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"Older Americans should pay close attention and make sure they support candidates who will protect the benefits they have earned—and even increase them—in the fast approaching November elections," said one advocate.
The cost-of-living adjustment announced Thursday by the U.S. Social Security Administration for more than 72 million senior citizens should serve as a reminder, said economic justice advocates, that the monthly Social Security payments—the "bedrock" of financial security for 58% of recipients—are on election ballots this year.
The administration announced a 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment, commonly known as COLA, for 2025. People who get retirement benefits through the broadly popular New Deal-era program will see their payments adjusted starting in January 2025, and people with disabilities who rely on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) will receive increased benefits starting in December.
To Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works (SSW), which advocates to protect and expand the program, the COLA announcement underscored the vast differences in how Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are likely to approach the Social Security program should they win the presidency in November.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, both co-sponsored legislation to update the COLA formula to better reflect the cost of living for seniors and people with disabilities, noted Altman.
"Republicans have a different perspective," she said. "The Republican Study Committee (which comprises over 80% of House Republicans) proposes annual budgets that include Social Security cuts. Page 104 of the Fiscal Year 2025 Republican Study Committee Budget calls the automatic nature of COLAs a 'problem' and implies that they should be subjected to annual Congressional approval. It also claims that the current COLA formula is too generous. Social Security beneficiaries likely disagree!"
The authors of Project 2025, the right-wing policy agenda co-written by dozens of people who worked in the Trump White House from 2017-21, have also endorsed increasing the full retirement age from 67 to 69, which would cut benefits for nearly three-quarters of Americans.
The current formula for the COLA is based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), but advocates have called for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to instead take into consideration the CPI-E, which measures the spending of Americans 62 years of age and older.
"The formula currently used to calculate annual COLAs under-measures the expenses that Social Security beneficiaries face," said Altman. "Seniors spend a greater proportion of their income on medical expenses―and the Social Security COLA should reflect that."
For beneficiaries who last year received $1,870 per month, the 2.5% increase will give them an additional $46.80 each month, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst Mary Johnson told Newsweek.
"That's only going to buy about 14 gallons of gasoline per month at today's prices, or maybe enough groceries for one to last two or three days," she added.
Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said the group welcomes the COLA, but warned that "many older Americans struggle to make ends meet and afford even the most basic necessities like housing, food, and prescription drugs."
"We need a COLA that better reflects how seniors spend their money," said Fiesta. "Strengthening Social Security and increasing benefits must be a national priority. If billionaires and the top 1% pay their fair share into the system, we can afford to increase benefits across the board and ensure Social Security is there for our children and grandchildren."
"Raising the retirement age, slashing benefits and privatizing the program are among retirees' top concerns," he added. "Older Americans should pay close attention and make sure they support candidates who will protect the benefits they have earned—and even increase them—in the fast approaching November elections."
Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) pointed to the Social Security 2100 Act, legislation that would apply federal payroll taxes to earnings above $400,000 to ensure millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share toward funding and expanding Social Security.
"There is an urgent need to act to not only protect Social Security from the cuts that my Republican colleagues have proposed [but to] enhance benefits," said Larson.
Ahead of the elections, said Altman, "the bottom line is that Democrats want to make annual COLAs more accurate and generous, while Republicans want to make them stingier."
"Democrats also support other policies that would lower costs for Social Security beneficiaries, including Harris' recently released plan to expand Medicare to include home care, hearing, and vision benefits," she said. "Older voters should bear that in mind this November."
Winning should be a breeze for Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and the other Democratic candidates. What's going on?
With little more than four weeks to go before the November elections, polls show the Trump/Harris race as “too close to call.” Winning should be a breeze for Harris and the other Democratic candidates. The GOP’s Congressional votes and policies are bad for women, children, and workers. The GOP doesn’t recognize and act against climate violence, it protects the corporate-favorable tax code, it is soft on corporate crooks, it scuttles regulatory protections for the peoples’ health, safety, and economic wellbeing and mocks the dire necessity of preparedness for future pandemics. (The military Empire with its violent war crimes and runaway budget-busting drain on our domestic necessities is supported by both Parties and not in electoral contention.)
Why so close, then? Because for years, the Democratic Party has abandoned the blue collar, New Deal roots of the Roosevelt era and ferociously dialed for the same commercial dollars as does the GOP. It has hired corporate-conflicted political consulting firms that control campaign messages, strategies and has excluded access by citizen groups to candidates, generally preferring corporatism over democracy, regardless of its rhetoric.
It also doesn’t advance any path to electoral victory to abandon half the country—the red states—and surrender them to the Republicans. The mountain states and North and South Dakota used to have Democrats representing them in the Senate. Failing to compete in these low population states concedes about ten Senate seats at the outset.
Most telling in these last remaining days is the refusal for Kamala Harris and most Congressional candidates to have front and center proven and proper vote-getting agendas reflecting the New Deal.
It also doesn’t advance any path to electoral victory to abandon half the country—the red states—and surrender them to the Republicans.
To begin with I’m referring to raising the GOP frozen federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour from its present $7.25. Democrats need more than a throwaway line on wages. They need to pour some of the billions of dollars raised into media and groundgame campaigns around the slogan “go vote for a raise, you’ve long earned and been denied by the Republicans.” That, authentically conveyed by thousands of Democratic candidates will get the attention of 25 million underpaid and struggling workers, who make our real economy run daily. Why aren’t the Dems ringing that bell?
