Many posts have discussed Social Security and Medicare.
A group of eight centrist senators is attempting to compel Congress to revamp Social Security, in what many in Washington see as the first real effort at overhauling the government’s biggest program in more than a decade.
The push, led by retiring Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), sets the stage for a major confrontation later this year with potential consequences for the 59 million seniors who currently receive benefits.
Their bill, the PROMISE Act, does not directly cut Social Security benefits or raise taxes to avert the program’s approaching budget shortfall. Rather, it would task a bipartisan board with writing a plan to keep the pension system funded for another 50 years, likely through trillions of dollars in tax hikes and benefit cuts. The legislation would also establish parliamentary rules aimed at pushing Congress to act on the board’s proposal.
...
AARP — the roughly 40-million-members-strong seniors’ organization — has begun urging lawmakers to reject the bill, highlighting polling that suggests 85% of Americans support maintaining or increasing benefits. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has begun calling for Senate Democrats to reject benefit cuts and instead stand behind financing Social Security by repealing the existing limit on payroll taxes for those earning more than $184,500 per year, arguing “the Democratic Party is ever to regain the faith of ordinary Americans it must stand firm on the issue of Social Security.”
Even conservatives who have long called for Social Security reform are mobilizing against it. Grover Norquist, the antitax crusader who leads the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, said in an interview that he has begun lobbying congressional Republican leadership to oppose the bill. Norquist called the legislation a “very real effort by the left” to convince Republicans to support tax hikes.
One Senate Democratic aide, granted anonymity to candidly assess legislative dynamics, said, “I will eat my shoe” if the bill passes this year.
Durbin acknowledged those odds: “Miracles do occur,” he said.
In another potential sign of the legislation’s radioactivity, half of its original sponsors — Cassidy, Durbin, Tillis and Republican John Cornyn of Texas — are leaving the Senate at the end of this year. (Cassidy and Cornyn lost their primaries against Trump-backed challengers.)