that puts the interests of patients over chasing profits. The American Health Security Act would make sure every state does the same - taking profits out of the equation by implementing a single payer system, but letting each state administer its own program, according to strict standards, in a way best suited to its needs.
The goal of real healthcare reform must be high-quality, universal coverage in a cost-effective way. We must ensure, to as great a degree as possible, that the money we put into health coverage goes to the delivery of healthcare, not to paper-pushing, astronomical profits and lining CEOs' pockets.
(Reprinted from the Guardian UK.)
The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee healthcare as a right to its people. Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much per capita on healthcare and, in a wide number of instances, our outcomes are not as good as others that spend far less.
It is time that we bring about a fundamental transformation of the American healthcare system. It is time for us to end private, for-profit participation in delivering basic coverage. It is time for the United States to provide a Medicare-for-all, single payer health coverage program.
Under our dysfunctional system, 45,000 Americans a year die because they delay seeking care they cannot afford. We spent 17.6% of our gross domestic product on healthcare in 2009, which is projected to go up to 20% by 2020, yet we still rank 26th among major, developed nations on life expectancy, and 31st on infant mortality. We must demand a better model of health coverage that emphasizes preventive and primary care for every single person without regard for their ability to pay.
It is certainly a step forward that the new health reform law is projected to cover 32 million additional Americans, out of the more than 50 million uninsured today. Yet projections suggest that roughly 23 million will still be without insurance in 2019, while healthcare costs will continue to skyrocket.
Twenty-three million Americans still without health insurance after health reform is implemented? This is unacceptable.
And that is why, this week, Representative Jim McDermott and I are announcing the re-introduction of the American Health Security Act, recognizing health care as a human right and providing every U.S. citizen and permanent resident with healthcare coverage and services through a state-administered single payer program. Let’s face it: Until we put patients over profits, our system will not work for ordinary Americans.
It is incomprehensible that drug companies still get away with charging Americans twice as much, or more, than citizens of Canada or Europe for the exact same drugs manufactured by the exact same companies. It is an outrage that insurers still often hike premiums 20%, 40% and 60% a year on individual policy holders; and some insurers still spend 40 cents of every premium dollar on administration and profits while lavishing multimillion-dollar payouts on their CEOs.
I am very proud that my home state of Vermont is now taking big steps to lead the nation in healthcare by moving forward on a plan to establish a single payer healthcare system that puts the interests of patients over chasing profits. The American Health Security Act would make sure every state does the same - taking profits out of the equation by implementing a single payer system, but letting each state administer its own program, according to strict standards, in a way best suited to its needs.
The goal of real healthcare reform must be high-quality, universal coverage in a cost-effective way. We must ensure, to as great a degree as possible, that the money we put into health coverage goes to the delivery of healthcare, not to paper-pushing, astronomical profits and lining CEOs' pockets.
(Reprinted from the Guardian UK.)
Libya and the Hitler mythology
By Alfredo Peppard
History rapidly becomes myth, and once myth replaces reality it propagates more nonsense until stupidity is passed off as wisdom. When the political discourse of an empire comes to this point, priesthoods arise that can seemingly explain events. The priests employ a method of thought that we find amusing when we read about its use in medieval times. They reason by analogy and employing a crushing reductionism wherein the mythic common knowledge is used as the ultimate authority and diverging from this authority can only invite disaster. Our myths are many, but one of the most popular is the WWII mythology.
Once you have your enemy pegged as a Hitler all facts are swept aside. The fact that the irrelevance and stupidity of this reasoning is not at anytime challenged on television or in the Congress demonstrates how much of our crucial political discourse has been reduced to mindless references to the WWII mythology. The paralysis of imagination that adherence to this mythology requires is nowhere more apparent than in the antics of that gang of clowns we call the Republican Party. And of course the best place to watch them perform is on television.
