Bernie Sanders Cracks The CODED THREAT To Entitlements In Obama’s State Of The Union

[ProSense]

11. There

was an earlier post about the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare's response:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002219121

My response, http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002219121#post1

Cutting costs should be clearly defined as reducing waste in the system and other savings unrelated to benefits.

It's good to have Bernie Sanders being very vocal about his opposition. Still, it's unlikely that the President has cuts to benefits in mind because he has always stressed that he will protect benefits and that Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit. Whenever he has talked about cuts, it's to abuse, fraud and waste.

I aslo agree with the NCPSSM:

Our President/CEO, Max Richtman responded:

“We share President Obama’s belief that we must rebuild our economy in a way that rewards Americans’ hard work and re-instills fairness into an economic system that too often rewards the rich and punishes everyone else. Ironically, these core American values of hard work, fairness and compassion are also the tenets of the programs most often targeted by Washington for cuts—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. If offering more reforms leads to benefit cuts for seniors in these vital programs then seniors program will once again become a bargaining chip traded in exchange for tax breaks millionaires don’t need in the first place.

The President’s support for providing a middle class tax cut to help spur the economy is the right policy, but reducing Social Security payroll taxes is the wrong way to do it. Extending the payroll tax cut further endangers Social Security’s financial integrity and could undermine our efforts to defend the program from benefit cuts or privatization. If seniors are required to pay for the payroll tax holiday — which most would not benefit from – through Medicare cuts as some lawmakers have suggested, that would also be contrary to the President’s stated goals of fairness.

We urge President Obama to safeguard the middle-class by drawing a clear line in the sand, promising the American people that this so-called ‘holiday’ will end this year. Restoring Social Security’s successful self-funding model is the only way to preserve its independence for future generations.” Max Richtman, NCPSSM President/CEO

Good health-care related point from the NCPSSM:

Just a reminder: according to the Social Security Trustees the Social Security Trust fund currently has a surplus of $2.6 trillion. This surplus is projected to grow until 2022. At that time the balance in the trust funds are projected to be $3.7 trillion. The skyrocketing costs of healthcare system wide have posed a greater threat to Medicare; however, healthcare reform added years of solvency to the program. While there’s more work to be done conservatives are now working to undo the progress already made by repealing the Affordable Care Act and reversing the savings already seen in Medicare.