it would never clear a 60 vote fillibuster in the senate. Not to mention that if they ever attempted to pull that shit, there would be a revolution. They would lose even their voters.

I mean just look at the CRAP Republicans have already pulled - even BEFORE Trump. If Americans are still plopped afront their televisions sucking on Schlitz and watching Reality shows NOW...what will it take to get them to pay attention?

I dunno...I hope you're right though.

We drank Schlitz when we couldn't get Budweiser

And he would NEVER lie to us, would he? He's gotta oppose this, right?

-said by millions of dupes who voted for him....

and we have Trump; the original P.T.Barnum, running the show here. Nuff said

And a lot of these "younger" people voted "against" the lady and fell for the old man's lies!

Whichever you prefer.

This is not going to happen. We are going to stand up and be heard on this atrocity.

Will support that plan.

That's the Republican philosophy in a nutshell.

Don't worry though, this plan is going to backfire. Just like all the other evil things the GOP tries to do.

wanting to cut SS and that is their reply "It won't hurt us".

Democrats will filibuster this to death--and AFAIK, the Senate cannot include anything Social Security related legislation in reconciliation.

The United States Senate's Compensation and Retirement Plan Programs in addition to Term Limits of not more than One Term for Life. The Top 10% of Wage Earners will be Taxed at a 75% Rate with All of Their Former Deductions Eliminated. PERIOD!

Figuratively speaking, of course.

GIVE THEM the money THEY EARNED...FUCKING THIEVES, LOOTING THIS NATION. They will go after VETERANS next, just you watch, take their benefits away from them and tell them, they are on their own...

Cutting it is just pure greed. The system is not broke nor will it ever be.

Raising the retirement age is a cut - a drastic one at that.

Increasing the SS/SSDI tax slightly and/or INCREASING the cap would deter any shortfall. As I said it will never be "broke" as Republicans like to claim but it will be unable to pay full benefits in a few years. To fix that, only MINOR tweaks are necessary and NO cuts are necessary at all. But Republicans are GREEDY, guys like Koch, Mercer and Trump don't want to pay into the system because THEY don't need it and so they keep ramming and ramming and ramming for cuts. And yes, they DO want to return to the "good old days" when people simply worked until they were dead or quit when they could simply no longer work and then were destitute.

The Social Security owns a bunch of Treasury Bonds. SS will be cashing in those bonds soon, so the US will have to pay back what they borrowed. We all know that tRump hates paying what he owes.

There is no way to make the math work to have people pay into social security for 30 years and have it cover an equal number of years without drastically raising the amount of money going into social security.

And I'd point out that life expectancy when social security was started was less than the retirement age. Yes a lot of that was infant mortality, but only 54% of men who made it to 21 lived to 65 and of those who made it to 65, they could expect to live to 78. Today a 65 year old man can expect to live until over 84 years. Sure it's "only" 6 years, but it's the years when you have higher costs for medical care like assisted living. Also we have fewer people paying in for each beneficiary. But in theory that will over time stabilize as baby boomers die off, but it still presents a problem today.

Fixing social security is hard. Just raising the cap on income without also increasing payout to those people would likely only serve to make social security be easier to portray as welfare rather than a system we all benefit from. It is also hard because while life expectancy is increasing, that isn't spread universally. People working manual labor obviously have a harder time working later in life than a typical office worker.

Also we need to address issues of age discrimination.

But lowering retirement age isn't a viable option given how we fund social security. You'd need to raise the social security tax probably by several times the current rate if your plan is to take out those who are making the most (workers 50 and up) from paying into the pool and adding them into the pool of those taking out of the system.

People who would hit 62 in 2023 are 56 now. So it affects people 56 and under (and maybe others??).

and speak up.

To "save social security"

https://samjohnson.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398516

Washington, December 8, 2016

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (TX-03) introduced legislation that will permanently save Social Security, ensuring this vital program continues to work for today’s workers and beneficiaries and future generations. For years, the Social Security Board of Trustees has cautioned the program is on an unsustainable path. This year, the Trustees Report warned workers will face a 21 percent benefit cut starting in 2034 if Congress does not reform the program.

Chairman Johnson’s legislation, the Social Security Reform Act of 2016 (H.R. 6489), puts Social Security back on a sustainable path by modernizing the program for the 21st century, rewarding retirees and individuals with disabilities for their years of work, and improving retirement security.

Upon introducing the legislation, Chairman Johnson said:

“For years I've talked about the need to fix Social Security so that our children and grandchildren can count on it to be there for them just like it’s there for today’s seniors and individuals with disabilities,” said Johnson. “My commonsense plan is the start of a fact-based conversation about how we do just that. I urge my colleagues to also put pen to paper and offer their ideas about how they would save Social Security for generations to come. Americans want, need, and deserve for us to finally come up with a solution to saving this important program.”

The Social Security Reform Act of 2016 ensures Social Security will be there when Americans need it by:
•Modernizing how benefits are calculated to increase benefits for lower income workers while slowing the growth of benefits for higher income workers.
•Gradually updating the full retirement age at which workers can claim benefits. The new retirement age better reflects Americans’ longer life expectancy while maintaining the age for early retirement.
•Ensures benefits keep up with changes in the economy by using a more accurate measure of inflation for the annual Cost-of-Living-Adjustment.
•Protecting the most vulnerable Americans by increasing benefits for lower-income earners and raising the minimum benefit for those who earned less over the course of long careers.
•Promoting flexibility and choice for workers by eliminating the Retirement Earnings Test for everyone. This allows workers to receive benefits—without a penalty—while they are working, or fully delay retirement and wait to receive benefits. For those who delay claiming benefits, they can receive increases in a partial lump sum or add it all to their monthly check.
•Encouraging saving for retirement by phasing out Social Security’s tax on benefits for workers who continue to receive income after they retire or stop working due to a disability.
•Targeting benefits for those most in need by limiting the size of benefits for spouses and children of high-income earners.
•Treating all workers fairly when their Social Security benefits are calculated by using the same, proportional formula that looks at all of an individual’s earnings over the course of his or her career.

use it. THEN they'd keep their goddamned grubby hands off it and expand it like it needs to be.