In the nineteen thirties and forties, George Orwell observed how Hitler, Roosevelt, and Churchill used radio and film to manipulate the masses. This did much to form the ideas he put forward in his major work, 1984. In this novel he projected a future in which television was the state’s main instrument for controlling the population. The State was always at war and as the war ground on, the Plebs willingly worked longer hours for less pay. The TV watched the watchers and controlled their very sex-lives. Lacking the intellectual equipment to question this arbitrary arrangement, their critical faculties having been aborted by the din emanating from the TV, the Plebs plodded on.
In 1984, Big Brother, the head of state, speaks for the God Ford He is both the ruler, protecting them from the slavering hordes of the east, and High Priest. He is on TV constantly explaining events in the language of New Speak in which anything he says is true because he said it, even though it might be the very opposite of reality. It’s much like what we encountered in the Bush era.
A few days before writing this, I was watching the TV news about Libya. Keep in mind that President Obama says we are not at war with that country; we are just bombarding their air defense system so that the unarmed civilians we are defending can get their tanks and missiles into the field. In fact it is such a piddling little humanitarian mission the White House saw no need to pester Congress about it. Nevertheless, here are the Republicans yapping at Obama’s heels demanding more vigorous action; with the leader of the pack, Senator John McCain, the Sage of Arizona, arguing that Kaddafi’s aggression had to be stopped, as he was another Hitler -- a serious threat to world peace.
My God, another Hitler! Never mind the fact that any state has the right to put down an armed uprising; the sacred mythology of WWII had been evoked. Thought is no longer appropriate; intervention is necessary to save the world. Yes, McCain in invoking scripture and promoting Kaddafi to Hitler had lifted the discussion out of the mundane ordinary affairs of state; the struggle was then elevated to an elemental conflict between good and evil. I couldn’t help noticing that as he referred to scripture he looked even more beady-eyed and stupid than usual.
Once we have wheeled Hitler onto the stage, the sacred mythology of WWII takes over. An entire series of conclusions comes into play. When on CNN Anderson Cooper of New Orleans fame openly sneers at a Libyan spokesman who claims that a group of 13 coffins are civilians killed by American missiles, Cooper demands proof that the bodies in the coffins are indeed civilians. When he is shown a devastated industrial plant, he points out to the increasingly agitated Libyan that this was a legitimate military target. As a highly popular priest, it is his role to determine legitimacy. After all he is dealing with the minions of a Hitler. And so Anderson Cooper, employing his “awe shucks home town kinda guy” good looks, explains the rights and wrongs of an attack upon a sovereign nation.
One more layer of obscurity is added to events when the intervention is taken over by NATO. Again reality is turned upside down; NATO, a creation and a tool of American military policy, is now in charge, not the US. The tool has become the hand and the hand the tool. Believe that if you will.
Will Rogers said, “All I know is what I read in the newspapers.” It worries me to think that so many Americans can say the same thing about TV.
History rapidly becomes myth, and once myth replaces reality it propagates more nonsense until stupidity is passed off as wisdom. When the political discourse of an empire comes to this point, priesthoods arise that can seemingly explain events. The priests employ a method of thought that we find amusing when we read about its use in medieval times. They reason by analogy and employing a crushing reductionism wherein the mythic common knowledge is used as the ultimate authority and diverging from this authority can only invite disaster. Our myths are many, but one of the most popular is the WWII mythology.
Once you have your enemy pegged as a Hitler all facts are swept aside. The fact that the irrelevance and stupidity of this reasoning is not at anytime challenged on television or in the Congress demonstrates how much of our crucial political discourse has been reduced to mindless references to the WWII mythology. The paralysis of imagination that adherence to this mythology requires is nowhere more apparent than in the antics of that gang of clowns we call the Republican Party. And of course the best place to watch them perform is on television.
In the nineteen thirties and forties, George Orwell observed how Hitler, Roosevelt, and Churchill used radio and film to manipulate the masses. This did much to form the ideas he put forward in his major work, 1984. In this novel he projected a future in which television was the state’s main instrument for controlling the population. The State was always at war and as the war ground on, the Plebs willingly worked longer hours for less pay. The TV watched the watchers and controlled their very sex-lives. Lacking the intellectual equipment to question this arbitrary arrangement, their critical faculties having been aborted by the din emanating from the TV, the Plebs plodded on.
