(cross posted at SocialSecurityDefender.blogspot.com) Well the first line of attack is opening up. Lindsay Graham is threatening to hold up the Debt Limit Increase Bill, and so potentially throw this whole country and perhaps the world into default unless he gets cuts to Social Security. This is insane on several levels, not least because the […]
by Bruce Webb Conservatives have long been 2nd Amendment Absolutists (unless you are a black man carrying a stick outside a mostly black precinct in Philadelphia, somehow ‘open carry’ doesn’t apply there). Now they have doubled down with the Tenther Movement, which they have tied together with an Enumerated Powers doctrine which mostly doesn’t actually […]
From Open Congress Nov 15, 2009 The Most Important Health Care Reform Provision You’ve Never Heard Of For months, Bruce Webb has been tracking a provision in the House’s health care bills that has flown mostly under the radar. He calls it the “most important and most overlooked” aspect of the bills, and he may […]
by Bruce Webb There has been a recent mini-surge of op-eds claiming that the ‘assets’ of the Trust Funds, all $2.6 trillion, are simply mythical. The most recent Scrooge to argue this line may have been Thomas McClanahan of the KC Star in this piece from Christmas: More mythbusting on Social Security ‘money’” in which […]
by Bruce Webb Digby points us to the following NYT piece: At $106.5 Million, a Picasso Sets an Auction Record with what is in one sense an understandable bitter comment “Hey, dead artists need work too.” And as a comment on the odd priorities of our plutocracy a reasonable moral judgement, but as an economic […]
Had a long day of Social Security related blogginess so will just put up this to spark some discussion: In Part One of this post I discussed the danger that the 2% ‘temporary’ payroll tax cut might be a Trojan Horse destined never to expire in full or at all only to have any continuing […]
by Bruce Webb (cross posted at new dedicated (and partially funded) blog Social Security Defender) As part of the Tax Cut deal Obama cut with Republicans there was included a one-year cut of 2% of payroll out of the 6.2% employee share of the overall 12.4% of payroll sent to Social Security. This cut was […]
Well the answer is in the above figure, or actually answers because the post title actually hides multiple questions depending on your view of Social Security generally. This is going to get kind of long so I will take it below the fold right away. There are actually three lines represented in the figure: scheduled […]
Well no there isn’t more under the fold. Let the creativity fly! Hmm proactive commenting! First Amendment bonanza!
by Bruce Webb Strengthen Social Security a coalition of progressive organizations determined to protect and strengthen Social Security, coordinated and hosted by Social Security Works (or maybe by now SSW is hosted by SSSC) produced the above graph. I didn’t see it on their website and so grabbed it from Ezra Klein’s post (which does […]