March, 31 2023, 01:37pm EDT
The 2023 Trustees Report Shows that Social Security Remains Strong, Despite Republican Attacks
The 2023 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds, released today, shows that our Social Security system remains strong and fully affordable.
This year’s report announces that Social Security has an accumulated surplus of approximately $2.8 trillion. It projects that, even if Congress took no action whatsoever, Social Security can pay all benefits and associated administrative costs until 2034. It is 89 percent funded for the next quarter century, 83 percent for the next half century, and 80 percent for the next three quarters of a century.
At the end of the century, in 2100, Social Security is projected to cost around 6 percent of gross domestic product (“GDP”). That end-of-the-century cost is a substantially smaller percentage than most other wealthy countries spend on their counterpart programs today.
Social Security Works has released a fact sheet that puts the report into further context, including the context of the ongoing fight over raising the debt ceiling.
The following is a statement on the report from Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works:
“The takeaway from this report is that whether to expand or cut Social Security’s modest but vital benefits is a question of values, not affordability.
Congressional Democrats have proposed several plans that expand benefits. These plans are fully paid for by requiring millionaires and billionaires to contribute their fair share.
These proposals are bipartisan in the way that matters — they have strong support from Democratic, Republican, and independent voters. In contrast, 88 percent of voters oppose cutting benefits. While some political elites still cling to the idea of a so-called “balanced” package that includes benefit cuts, such a plan will not succeed because it is toxically unpopular among the American people.
Unfortunately, Republican politicians are not listening to their voters. The most recent budget of the Republican Study Committee, which consists of about three quarters of the House Republicans, includes deep cuts to both Social Security and Medicare. Other Republicans are trying to create fast-track commissions that operate behind closed doors, aimed at forcing cuts that would not be supported in the sunshine.
To see the results of cutting earned retirement benefits through an undemocratic process, one only needs to look across the Atlantic Ocean, where the French people are rising up in anger.
Congress should take action to expand Social Security and close the system’s modest shortfall. Democrats have put their ideas on the table. Now, Republicans should do the same, so that Congress can debate Social Security’s future in the light of day.”
Social Security Works' mission is to: Protect and improve the economic security of disadvantaged and at-risk populations; Safeguard the economic security of those dependent, now or in the future, on Social Security; and Maintain Social Security as a vehicle of social justice.
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While praising the Biden administration's move "to stave off this reckless attack from extremist politicians and judges," advocates stressed that "broad-based debt cancellation is the only solution."
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The Biden administration responded to an appellate court temporarily blocking one of its student debt relief programs by pausing payments for the 8 million borrowers already enrolled—a move welcomed by advocates, even as some called for further action.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona acknowledged in a statement that the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling against President Joe Biden's Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan "could have devastating consequences for millions of student loan borrowers crushed by unaffordable monthly payments if it remains in effect."
"It's shameful that politically motivated lawsuits waged by Republican elected officials are once again standing in the way of lower payments for millions of borrowers," Cardona continued. "Borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan will be placed in an interest-free forbearance while our administration continues to vigorously defend the SAVE plan in court. The department will be providing regular updates to borrowers affected by these rulings in the coming days."
The appellate court's Thursday ruling was just the latest in a series of legal decisions endangering one of the administration's surviving policies to help Americans with burdensome student loans. Biden's attempt to roll out a broader debt cancellation program last year was thwarted by the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing justices.
Despite that setback, the Democratic president has continued to pursue relief programs while seeking reelection in November. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are preparing to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio). Analyses have warned that Trump's return to the White House would worsen the U.S. student debt crisis.
"It wasn't so long ago that a million borrowers defaulted on their student loans every single year, mainly because they couldn't afford the payments," Cardona noted Friday. "The SAVE plan is a bold and urgently needed effort to fix what's broken in our student loan system and make financing a higher education more affordable in this country. The Biden-Harris administration remains committed to delivering as much relief as possible for as many borrowers as possible."
"Already, we've approved an unprecedented $169 billion in relief for nearly 4.8 million Americans, including teachers, veterans, and other public servants, students who were cheated by their colleges, borrowers with disabilities, and more," he added. "And from larger Pell Grants to free community college, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and I continue to believe that college affordability is a cause worth fighting for—and we're not giving up."
The Student Borrower Protection Center, which had advocated for a payment pause after Thursday's ruling, thanked Cardona "for taking swift action to protect the millions of borrowers enrolled in SAVE."
"Opponents of SAVE have inflicted mass confusion and chaos across the entire student loan system—all borrowers are at risk," the group added. "Halt student loan payments and protect borrowers ASAP!"
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten put out a statement on Friday praising the administration's action "to stave off this reckless attack from extremist politicians and judges."
"But we shouldn't even be in this situation," she stressed. "These borrowers are on a roller coaster that's being forced off the rails by far-right politicians who will do anything in their power to hurt them, rather than help them get the relief they deserve."
"We are grateful that the Biden-Harris administration will continue to push for affordable monthly payments as bad faith actors continue to throw up roadblock after roadblock," she added. "In the end, broad-based debt cancellation is the only solution—and we will continue to advocate for it through every avenue available."