In 1984, Big Brother, the head of state, speaks for the God Ford He is both the ruler, protecting them from the slavering hordes of the east, and High Priest. He is on TV constantly explaining events in the language of New Speak in which anything he says is true because he said it, even though it might be the very opposite of reality. It’s much like what we encountered in the Bush era.
A few days before writing this, I was watching the TV news about Libya. Keep in mind that President Obama says we are not at war with that country; we are just bombarding their air defense system so that the unarmed civilians we are defending can get their tanks and missiles into the field. In fact it is such a piddling little humanitarian mission the White House saw no need to pester Congress about it. Nevertheless, here are the Republicans yapping at Obama’s heels demanding more vigorous action; with the leader of the pack, Senator John McCain, the Sage of Arizona, arguing that Kaddafi’s aggression had to be stopped, as he was another Hitler -- a serious threat to world peace.
My God, another Hitler! Never mind the fact that any state has the right to put down an armed uprising; the sacred mythology of WWII had been evoked. Thought is no longer appropriate; intervention is necessary to save the world. Yes, McCain in invoking scripture and promoting Kaddafi to Hitler had lifted the discussion out of the mundane ordinary affairs of state; the struggle was then elevated to an elemental conflict between good and evil. I couldn’t help noticing that as he referred to scripture he looked even more beady-eyed and stupid than usual.
Once we have wheeled Hitler onto the stage, the sacred mythology of WWII takes over. An entire series of conclusions comes into play. When on CNN Anderson Cooper of New Orleans fame openly sneers at a Libyan spokesman who claims that a group of 13 coffins are civilians killed by American missiles, Cooper demands proof that the bodies in the coffins are indeed civilians. When he is shown a devastated industrial plant, he points out to the increasingly agitated Libyan that this was a legitimate military target. As a highly popular priest, it is his role to determine legitimacy. After all he is dealing with the minions of a Hitler. And so Anderson Cooper, employing his “awe shucks home town kinda guy” good looks, explains the rights and wrongs of an attack upon a sovereign nation.
One more layer of obscurity is added to events when the intervention is taken over by NATO. Again reality is turned upside down; NATO, a creation and a tool of American military policy, is now in charge, not the US. The tool has become the hand and the hand the tool. Believe that if you will.
Will Rogers said, “All I know is what I read in the newspapers.” It worries me to think that so many Americans can say the same thing about TV.
An elephant is prowling the Capitol
By James Hauser and Kate Hunter
Our leaders are debating the federal budget in the marbled hearing rooms and mahogany chambers of Congress, in the cubicles of the White House West Wing, and in the Oval Office itself.
And in each of these rooms is an elephant; an elephant called the U.S. Defense Budget. The national media urges you to follow our leaders: Don’t think of the Elephant.
Don’t think about the defense budget having doubled during the past ten years.
Don’t think that the U.S. spends almost as much on the military (this year alone about $780 billion) as the entire rest of the world combined.
Don’t think about the Pentagon never having completed an audit, nor about the General Accountability Office finding $300 billion in cost overruns in the past five years.
Don’t think that here in Washington State we have paid $28 billion just for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; nor that our State legislators and Governor have proposed drastic cuts in our safety net to fill a $5 billion shortfall projected over the next two years. Don’t divide 5 into 28.
Don’t think of the dead – nearly one million soldiers and civilians dead as a direct result of military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Iraq Body Count).
Don’t think that with Osama bin Laden dead, there is no justification for remaining in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In fact, to follow our leaders, perhaps we should not think at all.
Luckily for us some in Congress HAVE been thinking and have drafted “The Peoples’ Budget.” Presented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, it would:
End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring home the troops.
End overseas military emergency supplemental funding starting in Fiscal Year 2013.
Reduce baseline defense spending.
It would also:
Allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012, but extend marriage relief, credits, and incentives for children, families, and education.
Immediately rescind the upper-income tax cuts in December’s tax deal.
Increase millionaire tax rates (adding 45%, 46%, 47%, 48%, and 49% top rates).
