Now that Christmas is over, President Obama and Speaker Boehner will soon resume talks to cut Social Security as part of a deal to avert the fiscal cliff. Here are ten reasons why the chained CPI–the Social Security cut they are considering–is terrible policy. I spoke about this with David Shuster on last Saturday’s Take Action [...]

As far as 80s trends go, the resurgent popularity of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill rivals that of skinny jeans and Members Only jackets. But were Reagan and O’Neill really as chummy as some people would have us believe? This post is based on an analysis I provided on the November 17 episode of Take Action [...]

Social Security Works spoke to several conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this past Friday, who were none too pleased to hear Mitt Romney he plans to cut Social Security and Medicare. To the right is a video Social Security Works put together contrasting Romney’s statements on Social Security and Medicare in his speech [...]

In the GOP response to President Obama’s state of the union address, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels argued that Social Security should be means-tested, rather than asking the rich to pay their fair share of taxes to the program. While this proposal may sound innocuous, in fact, means testing would save Social Security little money, erode [...]

In the New York Times on Tuesday, David Brooks attributed Rick Santorum’s last-minute surge in the polls to the appeal of his family values platform with working-class whites. If Brooks is right, then those same voters should take a second look at Santorum’s position on Social Security, a program that represents the best of American family values. Brooks [...]

The Strengthen Social Security Campaign has created a guide evaluating the “friendliness” of six Republican candidates, “Among Republican Candidates, Not a Single Friend of Social Security.” The Campaign has also produced longer individual profiles of Mitt Romney , Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich’s particular records on Social Security. Some key take-aways that may have slipped by casual observers of the 2012 race [...]

Days after the tents were ripped out of Zucotti Park in New York, hundreds of Americans brought the fight for the 99% to the nation’s capital on Thursday with a “Wake-Up Congress” rally calling for the Super Committee to support “Jobs, Not Cuts” to key social programs. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) fittingly called it “#OccupyThe SuperCommittee.” [...]

A recent study reveals how rising income inequality is jeopardizing Social Security’s finances. It is by now common to hear Social Security advocates demand that we “scrap the cap” on earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax. This is an important appeal. Few Americans realize that millionaires only contribute to Social Security on the first [...]

During a National Nurses United (NNU)-sponsored march from Lafayette Square and the Treasury Department to the #OccupyDC encampment in McPherson Square on Thursday, I got the chance to talk to NNU member Tonya Moss, who came more than 1,000 miles to protest Wall Street’s outsize power over our political system. I met Tonya Moss as the [...]

A proposal to increase the Medicare eligibility age, which the Super Committee is considering, would drive up health care costs to the point where they would consume almost half of the Social Security check of a middle-class retiree, according to a new analysis by Social Security Works . In his testimony before the Super Committee yesterday, Erskine [...]

A few weeks after calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” Rick Perry claims he has just the plan to save the program. That is nothing but a monstrous lie. In fact, Perry’s Social Security plan is a smorgasbord of awful Social Security ideas that conservatives have proposed over the years. It is George W. Bush meets Paul Ryan meets Alan Simpson. [...]

The Keeping Our Social Security Promises Act , S.1558, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) , strengthens Social Security for future generations without cutting benefits. The bill “goes big” for the nation’s most important pension, life and disability insurance plan. Before we get into the details of the Sanders bill , though, it is worth providing a little background on [...]

The Super Committee held its first public hearing today, the subject of which was the “History and Drivers of Our Nation’s Debt and Its Threats.” The responses of the Super Committee ’s members to the testimony of Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf showed bipartisan consensus in favor of cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; little discussion of [...]

The media have portrayed Governor Rick Perry’s description of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” at a recent Iowa campaign event as the latest extreme statement of an unconventionally candid, conservative presidential candidate. But Perry’s full remarks reveal just as much about the Republican Party’s strategy for cutting Social Security as they do about Perry himself. [...]

President Obama said that Social Security is not an “entitlement,” or a “driver of the deficit or debt,” at a Minnesota Town Hall meeting on Monday. Then why is he allowing a Super Committee charged with deficit reduction to address Social Security? “Not an Entitlement” At the town hall meeting in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, President Obama [...]

Eight leading veterans’ groups sent letters to President Obama, and members of the House and Senate this week, urging them not to adopt the chained Consumer Price Index (CPI) for determining cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security and VA benefits. The letters relied on information from a new analysis by the Strengthen Social Security Campaign showing that the chained [...]

The chained Consumer Price Index (CPI), a provision included in the Gang of Six’s deficit reduction package, raises taxes on low- and moderate-income workers, according to a recent report by the Joint Committee on Taxation. This belies the claim that the harm done to the middle class by the chained CPI’s benefit cuts would be partly [...]

Views expressed are those of the author, and do not reflect the views of Social Security Works or the Strengthen Social Security Campaign. The chained CPI, a Social Security COLA cut on the table in deficit talks between the President and Republicans, could dramatically worsen poverty among unmarried senior African American women. As such, it violates [...]

Although specifics have yet to officially emerge, there is little doubt that among the Social Security benefit cuts the President is proposing will be a reduction in Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) through an obscure change in the COLA formula known as the chained CPI. Update for those who haven’t seen it: The Washington Post [...]

Giving companies money does not mean they’ll hire. Especially when they have record amounts of cash, like they do now, companies are more likely to use additional capital to re-invest in assets, re-purchase stock, and other non-hiring-type activities. That’s what Jared Bernstein said in a really convincing takedown of tax repatriation holiday that would temporarily let corporations [...]