As word spreads that President Obama’s budget proposal will call for Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts, other voices are calling for increasing the successful programs instead as the medicine struggling families and a weak economy need.
A report for the New America Foundation highlights the crisis in retirement security and proposes expanding Social Security.
Yesterday the AFL-CIO learned President Obama's budget will cut Social Security and Medicare benefits for working families. The so-called "chained" CPI will cut Social Security benefits and middle-income seniors (people who made $47,000 a year and more) will be asked to pay higher Medicare premiums.
Over the past 40 years, some of the nation’s biggest and most profitable companies have not only moved America's jobs and manufacturing overseas, but by taking advantage of a U.S. tax code that encourages companies to shift their income overseas, they have cut the taxes they owe by more than half. The result, writes Jia Lynn Yang in The Washington Post ,
is lower revenue here that could pay for infrastructure, education and other services that support domestic growth—and that make life easier for U.S. firms.
Calling sequestration “just a fancy word for a dumb idea,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the 750,000 job-killing, across-the-board budget cuts and other moves toward fiscal austerity will “further weaken the economy and cost jobs” and make even worse “the crisis of mass unemployment. Millions of Americans who want to work cannot find jobs.”
Writing in a special report in The Hill on jobs and the economy, Trumka says:
On some days, it seems like all of official Washington is racing to embrace the most destructive consensus since the Iraq war.
In more than 100 events across the country Wednesday, working families rallied outside lawmakers’ offices, federal agencies, military bases and elsewhere to shine a spotlight on the impact of the sequester’s across-the-board cuts that will cost more than 750,000 jobs this year alone and to call for its repeal.
While most of the actions aimed at members of Congress were focused on Republicans who are using the sequester as leverage to get their way in Congress, in Beckley, W.Va., a group of more than 50 AFGE and other union members and community supporters received a shout out of support from Rep. Nick Rahall (D).
As part of Wednesday’s national day of action to repeal the sequester, “Building Unions,” a weekly radio show from the Connecticut AFL-CIO and Greater Hartford Central Labor Council will discuss sequestration, its impact on working families and the drive to repeal the across-the-board budget cuts.
The show airs from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. on WATR 1320 AM . Click on the “Listen Live” button to stream the show that will feature Connecticut AFL-CIO President John Olsen, labor council President Peggy Buchanan and members of AFGE , AFT and the Machinists ( IAM ).
The "chained" CPI cost-of-living formula—which would result in a painful cut in benefits for Social Security recipients—was touted as good policy by White House National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling in an "Ask Me Anything" Reddit chat yesterday.
For today's health care read, check out these new stories from Think Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP):
It's back. The Ryan–GOP budget that gives seniors "coupons" to pay for health care and guts Medicaid and public investment to enrich millionaires and billionaires was once again proposed by the House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) today.
Holding out for ransom demands in the form of benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Senate Republicans today again refused to surrender their hostages—the nation’s economy and working families who will be hurt by the upcoming Republican sequester.
Republicans led the charge to defeat a Democratic plan that would have eliminated the across-the-board sequestration budget cuts for the remainder of 2013, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated would cost 750,000 jobs.
It’s been four years since low-wage workers got a raise. Sign the petition to tell Congress it’s time to raise the minimum wage.
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