Tax all capital gains and qualified dividends as ordinary income.
Tax U.S. corporate foreign income as it is earned.
Eliminate corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies.
Add a financial speculation tax (derivatives, foreign exchange)
Reinstate Superfund taxes.
Negotiate costs of pharmaceuticals with companies
These major shifts in government policy would allow Congress to:
Enact a public health care option.
Raise the taxable Social Security maximum on the employee side to 90% of earnings and eliminate the taxable maximum on the employer side.
Increase Social Security benefits based on higher contributions on the employee side.
Search out and punish Medicare and Medicaid provider fraud.
Prevent a cut in Medicare physician payments for a decade.
Invest $1.45 trillion in job creation, education, clean energy and broadband infrastructure, housing, and R&D.
All of this while reducing the federal deficit and balancing the budget. Not bad!!!
It’s time we urged our leaders to cut military spending to free up money for states’ needs. According to a University of Massachusetts-Amherst study, military dollars spent in a state yield the least number of jobs, compared to public investments in health, education, transportation and even tax cuts.
The elephant in Washington, D.C. tramples the grass in every state.
Our leaders are debating the federal budget in the marbled hearing rooms and mahogany chambers of Congress, in the cubicles of the White House West Wing, and in the Oval Office itself.
And in each of these rooms is an elephant; an elephant called the U.S. Defense Budget. The national media urges you to follow our leaders: Don’t think of the Elephant.
Don’t think about the defense budget having doubled during the past ten years.
Don’t think that the U.S. spends almost as much on the military (this year alone about $780 billion) as the entire rest of the world combined.
Don’t think about the Pentagon never having completed an audit, nor about the General Accountability Office finding $300 billion in cost overruns in the past five years.
Don’t think that here in Washington State we have paid $28 billion just for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; nor that our State legislators and Governor have proposed drastic cuts in our safety net to fill a $5 billion shortfall projected over the next two years. Don’t divide 5 into 28.
Don’t think of the dead – nearly one million soldiers and civilians dead as a direct result of military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Iraq Body Count).
Don’t think that with Osama bin Laden dead, there is no justification for remaining in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In fact, to follow our leaders, perhaps we should not think at all.
Luckily for us some in Congress HAVE been thinking and have drafted “The Peoples’ Budget.” Presented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, it would:
End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring home the troops.
End overseas military emergency supplemental funding starting in Fiscal Year 2013.
Reduce baseline defense spending.
It would also:
Allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012, but extend marriage relief, credits, and incentives for children, families, and education.
Immediately rescind the upper-income tax cuts in December’s tax deal.
Increase millionaire tax rates (adding 45%, 46%, 47%, 48%, and 49% top rates).
Tax all capital gains and qualified dividends as ordinary income.
Tax U.S. corporate foreign income as it is earned.
Eliminate corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies.
Add a financial speculation tax (derivatives, foreign exchange)
Reinstate Superfund taxes.
Negotiate costs of pharmaceuticals with companies
These major shifts in government policy would allow Congress to:
Enact a public health care option.
Raise the taxable Social Security maximum on the employee side to 90% of earnings and eliminate the taxable maximum on the employer side.
Increase Social Security benefits based on higher contributions on the employee side.
Search out and punish Medicare and Medicaid provider fraud.
Prevent a cut in Medicare physician payments for a decade.
Invest $1.45 trillion in job creation, education, clean energy and broadband infrastructure, housing, and R&D.
All of this while reducing the federal deficit and balancing the budget. Not bad!!!
It’s time we urged our leaders to cut military spending to free up money for states’ needs. According to a University of Massachusetts-Amherst study, military dollars spent in a state yield the least number of jobs, compared to public investments in health, education, transportation and even tax cuts.
The elephant in Washington, D.C. tramples the grass in every state.
Our July 7 Membership Gala with Mayor McGinn
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn will be our guest Thursday, July 7, at our annual party and membership meeting at the Greenwood Senior Center, 525 N 85th Street.
