NEW: Biden escalates fight over Social Security and Medicare, frustrating Republicans
GOP leaders want Biden to stop saying they’re trying to cut benefits
But Biden is persisting; White House says he won’t stop calling out plans from Scott, Johnson, RSC https://t.co/7TjDRADzcO
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 13, 2023
… Democrats seized on the issue in the 2022 midterms with some success, and now it moves to an even bigger stage.
“It’s a smart play for the near term in the debt limit fight, and it’s even a smarter play when we head to the 2024 re-elect,” said Scott Mulhauser, a former top Biden aide who has worked on campaigns and in government. “It moves voters, it moves seniors, it moves allegiances and alliances, and it resonates.”…
Biden’s remarks indicate that Democrats have ruled out compromises that they pursued during President Barack Obama’s first term to trim long-term benefits as a way to reduce the national debt. Those negotiations drew objections from the left and never materialized into an agreement. Since then, Democrats have turned away from potential cuts and rallied around raising revenues to expand retirement benefits.
It represents a growing divide with Republicans, who continue to rule out new taxes to finance the benefits and instead believe spending must be curtailed in the long run.
Biden has endorsed raising the payroll tax cap on upper earners to expand Social Security payments. He sought to expand Medicare benefits for dental, vision and hearing services, but that effort was blocked by a few centrists, mainly Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va…
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in an email that protecting those programs “is core to President Biden’s top priority” and made it clear he won’t stop calling out plans to scale them back.
“A wide range of Republican lawmakers have endorsed severe cuts to Medicare and Social security benefits in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility,’” Bates said. “Complaining that the President is accurately shining a light on plans they don’t want their constituents to know about is very much not the defense they think.”…
As Republicans try to divert our attention away from their efforts to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, know that Democrats will remain focused and united to protect these vital lifelines for you. #MondayMotivation
— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) February 13, 2023
"Of course we don't want to get rid of Social Security — we just want it on the chopping block every single year, so if we ever get total power again we can show you just how much we don't want to get rid of it!" https://t.co/agyOZLntpG
— Roy Edroso (@edroso) February 12, 2023
LOL. GOPs are flailing so hard about this. Steve Scalise says Biden is lying that GOPs want to cut Social Security. They just want to make a work requirement if you get a check! https://t.co/9CYkAd61li pic.twitter.com/p0ywN1JWqq
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 13, 2023
they're innovating in the social security space
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 13, 2023
Maybe if you don’t want to be accused of wiping out social security, you should stop doubling down on your plan to wipe out social security? https://t.co/WDYEGRjDZs
— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) February 9, 2023
lmao i completely forget that under a year ago Fox News grilled Rick Scott about his plan to sunset Social Security — a plan they now claim Scott never had https://t.co/PXRmA56AIA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 12, 2023
I have NEVER seen the Republican political and media apparatus this rattled and defensive https://t.co/jAxYcs3ZKD
— the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) ?? (@merovingians) February 11, 2023
Like, not after Dobbs, not during Trump's worst scandals, the SOTU gotcha moment is like nothing i've ever seen
— the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) ?? (@merovingians) February 11, 2023
Even the subtle GOP hacks are freaking out, Bidens message is working https://t.co/HcdiKJJ0DE
— chekovian jubilee (@CollieYimby) February 13, 2023
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think it was Rounds who was also calling for privatization/turning Social Security into individual investment accounts
Poptartacus
Stop supporting twitter. It’s just laziness.
endless embeds find another way
misterpuff
The GOP won’t let us sunset tax cuts but want to put Social Security to a vote every year.
They really think Uncle Joe and Dems are The Dims.
Baud
Social Security is woke.
Baud
Dems rule out compromise. Republicans rule out new taxes. Both sides!
Frank Wilhoit
Forget the notion of “cuts” and focus on privatization, which will sneak in under some deceptive description.
Anne Laurie
@Poptartacus: To update the classic response to a heckler: Do I come down to the basement troll farm and tell you how to do your job?
Baud
@Frank Wilhoit:
Why use one syllable when you can use five!
Poptartacus
@Anne Laurie: sure whatever just laziness
dmsilev
The GOP has been going after Social Security for a long long time. And whining about it every time someone calls them out.
dmsilev
Did anybody think to ask Scalise how “work requirements” work vis a vis a retirement plan? Is the idea to empty out the nursing homes and require all those layabouts to take jobs at Walmart?
espierce
@Poptartacus:
You’ve just slandered the hardest working woman on this site.
