Breaking: Obama To Drop Social Security Cuts In His Budget

[okaawhatever]

175. I don't think seniors are in the dark in terms of proposed cuts and the effects of said cuts. I

think they're in the dark about where the support for those cuts are.

I take issue here with AARP for this statement:" AARP believes we should not reduce the deficit by weakening the programs that provide the very foundation of health and retirement security for current and future generations.”

While I agree that SS shouldn't be cut, saying SS doesn't affect the deficit is disingenuous. the issue with SS isn't about the deficit so much as it is about the fact that the SS trust fund doesn't have enough to pay current benefits past certain years. I feel like that's a misdirect. Now, SS has come into play with the deficit when Obama (and maybe Bush) cut the payroll tax by two percent to help the economy during the recession. I know Obama transferred money from the general tax fund into SS to make up the difference, but that wasn't a long term issue.

When AARP says things like, "we should not reduce the deficit by weakening the programs" it's counter productive. The SS issue isn't about the deficit, it's about the SS trust fund. I feel like making that claim screws everything up. AARP should be saying, cuts to programs aren't about the deficit, the cuts are designed to help the SS trust fund. Here's what we need to do to keep benefits from being cut and fix the trust fund problem.__________(fill in blank with solution)

One of the issues I have is that SS is basically an insurance program. I feel like we should pay the people back what they put into it plus interest, guaranteed. That's the one way of keeping people from trying to kill it. No one can argue with a program that gives people back what they put into it plus interest. What we then need to do is have programs to help those seniors who fall below a certain income level. The problem with giving unearned SS benefits across the board is that when you go over the amount put into the program, it's a giveaway program. That is fine if you're giving to the poor. The problem is, many currently on SS have healthy incomes. Why are we draining the SS trust fund to give money to people who make 100k a year? Now remember, I'm not talking about withholding money they earned or what they put in, I'm talking about the amounts over that. Instead of giving the money to all SS recipients, why aren't we giving twice as much to the bottom half on the income scale? That's my issue.

I read something a while back that talked about the historical level of poverty for children and seniors in this country. Basically, the children have never had it so bad and the seniors have never had it so good. I have to look at programs like Bush's Medicare Part D. That was a $300 Billion dollar giveaway to pharma that helped the poor somewhat. I don't know what the rules are now, but originally there wasn't an income test to qualify. Also, the government couldn't negotiate prices on the medication. (Obama changed that portion). The program was designed to give seniors relief from the high cost of pharmaceutical drugs. It didn't do that. It didn't address the most fundamental issues, the high cost of Rx drugs. The issues there are enormous, unfair patent protection, ridiculous insurance regs that allow pharma big bucks, etc. So the program didn't fix the problem of high cost Rx, it only helped seniors pay for the high cost Rx so the country wouldn't wake up to the cause of the prices in the first place.

So anyway, I had checked the AARP website before you responded and searched for SS. I clicked on an article that was supposed to be an overview. It listed Heritage as one of the authors. It also listed a woman who I think was part of a more liberal leaning group, but I wasn't in the mood for Heritage so i'm going to go back and research the group the woman belongs to and read up. I'll watch the video you sent. I'll be an AARP member this year, so it's not like I'm unsympathetic, I just know that a lot of info out there was created by "think tanks" and "scholars" who have an agenda other than helping seniors or the budget.