Politicians used to talk more about saving or fixing social security. It is closer to running out now, and politicians irresponsibly ignore it!
Someone’s willingness to pay isn’t just a function of how much they want the product or service, but also their ability to pay. So, when you have limited seats available for a sports game or concert, the people who go are not simply those who love the sport or the artist the most, but those who can better afford expensive tickets. This can result in rich people who don’t even care that much, having the best seats.
For a long time, a lot of people who really just wanted a smaller government pretended to care about debt (or fooled themselves into thinking they cared about debt).
Three quarters of US government spending make the federal government an insurance company with an army. As a percentage of the total spending, waste fraud and abuse is very small. DOGE was a failure because it didn’t understand the US federal government. If you want to significantly reduce spending, you have to stop sending Americans checks (like Medicare and Social Security), or/and have to weaken the military, although the check cutting part is much bigger than the military spending part.
Republican politicians used to lie, or be misinformed, by saying that tax cuts pay for themselves; now they lie, or are misinformed, by saying Trump won the 2020 election (he did not). It’s hard to make a tough compromise under such politics.
“Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.
Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.
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Also among the corrections: DOJ revealed that a DOGE team member was briefly granted access to private Social Security profiles even after a court prohibited it. Shapiro said the access was never “utilized.” And in another instance, a DOGE team member had access for two months to a “call center profile” that contained private information.
“It is unknown at this time whether any [private information] was accessed,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro also revealed that despite prior assertions in court, SSA’s DOGE team members “were using links to share data through the third-party server ‘Cloudflare.’”
“Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data and when used in this manner is outside SSA’s security protocols,” Shapiro indicated.”
“The Treasury Department will stop issuing paper checks for tax refunds, Social Security payments and most other government programs on Sept. 30 as part of an executive order aimed at modernizing the government.
While experts widely agree that electronic payments are faster to process, and less susceptible to fraud and theft than paper checks, advocates who work with the small percentage of those who still receive checks say the change is being rushed out and worry that some beneficiaries won’t learn of it unless their payment doesn’t show up.”
“the 2025 trustees reports for Social Security and Medicare are out. Once again, they confirm what we’ve known for decades: Both programs are barreling straight toward insolvency. The Social Security retirement trust fund and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund are each on pace to run dry by 2033.
When that happens, seniors will face an automatic 23 percent cut in their Social Security benefits. Medicare will reduce payments to hospitals by 11 percent. These cuts are not theoretical. They’re baked into the law. If nothing changes, they will be made.
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legislators could raise the payroll tax from 12.4 percent to 16.05 percent. That’s a 29.4 percent increase. Or they could restructure Social Security so that only people who need the money would receive payments. But because facing this problem in an honest way is politically toxic, legislators are ignoring it.
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Policymakers could gradually raise the retirement age to reflect modern, healthier, longer lives. They could cap benefits at $2,050 monthly, preserving income for the bottom 50 percent of beneficiaries while progressively reducing benefits for the top half. They could reform the tax treatment of retirement income to encourage private savings, as Canada has done with its tax-free savings accounts. Any combination of these reforms would help.
But that would require admitting that the current path is unsustainable. It would require telling voters the truth. It would require courage. So far, these admirable traits have been sorely lacking in our politicians.
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Waiting until the trust funds are empty will leave no room for gradual, targeted solutions. It will force crisis-mode slashing that will hurt the most vulnerable.”
“the bill does not include a provision to eliminate federal income taxes on Social Security benefits.
“There is no provision in the budget bill that directly ‘eliminates’ or even reduces taxes on Social Security benefits,” Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, told the Washington Post.
Trump’s bill offers a tax deduction of $6,000 to seniors making up to $75,000 individually, or $150,000 on a joint return. The deduction is lowered for incomes above that level and axed for seniors with individual incomes of more than $175,000, or $250,000 jointly. However, the new deduction for seniors is set to expire within a couple of years. The median income for seniors in 2022 was about $30,000.”
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“Before the megabill’s passing, 64 percent of seniors receiving Social Security income paid no tax on their Social Security due to exemptions and deductions, according to an estimate by Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers. Under Trump’s megabill, 88 percent won’t be paying.”
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the rise is due to the bill’s increase in “the standard deduction for seniors, which, as a result, reduces the number of seniors who will pay taxes on their Social Security benefits.”
…the new legislation will provide limited benefits for lower-income seniors because they already pay less in taxes.”