Fuck off, Troll.
zhena gogolia
@Poptartacus: She really doesn’t earn her salary, does she? //
Ryan
“Biden’s remarks indicate that Democrats have ruled out compromises that they pursued during President Barack Obama’s first term to trim long-term benefits as a way to reduce the national debt. Those negotiations drew objections from the left and never materialized into an agreement. ”
Let’s also not forget that John Boehner couldn’t bring a majority of his caucus to pro during those negotiations, because of a rule named after a child molester (Dennis Hastert).
Uncle Cosmo
Bazinga! The mortarforkers will “pivot” to that as a “fallback position” after the electorate laughs at their halfarsed attempt to sundown the social programs. What their Oligarch Overlords really want is to get their filthy paws on the trust funds and let the gummint worry about how to support people in need once those bastard bazillionaires have stolen nearly every cent.
Dan B
@dmsilev: And the disabled would have to work? An acquaintance was here yesterday. His partner has schizophrenia. He’s 74. How is he supposed to find a job?
Ryan
By the way, how about I pay my payroll taxes on a year to year basis?
caphilldcne
@Poptartacus: wow. You can fuck right off with that shitty attitude. Anne Laurie and the rest of the front pagers are anything but lazy.
Ryan
A work requirement, for retired folks? Have we hit peak high on your own supply?
frosty
@Poptartacus: You’ve got a lot of nerve calling Anne Laurie lazy. FOAD.
stinger
So tired of Manchin being called a centrist. He’s an outlier and an extremist.
Unrelated, a poptart is like a miniature pie. Done.
Roger Moore
@Frank Wilhoit:
I don’t see why we should forget about “cuts”. Privatization is an easier sell for the Republicans in a lot of ways. They can argue that the stock market on average gets better returns, so letting people invest their money themselves is better than putting it into Social Security. It’s BS, but it’s a harder BS to fight. In contrast, cuts are just obviously bad in a way everyone can easily see.
MomSense
The GOP is a fucking disgrace.
Dan B
@Uncle Cosmo: They may try a “voluntary” individual investment plan to further hobble Social Security’s funding. It would also make Wall Street very happy.
BruceFromOhio
I love everything about this.
Mallard Filmore
@Uncle Cosmo:
Instead of an underpaid bureaucrat moving bits in a computer from one account to another, they want $10 million dollar salaries, plus bonuses, plus perks, all to manage my money.
UncleEbeneezer
Funny how Biden is using the exact same messaging that I’ve been assured only shows how Dems don’t understand messaging!!1!
MomSense
@UncleEbeneezer: Dems can’t message is the new Dems in disarray.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
Privatisation came into vogue in the 1980s; the idea was that it would make public agencies more efficient. All it really did was turn them into business corporations, which are not necessarily more efficient, and certainly more interested in profits than in serving the public.
Brachiator
I don’t understand why the GOP thinks that they can make Social Security cuts a winning issue? But I am glad to see them trying. It gives the Democrats a stick to beat them over the head with.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Dems probably asked ChatGPT how to message.
japa21
There is a lot more truth to what Biden and the Dems are saying than there ever was in what the GOP said about Dems. GOP will grab onto one line said by a low level Dem (like dog catcher) and use it as a bludgeon. Such as Defund the Police, or CRT, etc. They have no receipts. Biden has plenty.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Wasn’t that precisely what Bush II, the forgotten disaster, tried to do with his political capital in ’05? He got his ass handed to him.
Ohio Mom
@dmsilev: Scalise might have been thinking about disabled people on SSI or SSDI. Not that that makes his comment any more coherent.
Some disabled people on SSI or SSDI do in fact work. To oversimply (because these programs are complicated), you are allowed to work part-time and still collect benefits, and you will still be poor.
It doesn’t take too much of a paycheck to no longer qualify for benefits which sounds fine but if your job doesn’t come with health coverage, well, Medicaid (and possibly Medicare) are part of the benefits you just lost. And being disabled, there is a good chance you have ongoing medical needs and can’t be without coverage.
