The Next Big Fight looms as
Trump and Congress aim to gut these vital programs
To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti74bDmqvZs
Fresh off passing
massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, Trump and congressional
Republicans want to use the deficit they’ve created to justify huge cuts to
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
As House Speaker Paul
Ryan says “We’re going to have to get… at entitlement reform, which is how you
tackle the debt and the deficit.”
Don’t let them get
away with it.
Social Security and
Medicare are critical safety-nets for working and middle-class families.
Before they existed, Americans faced grim prospects. In 1935, the year Social Security was enacted, roughly half of America’s seniors lived in poverty.
By the 1960s poverty
among seniors had dropped significantly, but medical costs were still a major
financial burden and only half of Americans aged 65 and over had health
insurance.
Medicare fixed that,
guaranteeing health care for older Americans.
Today less than 10
percent of seniors live in poverty and almost all have access to health care.
According to an analysis of census data, Social Security payments keep an
estimated 22 million Americans from slipping into poverty.
Medicaid is also a
vital lifeline for America’s elderly and the poor. Yet the Trump administration
has already started whittling it away by encouraging states to impose work
requirements on Medicaid recipients.
Republicans like to
call these programs “entitlements,” as if they’re some kind of giveaway.
But Americans pay into Social Security and Medicare throughout their entire
working lives. It’s Americans’ own money they’re getting back
through these programs.
These vital safety
nets should be strengthened, not weakened. How?
1. Lift
the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax.
Currently, top earners
only pay Social Security taxes on the first $120,000 of their yearly income. So
the rich end up, in effect, paying a lower Social Security tax rate than
everyone else.
Lifting the ceiling on
what wealthy Americans contribute would help pay for the Baby Boomers
retirements and leave Social Security in good shape for Millennials.
2. Allow
Medicare to negotiate with drug companies for lower prescription drug prices.
As the nation’s
largest insurer, Medicare has tremendous bargaining power. Why should Americans
pay far more for drugs than people in any other country?
3. Finally,
reduce overall health costs and create a stronger workforce by making Medicare
available to all.
There’s no excuse for
the richest nation in the world to have 28 million Americans still
uninsured.
We need to not just secure, but revitalize Social Security and these other programs for our children, and for our children’s children.
Millennials just
overtook Baby Boomers as our nation’s largest demographic.
For them — for all of
us — we need to say loud and clear to all of our members of congress:
Hands off Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Expand and improve these
programs: don’t cut them.
Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration,
for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet
secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including
the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and "Beyond
Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also
a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause,
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the
award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." His latest documentary,
"Saving Capitalism," is streaming now on Netflix.