The party starts with a potluck dinner at 4:30 p.m. At 5 p.m., Mayor McGinn will make brief remarks with plenty of time left over for questions and answers. The Mayor says he is looking forward to the meeting.
“Thank you to PSARA leadership and members for inviting me to attend your annual membership meeting,” Mayor McGinn said in a statement to The Advocate. “Your advocacy for progressive causes and the well-being of older people is essential. I hope you can attend the annual meeting and tell me about the issues that matter most to you.”
Please bring a main dish, salad, fruit, or soft drinks for the potluck if you can.
At 6 p.m. we’ll have a brief PSARA business meeting, followed by more time for socializing. If you can be there, please RSVP to the PSARA office, 206-448-9646 or email adminvp@psara.org. Metro route #48 passes the Senior Center on 85th Street. Limited parking is available in the Center’s lot, and on-street parking in the surrounding neighborhood. See you there!
The party starts with a potluck dinner at 4:30 p.m. At 5 p.m., Mayor McGinn will make brief remarks with plenty of time left over for questions and answers. The Mayor says he is looking forward to the meeting.
“Thank you to PSARA leadership and members for inviting me to attend your annual membership meeting,” Mayor McGinn said in a statement to The Advocate. “Your advocacy for progressive causes and the well-being of older people is essential. I hope you can attend the annual meeting and tell me about the issues that matter most to you.”
Please bring a main dish, salad, fruit, or soft drinks for the potluck if you can.
At 6 p.m. we’ll have a brief PSARA business meeting, followed by more time for socializing. If you can be there, please RSVP to the PSARA office, 206-448-9646 or email adminvp@psara.org. Metro route #48 passes the Senior Center on 85th Street. Limited parking is available in the Center’s lot, and on-street parking in the surrounding neighborhood. See you there!
Social Security funding is sound, but program remains at risk
By Steve Kofahl
The recent report by the Social Security Trustees shows only a slight deterioration in future funding projections, with the Trust Fund reserves now expected to last until 2036, rather than 2037. After that date, 77% of scheduled benefits would still be payable, with checks actually being higher than those issued today, even when adjusted for price inflation. That is because benefit amounts and cost-of-living adjustments are calculated based on wages, and in most years wages rise faster than prices. This period of recession, high unemployment, and wage suppression is the exception, not the rule. The trustees’ “intermediate” economic assumptions have proved to be pessimistic assumptions in normal times, with most of their previous reports extending the projected date by which the reserves would run out.
Annual surpluses ($69 billion this year) continue until 2025, when the current $2.6 trillion Trust Funds will have grown to well over $4 trillion. You wouldn’t know it if you relied on the major media, which misrepresents the finances of the program by failing to count interest payments as income. The Social Security chief actuary has told us that the law requires that all income and assets be included when describing the financial health of the program. Too many politicians refer to Trust Fund assets as “worthless IOUs.” They’re just as real and secure as U.S. Savings Bonds, and our debt held by China and other nations, and we need to keep saying it.
What we clearly need is first, to get more Americans back to work now in jobs that pay a living wage, and second, to scrap the $106,800 cap on wages and self-employment income that is subject to Social Security contributions. Politicians need to make real investments in education and job creation, and stop busting the unions that created the middle class. They should stop slashing public sector jobs. The vast majority of local, state, and federal workers now pay into Social Security.
Economist Dean Baker points out that projected increases in life expectancy in this year’s report also made a difference in the trustees’ projections. How much you can expect to benefit from these increases depends largely on your race and economic class. Those with low and moderate incomes, and African-Americans, have seen little increase in life expectancy. Rich white folks are the ones who are living much longer. That should only strengthen our resolve to defend the majority of the population that is not enjoying increased longevity, and that therefore will not receive significantly more checks in their lives than did previous generations. We must not tolerate any cuts in benefits or in cost of living calculations, period.
As I write this, it appears that the infamous “Gang of Six” is disintegrating. Faced by angry crowds at home, some of our elected representatives are now saying that they will not include Social Security in their plans to address growing budget deficits. However, we must remain vigilant. The President has Joe Biden negotiating with both political parties, and says he wants no lines drawn in the sand, and a bipartisan compromise.