Many others on either SSI or SSDI are not employed because they are too disabled to work (duh) or the workplace won’t accommodate them.
The more you know about these things (and I know a little as the mother of a disabled and sporadically employed young adult who receives Social Security benefits), the more uninformed, ignorant and mean-spirited you see Scalise is.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Anotherlurker
Sometimes my mind wanders to from the real to the ideal.
Today’s fantasy is, in addition to the lifting of the cap on income subject to Social Security contributions, I would like to see the tax on social security benefits shitcanned. Lets get rid of one of Regan’s most egregious attacks on the middle class in favor of the tax cuts for fucking rich.
I know, I want a Unicorn too!
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
But people CAN invest their money into IRAs, 401K plans and other retirement plans. It is not either/or. It’s both/and.
Social Security was not meant to provide all of a person’s retirement income, but to be a guarantee and a supplement.
And some of the recently passed legislation recognizes that some people live in different world.
In one world, people worry about having enough to live on when they retire.
In another world, people have so much money, they want to delay having to take the required minimum distribution of retirement income until after they reach age 72, for now, and age 75 in the future.
And they have so much retirement income that they want to be able to give up to $100,000 to charity and take a deduction.
Others have so much retirement income to go along with their other wealth, that they just want to leave it all to their children, since they can’t take it with them.
The only reason the GOP want to go after Social Security is naked greed. They want everything and will leave people with nothing.
kindness
It’s both funny and sad that Republicans keep insisting Biden & Democrats stop pointing out what Republicans repeatedly say they want which is to cut Social Security & Medicare.
Sure Lurkalot
@Roger Moore:
They also argued that 401K’s would be better than pensions. Better for whom? Employers and fund managers.
Everything they propose puts the onus on workers. Despite gobs of evidence that most of current inflation was a result of supply chain issues and rent seeking, it’s employment and wages that must be curbed.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I think this is more about how it plays with their oligarch masters than it is with how it will play with the average voter. If they can give the oligarchs a big enough win, that’s what really matters to them.
Scout211
It does seem counter-intuitive since their political advisors have probably polled likely voters and know that it is a losing issue with voters . But with big donors, it’s popular, so they try to walk the line between promising the monied class there will be cuts and telling the voters that the GOP will not cut Social Security and Medicare.
Same old song and dance. But the big difference is that Biden is using his bully pulpit like the pro that he is. And he is believable, because, well, he’s Joe Biden.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Privatization is an easier sell than cuts, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy sell.
cmorenc
@Ohio Mom:
My brother, who has a severe case of bipolar disorder, is a good example of this: he can function just barely well enough to supplement his $1,200/mo SSDI with two 6-hour shifts per week bagging groceries at a supermarket. But without SSDI, he’d quickly become one of the many mentally ill people who are living on the street, homeless and derelict. Without the two 6-hr gigs bagging groceries, he wouldn’t have enough $ on top of SSDI to eat without going hungry the last two weeks of every month. His mental illness is the reason he couldn’t hold down a full-time job without unraveling.
BruceFromOhio
@Baud: I read this to MrsFromOhio and we both lawled.
laura
Come for my earned benefits and pull back a bloody stump!
brendancalling
“MEIDCARE”?
Roger Moore
@Sure Lurkalot:
Personal retirement accounts have some real advantages over traditional pensions, the biggest of which is that they’re portable. Traditional pensions typically required people to work for the same employer for something like 20 years to get benefits, which just doesn’t describe many modern careers. Letting people put money into an account they can take with them when they change jobs is a real advantage.
Personal retirement accounts are also protected against various kinds of corporate malfeasance. Two classic causes of pensions failing are companies underfunding the pension because they made unrealistic assumptions about the pension fund’s future returns and corporate raiders looting the pension fund if it’s adequately funded. Personal retirement accounts are protected against both of those because the funds are given immediately and become the property of the employee and thus out of the reach of people trying to steal the whole fund.
ETA: That doesn’t mean retirements accounts are the perfect solution. We should have done more to prevent the kinds of corporate malfeasance I mentioned. It’s just that in the world we actually live in, where pension funds actually are underfunded or stripped for assets, not depending on the continued health of your former employer is probably a good strategy.
brendancalling
@Poptartacus: Have you considered fucking yourself?