EDIT: WHAT THESE ASSHOLES DON'T SAY is that "reforming the program" does NOT need to be in the form of CUTS.

The cap could be raised. The taxation rate could be increased slightly - one or both of these would alleviate the 2024 shortfall EASILY.

NO. CUTS. NECESSARY.

http://www.socialsecurityworks.org/faq/

and tax unearned as well as earned income for those with incomes above a certain level, such as $500,000 per couple.

find it doesn't solve the entire projected short-fall unless you tell people who are over the cap they are going to pay an additional 13% in taxes, but get no increase in benefits.

SS should have been discussed while Obama was in office.

there would have been far less problem. Part of political compromise. And if businesses had continued to offer retirement plans rather than divert the money to the rich, the problem would also be far less.

Social security needs to be used by everyone.

Where I live teachers don't contribute to social security.

I've never been able to figure out why other than "We have our own system for teacher retirement.

That's not an answer. Doctors would love to have their own system instead of social security. So would lawyers and stock brokers. But none of them can do that. They have to be in social security.

So why don't teachers?

Bringing teachers into the system would help social security's finances tremendously.

Supposedly to cover all the baby boomers who would be retiring at the same time. It was suppose to be only temporary, but we are still paying the same rate today. It was really just a backdoor tax on the poor, so Reagan could give huge tax breaks to his rich buddies.

Bottom line is that they stole our money and they don't want to give it back. Every single American worker pays into SS. If they get away with this, it will be the biggest theft in American history.

work until you die.

Here's the underlying problem: A good 45 years ago people my age were saying, "Social Security won't be around when I'm 65." It made me crazy. I'd say, "No, you idiot! If you buy into that you're making it possible to cut back or do away with Social Security altogether."


And so it goes. For a half century young people have been fed the bullshit about Social Security not being viable, not being around for them. And they've been buying into it.

Everyone, regardless of age, needs to fight back. Do NOT let the bastards win!

Otherwise, it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Some 45 years ago when my age mates were saying, "Oh gosh, Social Security won't be around when I'm 65" they were submitting to the BS of Social Security not being a good and viable thing.

A bit of a side note. Social Security was NEVER intended to be the only source of income in retirement. It was intended to be one leg of a three sided stool: SS, a pension, personal savings.

I understand fully that the three legged stool idea was something of an idealistic construct. I happen to be the rare person for whom SS is almost exactly 1/3 of my retirement income. I do have a pension, which is about 10% of my income. Luckily for me, I have savings that make up the rest.

I'm semi-comfortable. But if SS were to drop significantly, I'd be in a panic. I will say that I really love not working. However, I'm in good health, and I could (if needed) take a job of some kind to earn income. I could work retail, or I could get a fairly low level office job. I wouldn't like it very much, as I have better things to do with my time than work, but if need be I would.

But I understand quite clearly that many of my age mates can't really get a job. Ok, so they could get hired at WalMart or Target or some such, but I'm thinking about how many of them can't possible endure the rigors of work. One of my friends, a woman my age, is having her second hip replacement more or less as we speak. And hooray for modern medicine! But her health is fragile enough (she's also on oxygen all the time) that taking any kind of job is at best problematical. More realistically, impossible. And she's fairly typical. Recently this friend expressed concern for her long term future, confiding in me some financial details that aren't completely appropriate to pass on. But the point is, her financial future is in doubt. And she's far from the only one.

So yeah. We all have to fight to at least maintain Social Security and Medicare.

my boss (who was born in 1945) said, "Social Security won't be worth a damn when we're old enough for it."

I'm sure she's drawing it now.

this old meme about Social Security needs to be taken out and shot.

edit - retirement age is already 72 for me I think but lets see the bill the repukes manage to try passing

edit edit - heck to compromise with republicans i'd take these (or similar) changes to save a little cash if they soaked higher incomes a little more.

so he does very well on SS benefits - of course he paid into them. as progressive as I am, in broad strokes I will concede a little to the right about changing retirement ages. lets not end up like Greece.

edit ! - any discussion along those lines should begin under the assumption of raising the taxable income cap

do start drawing SS at 70, because the amount you'll receive will not increase after that age. Also, whatever your full retirement age is, at that point you can collect and your SS will not be reduced by any earnings.

a decent hearing. Instead we kicked the can to vile GOPers.

They touch SSN for Generation X AGAIN -- they will have H.E. Double Hockey Sticks To Pay!

Nobody pays attention to committee votes. But the very first whip count should be blasted from every news outlet in the country. The Russians will have to steal millions of votes, instead of 35,000 or so, in order to pull out a mid-term win for their lapdogs, the Republicans.

This is all so the republicans can have more massive tax cuts for the rich. Republican "family values" are right out of a freaking shithole.

I'm not sure it would even get a majority in the Senate. I can't believe the Republicans who voted against repealing the ACA would go for this.