By Herb Weiss in Rhode Island’s Future
One of the first political skirmishes to protect the nation’s
Social Security program, 589 days before next year’s Presidential election,
took place on March 24th in the U.S. Senate during the budget debate. Leading
the charge, Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called up Senator Wyden
(D-OR)’s budget amendment, requesting a Senate point of order against
legislation to cut benefits, raise the retirement age, or privatize Social
Security.
“Social Security benefits are a solemn promise that our seniors
have earned over a lifetime of work,” said Whitehouse, a founding member of the
Senate’s Defend Social Security Caucus. “Sadly, Republicans have made it their
mission for decades to dismantle that promise, attempting to turn it over to
Wall Street and cut benefits through misguided ideas like the so-called
‘chained-CPI.'”
Although his attempts to protect Social Security in the Senate
budget have thus far failed, Richard Davidson, Whitehouse’s Rhode Island press
secretary, tells this columnist that the senator plans to continue his efforts
to keep Social Security off the GOP budget chopping block and from being
privatized by supporting legislation like the Keeping Our Social Security
Promises Act, legislation that would raise the income cap on the payroll tax to
ensure the program’s solvency.
The Social Security trust funds are projected to be fully
solvent though 2033; there’s no immediate funding crisis, said Davidson. But,
in the longer run, Whitehouse believes the program must be bolstered by
applying the payroll tax, which currently only applies to income up to
$118,500, to higher levels of income, he says.
Protecting SSDI
One month before the Senate budget debate, the GOP-controlled
Senate Budget Committee put a spotlight at a hearing on the impending
insolvency of the nation’s Social Security Disability Trust Fund (SSDI).
The
federal government has predicted that SSDI fund reserves will run low by the
end of 2016, at which point millions of disabled beneficiaries could see up to
a 20 percent cut in benefits.
At the Senate hearing, entitled “The coming crisis: Social
Security Disability Trust Fund Insolvency,” Democrats called for an easy quick
fix to the problem, specifically the shifting of a small percentage of the
Social Security payroll tax from the retirement trust fund to the disability
trust fund.
No big deal, they say, because these transfers have occurred 11
times in the past with bipartisan support without political bickering. But,
from this hearing it seemed clear that GOP senators see things differently and
are threatening to block the infusion of funds to SSDI.
Approximately 10.2 million Americans received SSDI benefits in
2013, including roughly 42,000 Rhode Islanders. In order to qualify,
beneficiaries are required to have worked in a job covered by Social Security,
and must have been unable to work for a year or more due to a disability.
The Plum Line blog, penned by Greg Sargent for the Washington
Post, took a closer look a look at this SSDI entitlement debate in
February.
In his opinion blog, Sargent says that GOP lawmakers claim that
“restricting a fund transfer is all about forcing a necessary discussion on how
to improve Social Security’s long term finances, rather than merely ‘kicking
the can down the road.'”
On the other hand, the Washington Post blogger
believes Democrats see the Republicans as “exaggerating the sense of crisis to
realize one of two political goals. Either they want to force immediate, and
unnecessary, cuts – or they want to hold the disability fund hostage, in order
to have another run at cuts to the broader program [Social Security].”
Gathering the Troops
At a March 23rd panel discussion hosted by the Providence-based
Headquarters of Community Action Partnership, Whitehouse and Congressman Jim
Langevin with Rhode Island Senator Donna Nesselbush, a disability attorney,
along with SSDI recipients, disability groups, and the Social Security
Administration, came to discuss the solvency of SSDI and its impact on the
Ocean State.
The lawmakers called for shifting Social Security payroll taxes to
financially shore up the ailing SSDI program. Both lawmakers also supported a
long-term solution, fully funding the federal retirement and disability
programs by lifting the cap on the amount of income that is subject to the
payroll taxes that fund the program.
“Right now, a millionaire hedge-fund manager pays the same
amount of taxes into the Social Security system as someone who makes $118,500,”
said Whitehouse. He called for “wealthiest Americans to pay a fair share into
the program, so that it’s not funded disproportionately on the backs of
middle-class workers.”
Congressman Langevin stressed “SSDI is not only a critical
safety-net for disabled workers, their children and spouses, it is also a
promise we make to everyone who pays into the Social Security trust fund that
they won’t be impoverished if they are left with a debilitating condition or
disability.”
Although Whitehouse’s efforts to protect the nation’s Social
Security and disability programs were derailed in the Senate budget debate
because of a GOP procedural call, it’s only the first of many political
skirmishes to come.
The upcoming 2016 presidential elections will firmly put
this entitlement issue on the nation’s radar screen, hopefully to address once
and for all.
But, here’s my message to Whitehouse: Even if you lose a
skirmish, or battle, you can always win the war. Keep pushing.
Herb Weiss, LRI ’12, is a
Pawtucket writer covering aging, health care and medical issues and is
co-editor of The Selected E-Mail Correspondences of Richard Walton. He can be
contacted at hweissri@aol.com.