Cameron
All you woke lefties with your Critical Age Theory – you just want to take your “Social Security” and RAM IT DOWN OUR THROATS!!!!!
Jeffro
THIS
“So…why, exactly, would y’all want something as fundamental as Social Security put to a vote every year, Rep/Sen/GOP presidential candidate?”
They know this will kill them with one of their last reliable blocs of voters and after that…the abyss.
gene108
And the entirety of Republicans in Congress.
scav
@brendancalling: Who else would want to engage in that activity with him? Beggers can’t.
Jeffro
@Baud:
(which in most cases would be an improvement!)
Alison Rose
@brendancalling: Is there any chance anyone else would?
An actual Pop-Tart is smarter than this troll.
Brachiator
A little bit more.
The proportion of people age 65 and older is going to increase. Higher taxes, and more younger immigrants, will be necessary to take care of everybody.
Also, people are living longer, but the increase is not yet as great as just the sheer number of people making it to age 65.
Mike in NC
Getting rid of Medicare and Social Security has been on Page 1 of the Republican playbook since about 1950. For them to change their tune now is unpossible!
About Rick Scott: has any other state besides Floriduh taken a really shitty governor and then sent him straight to the US Senate, where he could continue to do shitty things?
Baud
@Brachiator:
How many years will it be before everyone is over 65?
Kent
Personal retirement accounts are arguably better than PRIVATE pensions and EMPLOYER-BASED pensions in this day and age when people move from job to job. But they are not better that Social Security which is 100% portable.
Myself, for example, I worked for 11 years for the Federal government from ages 30-41 and then 9 years as a teacher in Texas from ages 42-51. Both jobs earned me small pensions which will be way too fucking small because they will be based on my 3 highest earning years which will be 1999-2002 for the Federal job and 2012-2015 for the Texas teaching job. So I am locked into small pensions based on the wages and cost of living of 20 years ago when I finally retire. Whereas had they put say $10K into a 401K for me each year all those years ago I would have come out way ahead. As it is, I did a TSP and 401k on the side because I knew what was coming. But that was entirely my own money.
But social security works for all my jobs and so it is fine and 100% portable except for the Texas teaching job because Texas is too cheap to pay into social security for its teachers so I get screwed there.
The problem is that pension programs like the teacher’s pension in Texas have a legacy problem in that they need current teacher’s contributions to pay for all the current retirees. So it would take a massive cash infusion to switch to anything else.
FastEdD
What seems like a long time ago here in CA, we had Prop. 13 which froze property taxes to when you bought the property. It was sold as “Don’t kick Granny out of her house with these huge tax increases.” Even though I was a substitute teacher struggling to pay the rent and those taxes were the source of my pay, I had to admit there was a grain of truth in it. (The truly unfair part is that it froze property taxes on commercial property too.) Nobody wanted to see granny thrown out on the street. Where I’m going with this is, can you imagine the hew and cry when you take away Social Security from millions of seniors at the same time? Also, too, I know that was a long time ago and the parties have changed, but I’ve never heard anybody mention that Democrats CREATED Medicare and SS. I’d take credit for that!
BruceFromOhio
@Baud: Sixteen jillion. Possibly less, and perhaps more. Views differ!
Kent
Joe Manchin was governor of West Virginia before he became Senator. Doe he count? Also Evan Bayh if you want to go back further.
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: He hasn’t done anything to indicate that he’s stupid. But he is rude.
Qrop Non Sequitur
So if government programs sunset every year, how are people meant to plan for, well, anything?
Brachiator
@Baud:
Ha! Probably won’t happen. But Japan is an interesting case.
And Japan refuses to increase immigration by any significant number.
Kent
Because they live in a bubble where they only actually speak to rich people and business lobbyists at fundraisers and don’t do town halls or talk to their constituents.
rikyrah
With my entire chest…
The Democrats need to just hand out the printing contract. At every meeting with the public, the Democrats need to physically hand out Scott’s plan. And, expand it to also have the quotes of numerous Republicans who are already on the record about the American Social Safety Net.
At every meeting… For Every Democrat… On any political level…Not just the President
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
That’s what Dubya tried in 2006.
