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In his recent proposal, President Obama included a change in the cost of living adjustment (COLA) that will make cuts in Social Security benefits. Ugly, hurtful cuts.
This COLA cut is called Chained CPI. It would do real damage by changing the formula used to calculate the COLA.
It’s a real and harmful cut to the Social Security benefits you have earned.
The Chained CPI COLA cuts benefits more every year. After 10 years, your benefits would be cut by about $500 a year for the average retiree. After 20 years, your benefits would be cut by about $1,000 a year.
Switching to the Chained CPIwould hurt both current and future beneficiaries.
Social Security should not be part of any such deal anyway. By law, it can’t contribute to the budget deficit. It’s only permitted to spend money from the Social Security trust fund, as affirmed by Clinton’s Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.
Speaker Boehner and President Obama are tussling over a deal that would save around $1 trillion over 10 years. Yet Bill Clinton has admitted that the U. S.could save that amount, $1 trillion,–in one year and each and every year, not 10 years–by adopting the health care system of any other advanced nation.
Astounding, but true. To end the deficit and bring care to all, Congress could simply pass Congressman John Conyers’ bill, HR 676, national single payer health care. No cuts, no agonizing, no problem.
In the meantime, only an uprising can persuade President Obama and Congress that we will not stand for these social security cuts—nor any other cuts to Medicare or Medicaid—the programs won through generations of struggles for a better life.
Tell President Obama that the Chained CPI is unacceptable.
Call the White House (202) 456-1111.
Call your Senators and representative with the same message: 202-224-3121.
You can put in your zip code and find them here.
“I’m telling you this so that everyone is very clear: if you want to save Social Security from serious benefit cuts that will cause seniors to go hungry and have their utilities shut off, you have to act. You have to rise up and raise hell, because otherwise this train is going down the tracks — it won’t be stopped unless a lot of people get in the way NOW,” said Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive revolution: How the Best in America Came to be.”
He asks everyone to make the calls, then adds:
“But it is going to take people doing more. Make sure your parents, grandparents, and everyone else you know does something. Talk to people at work and at church and everywhere you go…. Show up at your congressperson’s office and let them know what you think. Organize a picket outside that congressional office.
“Do not hold anything back if you care about this issue. And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us raise some hell, this train headed down the track to cutting Social Security benefits, to taking money out of the hands of vulnerable innocents who had nothing to do with the deficits, will be forced to stop.”
This message is brought to you by:
All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org
12 Comments
If you’re on social Security, then you already know that in the first 2 years of Obama’s Presidency, for the first time ever, there was no COLA raise. So, I’m ready for an uprising.
This is where we’ve been screwed no matter what.
Even if Obama is not successful at pushing through cuts this time, he has succeeded in making Social Security a scapegoat for the deficit both in political terms and in the eyes of nightly news watchers.
Not only that, but he has also succeeded in making it standard procedure that true drivers of the deficit such as military and police-state spending and corporate subsidies are not even mentioned.
Even if cuts to Social Security don’t make it this time around, the die has been cast. Politicians will continue to try and cut Social Security under the guise off deficit reduction until they succeed, no matter how many phony fiscal “crises” they and the corporate media have to concoct.
A real uprising would be where we aren’t shamed into voting for the politicians who pass Obama’s Social Security cuts.
I vote third party so when the Dems succeed in touching the third rail, it won’t be an issue for me. Dems, Repubs, serial killers, they’re all the same to me.
As to the party faithful, I think many (most?) have convinced themselves that the Dems are their only option and will support them no matter what.
I’d love to be wrong about that, but I wouldn’t bet the price of a soda on it.
Thank you for your support in this months long effort . . . a refresher is always welcome, IMHO.
This I DIDN’T know, this should be shouted up loud with proof.
That’s a major rally cry, hoss. Why haven’t we heard about this?
What have you got against serial killers?
The George Will dinner where he said he wanted to go after S.S., no COLA, the “middle class tax cut (to defund S.S. of course), conversion of the Bush tax cuts for the rich to the Obama tax cuts for the rich, in return for the ‘Fiscal Cliff’, you would think it was a pattern.
Luckily, we had Bishop Willard and his evil dancing horse, and constant updates from Nate Silver’s House of Obvious Prognostication to keep the eyes of the public on the shinny metal ball.
Shit. Serial killers everywhere will now accuse me of being a hater.
So it would seem times3 … concur…
Thank you Kay Tillow … apt title to this FDL diary…recommended
Either way this time around it is a win-win then…if the SS Looters cannot shake SS loose from its dedicated $$ and the legacy of SS being untouchable and apart from other USG $$ pools? … the die is now made and in place for laying future sieges on FDR’s legacy USian SS and its $$.
Barack Obama clearly appears to be on a mission to accomplish what The Decider failed to do during 2005-2006 regarding SS undermining.
Sure is good to know we have Nancy Pelosi and the Stalwart Do Right By USians Democrats who let Fancy Nancy front for them on Capitol Hill to stand with this D POTUS — Barack Obama — wait…..ummm … this ain’t good is it?
Good title up top — very likely describes what USians one day will need to walk up to and make a decision about — does not take a whole lot of imagination to surmise what the likes of the Obama/Pelosi types and the ptb’s these Ds front for may/would do about such a “one day”.
This being so is what makes the waste of time and energy that this just completed 2012 WH election gave us with all the R vs. D junk which so many USians just accept at face value and play R vs. D GoodBots for. Meanwhile the real politics likely were always about getting Obama in the WH again to do what the Rs could not do to SS back in 2005.
How Barack Obama keeps a straight face while conducting the bait/switch/Look over there!! stunts and kabuki politics Obama does so well is a damn good sub-story in all this. ObamaBush The DINO is doing what Junior Bush was unable to do as a R. Thats not good for common USians. USians are getting/being OD’ed with American Empire and American Militarism propaganda — which if we take it at face value is telling us the world is against us and so the Pentagon and CIA need to be all over the planet stopping the US Haters. That this conveniently also means billions/trillions of $$ go to American Empire and Militarism corporatists and paid-off flying monkees who ply politics in WashingtonDC year after year must just be the happy downside( or is it the upside?). Barack Obama is not talking about bloated/outsized costs of American Empire and Militarism. Barack Obama wants to start gutting SS…slowly but surely.
Barack Obama seems to have already decided what Obama wants to do and about what way Barack Obama wants to go.
USians should think about catching up.
Looting SS to keep American Empire and Militarism in the big $$ seems pretty UnAmerican. It is.
I’ve discovered that you can watch network TV news stories about the Fiscal Cliff grift from end to end and not hear the words Socail Security, Medicare or Medicaid. I’m thinking that much of the American public has no idea that they are on the table and about to take a brutal hit.
They don’t, and that’s how such merciless cuts are possible: through ignorance. They’ve heard “we can’t go over the cliff” so often that they believe it in some vague, superstitious sense…despite the fact that they don’t know what it means or what’s supposed to be driving us over.