Let this be a warning to the Republican Party and any lawmaker who dare attack this life-saving program.
Only his dad’s Social Security benefits, along with vegetables
from the family’s small farm in southwestern Virginia, kept the household
afloat during the lean years that followed.
That battle for survival made Carlton a lifelong champion of
Social Security and a tireless opponent of the Republicans in Congress
who keep trying to kill this
lifeline for the middle class.
“It’s not a gift. It’s money that we’re due,” explained Carlton, vice president of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) Chapter 8-UR2 and president of the Virginia Alliance for Retired Americans.
“We put money into it. We deserve it back,” continued Carlton, 70,
a retired tire manufacturing worker and longtime member of the United
Steelworkers (USW) who’s attended rallies and lobbied Congress on behalf of
Social Security for 30 years.
Republicans long hoped to privatize Social Security, preferring
to gamble Americans’ futures on the
stock market rather than force the wealthy to pay their fair share of the
taxes needed to sustain the program. Fortunately, congressional
Democrats, union members and
other Americans torpedoed these schemes.
But now there’s a new threat. To secure enough votes to become
speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy toadied to extremist Republicans whose
demands for radical budget cuts once
again put Social Security and Medicare at risk.
Pro-corporate Republicans openly plot to cut Social Security benefits and
raise the retirement age, moves that would force millions of
Americans to work longer and
delay their retirements. Some Republicans even want to gut the current funding
formula, slashing payments to
Americans with other income, regardless of how much they pay into the program.
The National Committee to Preserve
Social Security & Medicare warns that this kind of con,
called means-testing, would end Social Security as Americans know it and take
benefits even from those with “very modest incomes.”
“If you lose something, you don’t ever get it back,” observed
Carlton, who fears that Republican toying with Social Security will break
seniors already living on the margins amid skyrocketing medical costs and
mounting bills stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic.
In addition to providing a buffer against unexpected health
crises, Social Security is the only resource many retirees have when they
outlive the nest eggs they accumulated during their working years.
“My grandmother is 102 years old. She retired at the age of 65
the year I was born, so I’ve never known her except in a retired state. She
still lives on her own,” said Mike Budd, 37, a Marine Corps veteran and member
of USW Local 12775, who credits Social Security with enabling his grandma, a
former bank teller, to maintain her independence and high quality of life for
decades.
“In fact, that’s the reason I’m very passionate about keeping
this program around,” said Budd, who works as a substation electrician at
Northern Indiana Public Service Co. (NIPSCO).
Democratic President Joe Biden and the Democratic-controlled
Senate will continue to protect Social
Security—and Medicare—from the Republicans who narrowly
regained control of the House in November. Still, the Republicans vow to stage
a showdown over America’s debt and allow the nation to careen toward default in
a reckless gambit to commandeer the spending cuts they want.
Ironically, many of the same Republicans bent on eviscerating
Social Security have huge personal fortunes on
top of congressional pensions and
enjoy a level of financial security out of reach of most Americans.
“It’s certainly easy to tell people to make do with less when
they have more,” noted Budd, chair of Local 12775’s Veterans of Steel
Committee, who deployed to Iraq three times from 2004 to 2009 as an aircraft
mechanic with Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 14 (MALS-14).
“There were no millionaires deployed with me,” noted Budd, only
“a lot of working-class people” who loved their country and believed in the
American dream that Republicans now threaten.
Some Republicans attempt to soft-pedal their shenanigans by
saying they won’t cut benefits for current recipients, only future retirees who
would have “time to adjust” to the
changes, likely by working longer.
That angers Budd, who’s been paying Social Security taxes since
he was a 16-year-old with a summer job at an equipment rental company and
expects the long-promised return on his ongoing investment.
He’s already laying the financial groundwork for his golden
years, and those plans hinge on a robust Social Security program that will not
only let him retire at a decent age but support him as well as it has his
grandma should he also live to 102.
Instead of cutting essential programs, TJ Stephens said, he’d
like to see Republicans agree to fairly tax uber-rich Americans who use dodgy loopholes
to pay little or nothing now. And he’d like to see more wealthy tax cheats and
deadbeats run to ground.
Stephens, a member of USW Local 9231 and an electrician at the
Cleveland-Cliffs complex in New Carlisle, Ind., regards Social Security as
America’s contract with working people—one as inviolable as the one he signed
when he joined the Air Force at 19 and went off to serve as a satellite
communications technician at Langley Air Force Base.
“Inhumane is the best word I can think of,” Stephens, 37, said
of Republican plans to move the goalposts on those already paying into Social
Security and force younger Americans to “work ourselves into the grave.”
Ultimately, Carlson predicted, public anger will stop the
Republicans in their tracks. He’s planning to ratchet up his activism and get
more retirees to join him.
“It makes a difference,” he said of Social Security. “It's not
something we’re going to give up without an extraordinary fight.”
TOM CONWAY is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).