Discussion for article #235283
The Dems should make this THE issue for 2016 and use it to demand positions from every GOP Presidential candidate
between now and Nov. of next year. Make them OWN the fact that their party has ALWAYS favored weakening or gutting the program ever since it was establishedâŚ
Josh cut his chops at TPM on this issue when Bush started trying to âreformâ it and I think played a major role in halting that effort by getting politicians to spell out where they stood.
Push the drive to lift the cap on salary deductionsâŚThat is a program the majority of Americans would favor.
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For the record, Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat.
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Only someone who has never worked a day in their lives would believe working longer is something that can be easily done. They never had blisters on their hands, pulled muscles in their backs, iron or dirt stuck in their eye or lungs filled with smoke or gases. They never broke a bone using a pry bar or fell off a ladder or had a wrench break and busted their knuckles.
These fat ass lazy right wing turds are not only parasites but clueless and delusional and should be laughed off the stage.
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People who spend their working life in warm offices have no clue how many jobs wear down the body. It used to be that most of us lived beside or had a family member who earned a living doing manual labor. Now we live in enclaves of people who work at the same types of jobs.
While lowering payments for upper earners is made to sound logical it is a ploy to means test SS so they can attack it as a welfare program, not an earned benefit.
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With the money weâre wasting on Social Security, we could be bombing Iran! Public be damned!
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I am a retired, 66 year old white man and I hate this. I oppose anything that weakens the achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society and only wish SS could be made universal for all Americans, with benefits for SS, Medicare, and Medicaid increased through much increased taxation of the most privileged.
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The Republicans are using the divide-and-conquer strategy, proposing plans that donât touch the SS benies of their 60+ base while screwing the younger generations with cuts or âreforms.â They might not be aware that many seniors have children and grandchildren whom they would like to receive the benefits they are getting now when the kids turn 65. Not all 60-somethings are bitter Tea Partiers.
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Lifting the cap on how much income is paid into Social Security would be fairer than means-testing, but that might threaten to ameliorate Social Securityâs solvency problem so the Republicans canât have that. They depend on possible insolvency as a justification for the âreformsâ they want people to accept.
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Sigh. At some point, Democrats have got to move beyond the mediocre Beltway consultant CW that itâs enough to thunder against benefit cuts and directly attack the widely held belief, fostered through vast amounts of Concerned One Percenter propaganda, that Benefits Must be Cut Because Social Security is Going Broke.
Weâve let the Republicans insert their insane troll logic lies into the publicâs imagination as the gospel truth, to the point that you tell one of the mostly unformed people who decide presidential elections in this country that a) Social Security is good for 25 years, b) if we do nothing and the direst projections come true, it will be able to pay 75% of promised benefits and c) we can fix the rest with some relatively modest tax hikes on the rich and they look at you like you told that babies are made of gorgonzola.
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Raise the salary cap on Social Security to 500,000. Problem solved.
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no he just votes with the Democrats 100% of the time
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First of all, can we stop calling Social Security an entitlement program?
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He caucuses with the Democrats.
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Defending his proposal, Christie told Yahoo News that itâs ânot a tough sell to current seniors or people about to enter the system because this wonât affect them. Weâre going to phase this in over a good period of time.â He added, âThese programs â Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security â are on the road to ruin if we donât make changes.â
Maybe Christie should ask GWB how hard that sale really is. Seniors donât like that kind of thinking because seniors have kids who they want to have social security. That is why GWB got torched with his privatization idea. Republicans seem incapable of learning. There are changes that can be made to the three programs that have nothing to do with cutting benefits. In particular raising the cap on Social Security income can solve the Social Security problem well into the last 1/2 of this century.
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Yeah, back in the day, we called them âSocialâ programs. What changed?
Exactly. It is not an entitlement program. I am putting money into it for my retirement. No one is giving it to me for free.
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EXactly! From now on these should be called EARNED Entitlements!
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No âmeans testingâ, Warren Buffet deserves to collect as much as I do, provided he collected a paycheck for the required time. What people seem to miss is the fact that the word âentitlementâ comes from the root âentitledâ. One is entitled to benefits paid for, which all wage earners do, they pay into the system. Just as I am entitled to a paycheck every other week in return for services rendered. Before he became a Senator Al Franken made the following proposal: lift the cap to $150,000 at the current rate. From $150,001 to 350,000, no tax at all, above that, restore the tax at the current rate, This would reward those who make the effort to rise above the average and tap into those who truly benefited the most from the American Dream.
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Not quite true. Your contribution is matched by your employer, plus the accounting costs. Unless you are self-employed, and then you pay the full amount. So this is why Repubs hate it so. They get nothing in return. What they donât realize though is that most people wonât plan/save well for old age, and so without these programs, we would have a huge social nightmare. What Christie really wants by raising the retirement age is for the working class to die off before they can collect. Funding problem solved. He and Stalin would have gotten along famously.
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