social-security – thoughtprivacyandliberty.com

Trump/Republican “Good News” following Republican passage of The Republican Big Ugly Bill

Got a cheery (yes, it’s sarcasm) bit of propaganda from the new Social Security Administration under Trump this morning. The day after the Republicans passed the Big Ugly Bill.

The propaganda told me the good news that Social Security benefits are no longer going to be taxed. If that is true, great. However, the propaganda does NOT mention several very important points:

1. This is the first step in the Republican/Trump plan to eliminate Social Security altogether.

2. It is appeasement for those already receiving Social Security benefits to help them “look the other way” in the future actions the republicans may take to further decimate the program.

3. Republicans think they are doing a good service by eliminating this crucially important safety net for their own ludicrous and unknown reasons. They don’t talk about them except to call Social Security socialism or some other such bullshit smear. What Social Security is can be thought of as a retirement bank account that Americans pay into every hour that they work from the time they begin working until they retire. It is an earned investment, not socialism, not fraud.

4. The truth is that Social Security is not broken and never has been broken. In fact, it has performed spectacularly since its inception. But Republicans and Trump, right now, are trying very hard to destroy and eliminate it permanently.

5. The truth about Social Security is that it can be easily improved, strengthened, expanded, and made permanently solvent very easily by removing the artificial cap on the upper limit of income that is taxed to pay into the Social Security Trust Fund. That’s it.

That single easy step would fix the problem of Social Security solvency and give the Social Security Administration the ability to expand benefits and make it a permanent program of retirement for hard working Americans.

So, the good, cheery bit of propaganda I got from the Social Security Administration this morning, the day after the Republicans passed Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, may be good news if indeed it is true that Social Security benefits will no longer be taxed. But that shouldn’t have happened in the first place anyway because it is double taxation for no good cause or reason. So, stopping double taxation for Social Security for working Americans is only the bare minimum thing that Republicans could have done to help rather than hurt working Americans. And it should be permanent.

But far better news yet will be when Congress finally fixes the problem of Social Security solvency by taking the very easy, very do-able step of removing the artificial cap on the upper limit of income taxed for it.

Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt if Congress returned the trillions of dollars that Congress has “borrowed” and promised to pay back from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for disastrous and unsanctioned wars that didn’t do any good for anything or anyone.

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.