Wall Street and the Republican Party have been attempting to defund, weaken, and dismantle these social programs for decades. They now have Trump as an ally to try to wipe out those programs. They call these programs entitlements and claim that they are the cause of the federal deficit which is a lie.
Another lie is that Wall Street, the Republican Party, and Trump do not state that these programs are paid for by Americans through a payroll tax that they pay for every hour they work for their entire working lives. American workers have paid for these programs. It is their money that they have paid into the Social Security Trust fund through the taxes that they have paid their entire working lives. It is a lie when Republicans make claims that imply that these programs are some kind of communist or socialist plot. These programs are a social safety net for retirement. It is a lie to imply that American workers have not worked and paid for every cent that they have paid in income taxes that go directly into these funds and that it is not their money. That is the most insulting lie of all.
Social Security itself is not part of the federal budget. It is its own self-sustaing fund and is only strained financially and under threat of insolvency because it has a cap on the upper levels of income to generate revenue. It is a lie when someone implies that the funding of Social Security and Medicare is part of the federal budget. Those funds are funded by worker contributions in the form of the income taxes they pay for their entire working lives.
The problem with insolvency of Social Security is only a problem that exists because all income above $176,100 is not taxed. In other words, a person who makes more than that income is not taxed for any additional income above that amount. That is about 15% of tax payers. That means that, for example, a person who has an income of $5 million is not taxed for social security above $176,100. Approximately 15% of the population has an income of more than $176,000.00 a year and are not taxed on any more than the first $176,100.00 of that income. There is an easy two-part fix that would solve the problem of insolvency of Social Security. New taxes on upper levels of income which can be done in a progressive way so that as income increases, so does the tax rate. This incremental increase in taxes could be fair and not be a burden to all tax brackets but it would also ensure that the upper levels of income are fairly taxed as the lower levels of income are and have always been taxed. Since Ronald Reagan cut income taxes for the wealthy from 70% to 28% in the 1980s, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have all experienced financial strain by insufficient generation of revenue and that financial strain is what puts stress on the economy, not the programs themselves. The second part of solving the insolvency of Social Security is that Congress must repay the more than a trillion dollars it has “borrowed” from the Social Security Trust fund to pay for wars that Congress neglected to find other ways to pay for other than to “borrow” money from Social Security and promise to pay back. Congress needs to pay its IOUs to the Social Security Trust Fund.
Millions of Americans who have paid into Social Security and Medicare all their working lives depend solely on these programs to have a very modest income and healthcare in their retirement years. Congressional Republicans want to take that away from them. The Republican Party does not care about what happens to people when they have nothing and are left destitute. The Republican Party apparently does not care when these people may starve, not have enough money to pay for a place to live, and get sick and die because they have no income or healthcare.
All working Americans deserve a dignified retirement. They have worked hard for it for their entire lives. Congress needs to keep its hands off of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid except for making them solvent and increasing benefits so that they more closely match what is needed to keep up with the actual cost of living. If Congress threatens to tamper with these programs, it will have to deal with the response.
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