Hands off Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

by: Combined Sources Tuesday 12 July 2011

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From Strengthen Social Security:

Join us in calling for Congress to RESPECT women, PROTECT Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and REJECT any budget plans that threaten the economic security of women.

SIGN THE PETITION -- Federal Spending Cuts Hurt Women, Seniors -- Benefit the Wealthy

Right now Members of Congress are debating how to reduce the federal deficit. Some have proposed cutting social safety net programs to reduce federal spending. Some are refusing to restore taxes on the wealthy which would provide increased revenues to maintain the safety net. Members of Congress are proposing substantial cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Social Security's benefits would be deeply cut by increasing the full retirement age above 67 and reducing the Cost-of-living Adjustment (COLA) by switching to the chained Consumer Price Index (CPI). Using the "chained CPI" would cut benefits for everyone immediately and would cumulate over time, so that those who live the longest would suffer the deepest cuts.

Those most economically vulnerable — especially women with disabilities, older women who live alone, and others with limited means — will suffer the brunt of these cuts. Many women cannot find employment at older ages, do not have pensions, and have been unable to save sufficiently because of wage discrimination and time taken out of the paid workforce for care-giving. Women are recovering more slowly from this recession than are men. Women need jobs and the social services that are provided by many female workers in our child care centers, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and senior centers. The federal government should fund these jobs by raising new revenues.

We demand a budget agreement that will respect women’s contributions to their families and communities, protect programs that disproportionately serve and employ women, and reject cuts that threaten women’s well-being. The deficit problem should not be solved on the backs of vulnerable women.

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  • Have the “Progressive Democrats” already caved, as they did on Obamacare (remember Kucinich-- smiling and embracing Obama--when he agreed to give up on a “public option” and go along with a bill that cut $500 billion from Medicare programs, resulting in doubling monthly premiums for “extremely low income seniors,” besides encouraging insurance companies to increase co-pays). Watch now as Obama and the “Progressive Caucus” raise the cost of living assessment ceiling (at a time when all the basics needs of daily life have gone up dramatically in price), and cut the real value of social security payments. Such magicians: all in the name of “compromise!” Remember this words for later:


    REP. RAÚL GRIJALVA: “Social Security did not create this deficit problem. In fact, we’ve borrowed from the trust fund to help offset other costs, military and otherwise, so there is a debt owed to Social Security. If we want to make it solvent beyond the next 25 years, which there is enough right now to keep it solvent for 25 years and keep all benefits equal, then let’s talk about that separate from this deficit and debt discussions. How do we strengthen it? How do we make it a stronger program? How do we restructure, let’s say, the income tax, that could again create billions of dollars of Social Security? People at a higher income should probably pay more into Social Security. Those kinds of restructuring issues that makes the system fairer and makes it stronger, we’re all for. But to put that on the table as part of the negotiations, as I’ve said earlier, you begin with the wrong premise. You begin with the premise that there is fault and that there is a reason, that these programs are the reason why we’re in the mess that we’re in, and that’s absolutely not true. So, I think it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We keep talking about Social Security as the cause, and now it’s being discussed here, with more earnest, as one of the mechanisms to deal with this deficit and the debt.”


    “The argument has always been, when there’s a compromise, whether it’s the healthcare, the Bush tax cuts, etc., extending those, that we’re going to do this because we’re avoiding worse damage. I think we reached the tipping point. I think the scrutiny of the American people, the opposition of the American people to these cuts in benefits in Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid is very, very strong. And I believe that the Progressive Caucus has an opportunity to stick together. I, for one, certainly the leadership of the caucus, is going to stick to what we’ve said, that if it’s on the table, there is cuts in benefits, reductions in benefits for recipients on any of those programs, then we are not going to support any deal.”


    SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: “We of course need a vigorous debate about how we deal with the deficit crisis and our national debt, but Social Security, independently funded with a $2.6 trillion surplus, having not contributed one nickel to the national debt, should not be part of that debate.”


    From: (http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/12/debt_lock_will_obama_make_cuts)


    Mary Lynn Cramer


    Posted by Mary Lynn Cramer, 07/14/2011 12:22am (13 years ago)

  • In the face of these atrocities we have to know how to help to trigger, to be "catalysts" for the direct action of peace to answer this-what is greatest violence against the vulnerable(especially women and children of color) and thereby against the whole people and nature.
    It we, the communists are not the spearheads of such massive people direct action(s)-we have to learn how to be- the people yearn for such leaders to help protect them from this current state/capitalist devastation.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 07/13/2011 11:06am (13 years ago)

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