A 20% reduction in SSDI benefits would drop me to $926 a month

[progree]

33. "oh yes, the minority party is powerless -- unless it's republican, in which case it's all powerful"

Huh?

They are the majority in the House and the Senate.

As for the House, there's no filibuster, the minority doesn't count for squat in the House. In the Senate, its different, in that the minority can filibuster (as long as they have 41 or more votes -- as the Republican minority did in the last Senate, and as the Democratic minority does in this Senate. So hopefully we can use that filibuster power in this and other situations effectively).

>> The rule change was just put in place by the House majority (Republicans)" <<

>>>> "if so, then that's one talking point to attack the republicans with" <<<<

Yes, for sure, their bloody fingerprints are all over it.

>>>> Most americans are very supportive of social security and would willingly pressure the government were they effectively led to do so. <<<<

I sure hope so. The one thing I wonder though is if the majority of voters favor maintaining SSDI (DISABILITY) at current levels, particularly when it requires transferring funds from the OASI (RETIREMENT) to it. It seems there's a lot of narrative out there that SS Disability is a welfare program with a lot of welfare fraud and all that, affecting only a few unlucky people, while the Retirement fund is (relatively) sacrosanct because just about everyone expects to reach retirement age (62 for early benefits) some day.

[font color = red]On Edit[/font] - I don't agree that SS Disability is a welfare program rife with welfare fraud. But the righties pretty much have a monopoly of talk radio and cable. And they seem to almost monopolize e.g. comments on news articles like Yahoo News. So those are some ways they spread their narratives.

Part of the problem is that seemingly most DUers spend almost all of their interactive Internet time on DU, rather than out there on the other message boards and comments to news articles and social media countering these rightie narratives. Rather, we huddle in our little incestuous "safe havens" and endlessly message board message each other... and too often its more like a circular firing squad than a safe haven.