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House passes bill to prioritize US payments to bondholders and Social Security recipients
The GOP-controlled House voted Thursday to put U.S. bondholders and people on Social Security at the front of the line to be paid if the government hits its borrowing limit.The move comes as Republicans are grappling with the hot-potato issue…
Fix the Debt Flashmob Participants Oppose Social Security Cuts
Fix the Debt did a dance flash mob in Farragut Square in downtown Washington, D.C., around noon on Friday. Two participants expressed concern about the debt, but did not want to cut Social Security. Read more…
‘Chained CPI Not a Tweak: It’s a Cut to Social Security,’ Alliance Members Tell Congress
After Medicare deductions, Marty Alvarado has about $950 left in her monthly Social Security check. The Alliance for Retired Americans members from Dallas told a Capitol Hill Hands Off Social Security summit of Alliance members, lawmakers, senior activists and Social Security advocates: As you might imagine…
The dead got $108M in Social Security benefits in 2012, feds estimate
Government records are so messed up that it’s likely dead people are collecting Social Security benefits, the Government Accountability Office found in a study. GAO inspectors found about 1,300 records of people in the government database who had received benefits…
Credit raters wary of GOP debt limit bill
The nation’s credit rating agencies are wary of a House Republican plan to prioritize payments to U.S. bondholders and Social Security recipients if the debt ceiling is reached.GOP leaders have cast their Full Faith and Credit Act, which is set…
Entitlement programs thrive amid gridlock, shifting money from younger generations to older
With Congress increasingly unable to resolve budget disputes, federal programs on automatic pilot are consuming ever larger amounts of government resources. The trend helps older Americans, who receive the bulk of Social Security and Medicare benefits, at the expense of…
The Chained CPI in people terms
At last comes a story in a major news outlet that explains in people terms what exactly the Chained CPI will or won’t do for the family budget. The New York Times deserves a CJR laurel for its Saturday “Your Money” piece by Tara Siegel Bernard…
$7.9 Billion in Improper Social Security Payments in FY 2012
The Social Security Administration (SSA) needs to focus on “program integrity,” a polite term for reducing fraud and payment errors, the agency’s inspector general told Congress last week. Reducing improper payments is one of the challenges facing the next SSA commissioner,…
Good Question: Should We Force People To Save For Retirement?
In a time where individual choice rules the way Americans save for retirement, Americans are making a lot of bad choices. We have to opt into a 401(k), pick the percentage of our income we contribute, and pick the mutual funds…
How the Chained CPI Affects Social Security Payments
In his 2014 budget, President Obama proposes changing the measure of inflation used to calculate annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustments from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI) to the chained CPI beginning in 2015. This change would modestly…