The greatest threat now is that Congress and the White House may agree to binding caps or “triggers” that would automatically cut future domestic spending, including Social Security payments, when overall spending exceeds a certain level. There would be no new revenues, just more shredding of the social safety net.
This approach to deficit reduction would not only be cowardly, but cruel and inequitable. The wealthiest among us would continue to avoid paying their fair share from the riches they have accumulated, while the vast majority of Americans would suffer even more. No individual politician who holds office today would be held accountable for the future damage done.
We will not be fooled into accepting that kind of raw deal. We will press lawmakers to make the right choices, insist on healthy cuts in war spending, and demand an end to tax breaks that benefit only big corporations and the richest Americans. The battle is far from over, and the Alliance will never stop fighting.
The recent report by the Social Security Trustees shows only a slight deterioration in future funding projections, with the Trust Fund reserves now expected to last until 2036, rather than 2037. After that date, 77% of scheduled benefits would still be payable, with checks actually being higher than those issued today, even when adjusted for price inflation. That is because benefit amounts and cost-of-living adjustments are calculated based on wages, and in most years wages rise faster than prices. This period of recession, high unemployment, and wage suppression is the exception, not the rule. The trustees’ “intermediate” economic assumptions have proved to be pessimistic assumptions in normal times, with most of their previous reports extending the projected date by which the reserves would run out.
Annual surpluses ($69 billion this year) continue until 2025, when the current $2.6 trillion Trust Funds will have grown to well over $4 trillion. You wouldn’t know it if you relied on the major media, which misrepresents the finances of the program by failing to count interest payments as income. The Social Security chief actuary has told us that the law requires that all income and assets be included when describing the financial health of the program. Too many politicians refer to Trust Fund assets as “worthless IOUs.” They’re just as real and secure as U.S. Savings Bonds, and our debt held by China and other nations, and we need to keep saying it.
What we clearly need is first, to get more Americans back to work now in jobs that pay a living wage, and second, to scrap the $106,800 cap on wages and self-employment income that is subject to Social Security contributions. Politicians need to make real investments in education and job creation, and stop busting the unions that created the middle class. They should stop slashing public sector jobs. The vast majority of local, state, and federal workers now pay into Social Security.
Economist Dean Baker points out that projected increases in life expectancy in this year’s report also made a difference in the trustees’ projections. How much you can expect to benefit from these increases depends largely on your race and economic class. Those with low and moderate incomes, and African-Americans, have seen little increase in life expectancy. Rich white folks are the ones who are living much longer. That should only strengthen our resolve to defend the majority of the population that is not enjoying increased longevity, and that therefore will not receive significantly more checks in their lives than did previous generations. We must not tolerate any cuts in benefits or in cost of living calculations, period.
As I write this, it appears that the infamous “Gang of Six” is disintegrating. Faced by angry crowds at home, some of our elected representatives are now saying that they will not include Social Security in their plans to address growing budget deficits. However, we must remain vigilant. The President has Joe Biden negotiating with both political parties, and says he wants no lines drawn in the sand, and a bipartisan compromise.
The greatest threat now is that Congress and the White House may agree to binding caps or “triggers” that would automatically cut future domestic spending, including Social Security payments, when overall spending exceeds a certain level. There would be no new revenues, just more shredding of the social safety net.
This approach to deficit reduction would not only be cowardly, but cruel and inequitable. The wealthiest among us would continue to avoid paying their fair share from the riches they have accumulated, while the vast majority of Americans would suffer even more. No individual politician who holds office today would be held accountable for the future damage done.
We will not be fooled into accepting that kind of raw deal. We will press lawmakers to make the right choices, insist on healthy cuts in war spending, and demand an end to tax breaks that benefit only big corporations and the richest Americans. The battle is far from over, and the Alliance will never stop fighting.
Pride at Work
Join Pride at Work for the annual LGBT Pride Parade!
Click on the Meetings and Events link for details about this and other PSARA/community events.
Click on the Meetings and Events link for details about this and other PSARA/community events.
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