Right-wing Republicans targeting Medicare, Social Security

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri., or Sat., Jan. 4, 5 or 6, 2018

As lawmakers this week returned to Washington for the Second Session of the 115^th Congress, President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan are preparing to make up for revenue losses they created in the tax overhaul by reducing spending that helps older and needy Americans.

Last month, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) conceded the tax measure now requires cuts to programs such as Social Security, which could mean changing rates and ages for benefits and eligibility.

In their recent tax overhaul, Republican extremists are trying to create a problem where their solution is a past goal, one rejected for generations: cut Social Security, Medicare and so on.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) commented, “Republicans are already saying ‘entitlement reform’ and ‘welfare reform’ are next up on the docket. But nobody should be fooled – that's just code for attacks on Medicaid, on Medicare, on Social Security, on anti-hunger programs.”

Ryan and his ilk blame annual budget deficits and the cumulative national debt on Social Security, However, it was never set up to be an exclusive investment program. Instead, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system with current workers contributing to older Americans.

Bernie Sanders in 2012 wrote, “Under long-standing federal law, Social Security is not part of the federal budget and cannot contribute to the federal deficit. This reflects Social Security’s structure as an independent, self-financed insurance program, in which worker contributions, not general taxes, finance benefits.”

Indeed, Social Security is “F.I.C.A.,” as in Federal Insurance Contributions Act. Workers and employers contribute in each paycheck.

Echoing Sanders, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, the Democrat who represents Wisconsin’s 2nd District (next to the 1st District, represented by Ryan), said, “Social Security benefits can be paid only from the Social Security trust fund, not general funds.”

Illinois has 2.1 million recipients of Social Security Income (SSI), according to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM). Those Illinoisans get an average of $1,361 a month.

That apparently causes some extremists to drool.

According to Newsweek, Rubio said, “You also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn’t the driver of our debt. The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries.”

However, the Congressional Budget Office says the tax overhaul alone will cost the country $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years.

Progressives say that the GOP will use that over-spending – which they themselves approved by enriching the wealthy – as a ploy to achieve the long-held conservative ambition of cutting Social Security and other social programs such as the Farm Bill’s food-stamp provisions (S.N.A.P., the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The aged and poor and will be affected the most.

Social Security isn’t generating the surpluses it did for decades, but that doesn’t mean is bankrupt.

“If Congress does nothing – makes no changes or ‘reforms’ – Social Security is projected to deliver full guaranteed benefits until at least 2037,” the NCPSSM reports. “Even after 2037 – again, without any changes – the trust funds will continue to pay 76 percent of benefits for years after that.”

Exemplified by the failure to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Congress’s Republican majorities seem to ignore their constituents as if they don’t care; as if they’re ideologues whose loyalty is not to the people they were elected to represent or the Constitution, but to their affluent supporters.

Writing in Time magazine, AARP president Eric J. Schneidewind said seniors will be put at risk by Ryan’s targeting Medicare – cuts that would increase health-care costs.

“To justify what they position as the ‘we-have-no-choice’ necessity of their plans, congressional leaders have characterized Medicare, in operation for more than 50 years, as ‘going broke’,” Schneidewind said. “That’s simply not true. In fact, both the Medicare Trustees Report and the Congressional Budget Office report that Medicare’s fiscal strength has improved — not declined — in recent years and that the Medicare trust fund is fully funded through 2029 and 79 percent funded through 2040, a highly manageable shortfall that can be closed in coming years without experimenting with, or reducing, seniors’ health-care coverage.”

Some 12 years after the GOP’s failed “privatization” schemes – taking payroll-tax money that now goes into the Social Security trust funds and instead investing it in private investment accounts managed by Wall Street – some version may be dusted off as a “compromise” to outright cuts.

President Dwight Eisenhower on November 8, 1954, said, “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”

Many hope that the World War II hero and moderate Republican was right.