“The truth is — as our nation ages and retirement income continues to decline for millions of Americans – Congress should be talking about the adequacy of Social Security’s benefits not cutting them.  Congress should examine the inequities that have created a poverty rate for senior women and widows that is 50% higher than other retirees 65 and older.  We can break this Social Security glass ceiling…in fact, we must do so to preserve the economic security of generations of American women and their families.” Max Richtman, NCPSSM President/CEO

“Our proposals are designed to modernize the Social Security system and recognize particularly the changes that have occurred in women’s lives and in family life, so that women will be rewarded more fairly for the full value of the  work they do, both in the labor market and in raising the next generation.  We can strengthen the Social Security system to address the gender gap in retirement that reveals many more older women in poverty than older men, while still addressing the financial needs of the program.”  Dr. Heidi Hartmann, Institute for Women’s Policy Research President

“If implemented, the recommendations we make in ‘Breaking the Social Security Glass Ceiling’ will go a long way toward creating a retirement and disability insurance program that recognizes the new reality of working women and men and values women’s role in society as both breadwinners and primary caregivers. Crediting women’s years out of the paid labor force is a long overdue feature that NOW strongly supports and urges lawmakers to support as well.” Terry O’Neill, NOW Foundation President

Here are just some of the recommendations in this groundbreaking report:

• Improving Survivor Benefits.  Women living alone often are forced into poverty because of benefit reductions stemming from the death of a spouse. Providing a widow or widower with 75 percent of the couple’s combined benefit treats one-earner and two-earner couples more fairly and reduces the likelihood of leaving the survivor in poverty.

• Providing Social Security Credits for Caregivers. We recommend imputed earnings for up to five family service years be granted to a worker who leaves or reduces his/her participation in the work force to provide care to children under the age of six or to elderly family members.

• Equal Benefits for Same-Sex Married Couples and Partners. Gay and lesbian same-sex couples, whether married or not, are denied a host of benefits under state and federal law that are routinely provided to heterosexual married couples. Social Security benefits should not be denied to qualified retirees because of their sexual orientation.

• Restoring Student Benefits. Social Security pays benefits to children until age 18, or 19 if they are still attending high school, if a working parent has died, become disabled or retired.  In the past, those benefits continued until age 22 if the child was a full-time student in college or a vocational school.  Congress ended post-secondary students’ benefits in 1981 which has disproportionately hurt children of parents in blue-collar jobs, African Americans, and lower income students.

“Social Security is a vital lifeline for all Americans, especially women and people of color. When you consider that Social Security provides 90% of seniors’ income for 58% of unmarried women of color, 53% of Hispanics and 47% of African Americans it’s hard to understand why benefit cuts are always the first answer for fiscal hawks hoping to use Social Security for deficit reduction.  Building on what works, ‘Breaking the Social Security Glass Ceiling’ offers a modernization plan for Social Security that would strengthen benefits for women and their families while improving the equity and adequacy for generations of Americans.” Dr. Carroll Estes, NPCSSM Foundation Board Chair

While some suggest we can’t afford to provide even current level benefits to America’s retirees, disabled and their families, we disagree.  In fact, we believe our nation can’t afford not to provide fair and adequate benefits for future generations of working Americans.  A number of funding options are included in this research, including:

• Eliminate the Cap on Social Security Payroll Contributions.
• Slowly Increase the Contribution Rate by 1/40^th of One Percent over 20 years.
• Treat all Salary Reduction Plans like 401K’s.

Together, these proposals provide revenue increases equal to 3.99% of taxable payroll.  They would close the actuarial deficit (2.67% of payroll) while also funding the modest program improvements recommended.

Here’s the link to the full report, “Breaking the Social Security Glass Ceiling”.

http://www.ncpssm.org/entitledtoknow/?p=2340

An Executive Report detailing the results of Mr. Ambrose’s Capitol Hill visit will be issued in early June.

Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (MD-6 District) and Executive Director Louis Ambrose

On March 23, 2012, Council of Seniors Executive Director Louis Ambrose hosted   a Seniors Town Hall Luncheon featuring Congressman Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland’s 6th Congressional District.

Congressman Bartlett addressed Federal Spending, Debt Reduction and the potential economic  impact of the “Patient’s Protection and Affordable Care Act” on Senior Citizens.  A short question  and answer session followed the presentation and Congressman Bartlett took time to listen to the thoughts and concerns of Senior Citizens.

 The Council of Seniors wishes to express our sincere gratitute to Congressman Bartlett and his District Chief of Staff, Sallie Taylor.

Associated Press

Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with  disabilities lose their jobs and can’t find new ones in an economy that has shed  nearly 7 million jobs.

The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants –  many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved — and worsening the  financial problems of a program that’s been running in the red for years.

