Tag: Social Security
A Tale of Two Democrats
Or at least two types of Democrats.
Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders and 15 other Democratic Senators sent a letter to President Obama urging him to not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid in his FY15 budget. It won’t be much of a surprise to most of the readers here to find that neither Senator Carper or Coons signed on to this letter. Interestingly, Senator Coons voted to restore the cuts to military pensions and Carper voted against them. So take a look at what a group of Democrats genuinely interested in the well-being of middle class and working class people urged the President:
Today, retirement insecurity is as high as it has ever been. Only one in five workers in the private sector has a defined benefit pension plan; half of Americans have less than $10,000 in savings; and two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for a majority of their income.
Given this reality, we respectfully urge you not to propose cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits in your Fiscal Year 2015 budget.
In good times and bad, Social Security has succeeded in keeping millions of senior citizens, widows, orphans, and persons with disabilities out of extreme poverty. Before Social Security was developed, about half of our seniors lived in poverty; today senior poverty is down to 9.1 percent. Without Social Security, one-third of senior citizens would have virtually no earnings at all.
Social Security has not contributed one penny to the deficit. Social Security has a surplus of more than $2.7 trillion and can pay every single benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 19 years.
What Happens When Americans Find Out That Social Security is Not In Trouble
Today’s WONKBLOG has a great bit of reporting on a new survey from a group called the National Academy of Social Insurance, which conducted a survey of Americans and found that most Americans want to fix the long-term shortfall by raising the cap on contributions and they want to increase the benefits. Shockingly, Americans come to this conclusion once they learn (via this survey) that Social Security is not in immediate crisis. Which it isn’t.
Dean Baker Writes to Senator Carper On Social Security
Dean Baker’s (from the Center for Economic and Policy Research) letter to Tom Carper, reprinted with permission.
Recent Comments