Another winner for 65 million elderly voters is to pledge with full throttle to increase Social Security benefits frozen for half a century and to raise the Social Security tax on the wealthy to pay for it. Astonishingly, Kamala Harris and her handlers are not championing the “Social Security 2100 Act” which had 200 sponsors in the Congress, led by Congressman John Larson and Senator Richard Blumenthal. The throwaway line is that they “will protect social security” as it deficiently exists. Talk is not enough. The Democrats need to organize and communicate to drive this message.
Third, they should be championing government-paid child care, maternal and family sick leave and the child tax credit—all opposed by the Wall Street GOP. Paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy—this issue is an 85 percent poll winner. Instead, Harris and the Dems mumble with some general rhetoric that nobody really believes. Western countries have long had such social safety net protections for families and children.
The Democratic Party has abandoned the blue collar, New Deal roots of the Roosevelt era and ferociously dialed for the same commercial dollars as does the GOP.
Get-out-the-vote efforts are still inadequate. The Party has trouble listening to Rev. William Barber who argues that just a ten to fifteen percent increase in low-wage voter turnout from 2020 would win the November elections. Instead of scapegoating the Green Party and spending money to block Third Party ballot access, the Democrats should try harder to tap into the 80 to 90 million non-voters who stay home, many of whom don’t see anything benefiting them coming from bloviating, hypocritical politicians.
If readers want more ideas for ways to get more votes, such as midnight shift campaigning, and cracking down on corporate crooks, they can obtain my usable new book “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People” and go to winningamerica.net.
Are you wondering why Tim Walz didn’t do better against J.D. Vance in the VP debate? Vance managed to normalize criminal felon Trump with his serial lies and law violations, corruption, abuse of women, awful presidential record (recall his lethal mocking of the early Covid-19 pandemic), because Walz was muzzled by the Harris campaign operatives. He was told what not to speak about and to hew to the narrow Party line. That kind of advice may sink the genocidal Democratic Party with its insular cowardliness in November.
Will these observations get the attention of the tiny number of ruling Democratic Party operatives who make most of the major decisions for their rank and file? Probably not. But similar advice from loyal party columnists like Dana Milbank, Michelle Goldberg, Eugene Robinson, Charles Blow, E.J. Dionne, Paul Krugman, among others, may breach the upper deck’s aloofness.
"This report should add urgency in Congress as the Trump tax scam expires next year and we negotiate future tax legislation," said Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse.
As a Capitol Hill battle over the "GOP tax scam" looms, U.S. Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse on Wednesday pointed to a new nonpartisan government analysis about soaring wealth inequality as proof of the need for serious reforms.
Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sought the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, which details trends in the distribution of family wealth—including projected Social Security retirement and disability benefits—in the United States from 1989 to 2022.
"Adjusted for inflation, the wealth held by families in the United States almost quadrupled between 1989 and 2022, rising from $52 trillion (in 2022 dollars) to $199 trillion, at an average rate of about 4% per year," the CBO found. "Over that 33-year period, family wealth was unevenly distributed, and that inequality increased."
"In 2022, families in the top 10% of the distribution held 60% of all wealth, up from 56% in 1989, and families in the top 1% of the distribution held 27%, up from 23% in 1989," the office said. "The share of wealth held by the rest of the families in the top half of the distribution shrank from 37% to 33% over the same period. Families in the bottom half of the distribution held 6% of all wealth in both 1989 and 2022."
"By making the wealthy pay their fair share, we can protect Social Security forever and unrig our tax code."
The report comes as Congress prepares for a tax debate due to next year's expiration of policies signed into law in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump, the Republican facing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in this November's election.
Throughout the current election cycle, Trump and congressional Republicans have campaigned on extending policies from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and also benefited wealthy individuals.
"This report should add urgency in Congress as the Trump tax scam expires next year and we negotiate future tax legislation," Whitehouse said of the CBO analysis. "Do we want to reward billionaires, who have already captured so much of the nation's wealth, or do we want to de-corrupt the tax code, ensure the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, and reduce the deficit, all while making necessary investments to better the lives of all Americans?"
Whitehouse noted that the report also comes amid concerns about the future of Social Security. Citing the CBO analysis, his office detailed:
"Social Security is a bedrock of our retirement system and ensures millions of seniors can retire with dignity," Whitehouse said. "Seniors earned their benefits throughout their working lives, but the program is now facing a looming cash flow problem. By making the wealthy pay their fair share, we can protect Social Security forever and unrig our tax code—exactly what my Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act would do."
Whitehouse's bill is spearheaded in the lower chamber by U.S. House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), who also recently requested a CBO report. That one focuses on the impact of raising the full retirement age for Social Security from 67 to 69, as various Republican groups have proposed.
The CBO's Social Security analysis, released last week, found that for workers now in their 30s and 40s, the average annual benefit cut would be around $3,500 a year—and the GOP's proposed changes wouldn't even extend the program's solvency.
"This independent, nonpartisan report shows just how devastating Republican plans to rip away hard-earned Social Security benefits would be for American workers," Boyle said last week. "Instead of saving Social Security by making the ultrarich pay their fair share, the GOP is hell-bent on gutting benefits for the middle class."