While also welcoming the pause as the court battle continues, the Debt Collective said Friday: "But no need to stop there—pause everyone's payments. Unburden them from what has been."
Recalling when student debt payments were halted because of the Covid-19 pandemic, initially under Trump and then Biden, the group also said that the president "never should have restarted student loan payments," calling it "an unforced error."
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"It is long overdue that Microsoft and other Big Tech monopolies are broken up—for good," said one expert.
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Digital rights advocates responded to Friday's havoc-wreaking global technology outage by sounding the alarm on the Big Tech monopolies.
The outage—which is being attributed to a software update by the U.S.-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike—sparked worldwide chaos on Friday, causing so-called "blue screens of death" on computers using Microsoft Windows. The outage grounded commercial flights and caused serious disruptions to transportation, financial, and healthcare systems.
"Today's massive global Microsoft outage is the result of a software monopoly that has become a single point of failure for too much of the global economy," George Rakis, executive director of the advocacy group NextGen Competition, said in a statement.
"For decades, Microsoft's pursuit of a vendor lock-in strategy has prevented the public and private sectors from diversifying their IT capabilities," he continued. "From airports to hospitals to 911 call centers to financial systems, millions today are feeling the consequences of the greed and ego of one of the most egregious offenders in Big Tech."
Emily Peterson-Cassin, who heads Demand Progress' corporate power program, said that "today's outage shows how one software issue stemming from only one or two companies can ground flights, take down hospital systems, stop 911 calls, and cut off access to the internet in one fell swoop."
"Economy-wide reliance on a few giant companies is a serious fundamental risk to Americans," she asserted. "No one regulatory or legislative intervention will prevent this kind of situation, but there are plenty of policies that can reduce the danger. Efforts to empower regulators' ability to tackle the risks posed by concentrated corporate actors are critical to protecting Americans from these kinds of failures."
Bloomberg columnist Parmy Olson—who focuses on tech issues—said that Friday's outage "should spur Microsoft and other IT firms to do more than simply administer a Band-aid."
"The bigger problem is the supply chain itself for cloud computing and, by extension, cybersecurity services, which has left too many organizations vulnerable to a single point of failure," she noted. "When just three companies—Microsoft, Amazon, and Google—dominate the market for cloud computing, one minor incident can have global ramifications."
European Union nations "are furthest ahead in addressing the market stranglehold that these so-called hyperscalers have with the new E.U. Data Act, which aims to lower the cost of switching between cloud providers and improve interoperability," Olson noted.
"U.S. legislators should get in the game too," she argued. "One idea might be to force companies in critical sectors like healthcare, finance, transportation, and energy to use more than just one cloud provider for their core infrastructure, which tends to be the status quo."
"Instead, a new regulation could force them to use at least two independent providers for their core operations, or at least ensure that no single provider accounts for more than about two-thirds of their critical IT infrastructure," Olson added. "If one provider has a catastrophic failure, the other can keep things running."
However, most congressional efforts to rein in Big Tech monopoly power and encourage competition have failed or languished amid opposition and obstruction from lobbyists and corporate lawmakers.
Ultimately, Rakis stressed, "it is long overdue that Microsoft and other Big Tech monopolies are broken up—for good."
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The ACLU on Friday issued a memo warning that a second term for former President Donald Trump would "exacerbate inequalities" in the criminal justice system and laying out plans to push against a potential Republican administration's efforts to do so.
The 14-page memo argues that Trump's agenda would be to expand incarceration, abusive policing practices, and the use of the death penalty, all of which the ACLU, a nonprofit human rights organization, opposes.
"We know from this country's history that these extreme and immoral policies harm communities and infringe upon our rights and humanity," Yasmin Cader, director of the ACLU's Trone Center for Justice and Equality, said in a statement that accompanied the release of the memo. "The ACLU is prepared to meet the Trump administration with the same fierce response as we did during his last term in office should he be reelected."
In our latest memo, we make the case for how a second Trump administration would fuel our mass incarceration crisis and threaten all of our civil rights and civil liberties.
Our legal experts break down what’s at stake for criminal legal reform, and how we’ll work toward changes…
— ACLU (@ACLU) July 19, 2024
Most of the U.S. criminal legal system is run at the state or local level. More than 1.6 million people are incarcerated in state and local jails or prisons, compared to just over 200,000 in the federal system.
However, a second Trump administration would set the "tone" and create a "ripple effect across the country," threatening a "new era of mass incarceration," the ACLU said. The memo warns that Trump would do so in the following ways:
- Escalating punitive, draconian sentencing and incarceration approaches;
- Incentivizing dramatically worse conditions for the nation's 1.9 million incarcerated people;
- Reincarcerating nearly 3,000 people released to federal home confinement during the pandemic; and
- Undermining recent reforms, including the First Step Act.
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The ACLU also drew attention to Trump's extreme position on the death penalty. More people were executed by the federal government during his four-year term than had been in any in over a century, and his administration went on what ProPublicacalled a "last-minute killing spree" before his term ended.
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