New congressional estimates say the trust fund that supports Social Security  disability will run out of money by 2017, leaving the program unable to pay full  benefits, unless Congress acts. About two decades later, Social Security’s much  larger retirement fund is projected to run dry as well.

Much of the focus in Washington has been on fixing Social Security’s  retirement system. Proposals range from raising the retirement age to  means-testing benefits for wealthy retirees. But the disability system is in  much worse shape and its problems defy easy solutions.

The trustees who oversee Social Security are urging Congress to shore up the  disability system by reallocating money from the retirement program, just as  lawmakers did in 1994. That, however, would provide only short-term relief at  the expense of weakening the retirement program.

Claims for disability benefits typically increase in a bad economy because  many disabled people get laid off and can’t find a new job. This year, about 3.3  million people are expected to apply for federal disability benefits. That’s  700,000 more than in 2008 and 1 million more than a decade ago.

“It’s primarily economic desperation,” Social Security Commissioner Michael  Astrue said in an interview. “People on the margins who get bad news in terms of  a layoff and have no other place to go and they take a shot at disability,”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/21/social-security-disability-insurance-on-brink-insolvency/print#ixzz1pZwZYuQN

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/21/social-security-disability-insurance-on-brink-insolvency/

Posted 1:10PM 01/05/12

Millions of Social Security recipients get minimum-wage benefits that are barely enough to make ends meet. At the other end of the spectrum, though, many retirees who could get by just fine without any Social Security payments at all receive much larger monthly benefits from the government.

With Social Security in crisis, does it make sense to give those big payouts to the people who paid the most in taxes along the way — or should they be forced to sacrifice those benefits for those who are less fortunate?

Before you decide whether the government should cut off rich retirees from part or all of their Social Security benefits, let’s first look at exactly how high-income earners get treated under Social Security currently.

What the Wealthy Get from Social Security Under current law, Social Security benefits get calculated based on your average income throughout your career. The more you make, the higher your benefits are, up to the yearly maximum on which the government collects Social Security taxes — $110,100 for 2012. But what many don’t realize is that in figuring your monthly check, not all earnings are created equal.

• The first $700 to $800 in average monthly earnings counts the most, turning into $0.90 of benefits per $1 of income.
• Above that level, the increases in benefits get a lot slower — $0.32 per $1 up to about $4,600 in 2012, and $0.15 per $1 above that.

So even though top wage-earners get more benefits, they don’t get as much more in benefits as their higher earnings would suggest. Furthermore, many high-income retirees pay taxes on as much as 85% of their Social Security benefits. For top-bracket retirees, that has the same impact as slashing almost 30% off their monthly checks.

Two Ways to Look at the Issue
Obviously, arguments for and against giving Social Security to the rich create strong emotions. On one hand, high-income earners pay a lot of money in Social Security taxes, and with the tapered benefit structure, many feel that they already don’t get their fair share of what they put into the Social Security system. If Social Security calculated benefits without the earnings breakpoints described above, then high-income earners would get much more in their monthly retirement checks.

On the other side of the argument, many believe that the purpose of Social Security isn’t to give people payback for the payroll taxes they’ve had withheld from their paychecks throughout their lifetimes, but rather to provide an economic safety net for all workers. With insurance for disabilities and other hardships as well as retirement benefits, Social Security acts as a supplement for those who need it. Proponents of measures like means-testing argue that if you don’t actually need the money, you shouldn’t get benefits.

Does Rolling Back Benefits for the Rich Really Help?

The bigger question, though, is whether cutting benefits for the rich would actually do any good.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/01/05/should-the-rich-lose-their-social-security-benefits/
Motley Fool contributor Dan Caplinger doesn’t count on Social Security for anything.

December 20, 2010 12:34 PM

When the president signed the tax bill Friday, a year’s worth of efforts aimed at modifying Social Security came to an end—at least for now. Obama’s signature was an early Christmas present to those who propose fixing the system in ways many Social Security experts say could hurt recipients in the future. The Obama-Republican compromise grants a payroll tax holiday that reduces the contributions paid by workers by two percentage points for 2011 and, ironically, aggravates a shortfall that budget hawks on the president’s now-defunct deficit commission have screamed about all year.

When the commission disbanded on December 3, eleven of its eighteen members had voted to cut Social Security benefits and make technical changes in the benefit formula that would reduce the amount of money workers would eventually receive, including cost-of-living increases for all beneficiaries beginning in 2012. “The public needs to recognize that there is a serious effort underfoot to dismantle Social Security,” says Eric Kingson, co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition of 250 organizations—including labor unions, civil rights groups, and women’s groups—that takes a different view of what needs to be done to Social Security.

Kingson’s coalition has struggled all year to inject that view into the MSM. When they were quoted, journalists often described them as “defenders” of the country’s most successful social program, implying that, as defenders, they are seeking to hold onto something that’s outdated and unworkable. In the last couple of weeks, the press has finally noticed what they have to say. Kingson’s co-chair Nancy Altman appeared on  NPR’s All Things Considered, arguing that once a tax cut is in place, it’s hard to repeal it. “All of a sudden Social Security’s shortfall, which is very manageable at this point, would actually double,” she said. It’s hard to say whether the press was finally paying attention to concerns and seeing what veteran Washington journalist Tom Bethell has called “an opening wedge in a new effort to change the face of Social Security,” or whether it was atoning for a year’s worth of lopsided reporting.

It’s reasonable for people to debate the merits of ways to slice the deficit or to fix Social Security’s shortfall, but it is not reasonable for the press to serve up one-sided, shallow reporting, which has been the norm from too many news outlets. As Social Security expert Alicia Munnell told Campaign Desk in late October: “We haven’t really had a debate.” And yet, a few weeks later, a headline in The Washington Post announced “Consensus is forming on what steps to take in cutting the deficit.” A consensus of elites, maybe, but not necessarily of the general public, who indicated in poll after poll they do not want to cut Social Security to reduce the deficit or achieve the long-term fiscal balance in the Social Security trust funds.

But stories asking what the public thinks or probing how ordinary citizens will be helped or hurt by proposed changes have been absent this year. CNN aired segments about why people take early retirement benefits, but stories like that were rare. That omission prompted me to travel to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and report in our series, “Social Security in the Heartland,” how people would fare in a different kind of system. In my admittedly unscientific sample, no one was in favor of the changes advocated by political elites and the press. One businessman who called himself a conservative and favors privatization did not like raising the retirement age because he said it would hurt some people financially. “It’s a violation of the original contract. I should get what the system was set up to give me,” he explained.

From the beginning of the deficit commission’s work early last year, the press passed along comments, even offensive ones, from co-chair Alan Simpson, famous for saying “this country is gonna go to the bow-wows unless we deal with entitlements, Social Security and Medicare,” and “we’re trying to take care of the lesser people in society,” and likening Social Security to “a milk cow with 310 million tits.” The president did not fire Simpson, and so his comments set the premise for the public discourse that followed.

Simpson and other advocates for reform talked a lot about the need to save Social Security for their grandchildren. “Erskine [Erskine Bowles, the commission’s co-chair] and I are in this one for our grandchildren,” Simpson said. “Somebody said they’re stalking-horses for taxes. I’m not a stalking horse for taxes. I’m a stalking horse for my grandchildren.” If the retirement income of future generations were the issue, we should have gotten critical analysis from the media about the looming crisis in retirement income. How do skimpy personal savings and the decline of good employer-sponsored pension plans mesh with cuts to Social Security? Never mind the grandchildren. About half of American households are at risk for being unable to maintain their pre-retirement income. News outlets, however, were more interested in the deficit crisis as defined by a narrow group of economic experts.

It wasn’t until much later—closer to the mid-term election, when candidates revealed their positions on Social Security—did stories began showing up on local news broadcasts. It’s fair to ask if the electorate understood enough about what was at stake to evaluate what the pols were saying on TV. Stories also appeared in local newspapers like The Bristol Press in Connecticut and The News-Gazette, which serves central Illinois. Those stories reported on grassroots pushback to the deficit commission proposals from a group called the Alliance for Retired Americans, and were notable because they offered new voices to the discussion.

As they did with health care, the media played follow the leader, waiting for newsmakers to make news. Alan Simpson and his deficit commission were making the news that was informing elite opinion. Other proposals came late—perhaps too late for the media. In late November, shortly before the deficit commission’s report was due, a group called the Citizens’ Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America’s Economic Future—composed of well-known experts and civic leaders—released its own set of proposals challenging those of the deficit commission. The group’s press release called the commission’s proposals “fundamentally misguided.” The group got some coverage, but conventional wisdom about changes for Social Security had already emerged.

This is not the first time the press has flubbed in covering Social Security. In the mid-1990s, the National Academy of Social Insurance commissioned a study by two well-known academics who examined coverage by major media outlets between 1977 and 1994. Lawrence Jacobs of the University of Minnesota and Robert Y. Shapiro of Columbia concluded that the media have delivered “a consistent message” to the public:  “Social Security is very difficult to sustain without constant doctoring.” That is not a correct assessment of the program’s status, they said. Their study also found that the media turn to sources who might be expected to be critical of Social Security rather than people who support the program, who themselves could provide balance.

Sound familiar? Yale professor emeritus Theodore Marmor once told me:  “Social insurance programs in the U.S. are widely popular in a superficial way. You have popularity without understanding.” The media bear much responsibility for this.

http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/social_security_under_attack.php?page=all