He was able to lie us into two wars…
But ,couldn’t get Social Security privatized.
cckids
@Ohio Mom:
Yes, indeed. My son was also on SSI, and was never going to be employable. And if you’ve ever gone through the process of getting onto Soc. Sec. disability, it is laughable that there are large numbers of people who “don’t deserve it” drawing checks. It is a long, meticulously detailed process requiring LOTS of proof that the person cannot work at ANY job. Many, many people who SHOULD qualify have been turned down repeatedly.
Cameron
@Brachiator: And here’s one proposed solution: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/12/world/asia/japan-elderly-mass-suicide.html
Roger Moore
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
By not relying on the government for anything. That’s the point.
Brachiator
One more thing.
Republicans try to conflate Social Security with other social programs and create the Big Lie of Democrats giving “free money” to people who don’t want to work.
Republicans opposed the stimulus payments because this was “free money.” Republicans opposed enhanced unemployment because it made people lazy and they didn’t have to take jobs offered.
Remember. Republicans oppose free money because it makes people lazy.
The Alaska Fund Dividend from oil revenues for 2022 was $3284 for Alaska residents.
Free money.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Roger Moore: remember when “uncertainty” was an all-purpose buzzword for CNBC types to criticize Obama policies
Ohio Mom
@cmorenc: Ohio Son only recently made the transition from SSI to SSDI. I am still getting my sea legs as far as learning the rules of SSDI but I know enough at this stage to understand that your brother’s situation is (sadly) a great illustration of what I was trying to convey.
Is you brother eligible for an ABLE account? That might give him some leeway — if family members are able to give him money, the ABLE account would shelter the money without jeopardizing his SSDI eligibility. The cut off age is currently 26 but if his diagnosis wasn’t made until after that, in a few years the age cutoff will be raised to 46.
Qrop Non Sequitur
So why have it?
David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch
Democrats make football great again.
Super Bowl ratings up 13% since Biden became president.
Yesterday match, featuring two black quarterbacks for the first time ever, was the 3rd most watched broadcast in history. The two highest broadcasts were Super Bowls during Obama’s 2nd term.
Brit in Chicago
@Baud: 65! (Easy math.
ETA: everyone currently alive, that is.
RSA
I know only a little. In addition to the holes in the SSDI safety net that you’ve mentioned, it’s also notoriously difficult to get into the system. You hire a lawyer, if you can afford one, and you wait a few months for your application to be processed. You get rejected—only about 20% of initial claims are granted. You collect more information and appeal, but again you’re likely to get rejected. More than 60% of SSDI applications are denied. All for a monthly benefit that averages about $1200.
It’s shameful how poorly our society treats the less fortunate.
scav
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Who else is going to provide health care, free cars and retirement packages for congressmen?
Qrop Non Sequitur
@scav: There would, in fact, be a collapse in Congressional employment.
CarolPW
@Ohio Mom: I am absolutely in awe about not only what you do for Ohio Son, but the accurate help you always offer to others in related circumstances in an evil bureaucracy. I would kiss your feet because you are a disability mother goddess except when I see anyone else I always have a mask on.
prostratedragon
I see there’s a 2nd edition of The Great Risk Shift. Might be worth a look.
Bostondreams
DeSantis talks about ending Advanced Placement in Florida and forbdding colleges from accepting AP credits. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
Gvg
@Brachiator: They have been saying this my whole life and using it as a scare reason that social security is doomed so we should go ahead and phase it out now or whatever or not count on it or raise the retirement age (they did that) or tax it, (they did that) and what they are doing is conditioning some of the population to not expect it to last and not fight hard enough to keep it. That apparently also means too many of the young currently have bought this bull.
Someone, us, I guess, needs to go out and warn our young relatives and acquaintances that this has been a line for decades and it really doesn’t matter. There have been numerous supposed crisis’ that had a bunch of hair on fire news, then some legislation gets passed, mostly really minor and SS goes on. Right now we have too many stubborn flakey republicans so elect more democrats and tell the losers to their faces this is a reason why.
lower the retirement age back down to what it should be, have no limit on SS withdrawal, cancel the tax on it, tax all income and end a bunch of exclusions of certain kinds of workers, which were meant to be racist back in the day but have also hurt plenty of white people and just make for loopholes. Eliminating the limit on how much income gets taxed would probably fund everything. Because we have let those CEO and high management inflate their wages way out of line.
Ohio Mom
@RSA: Yes, SSDI for workers is very difficult to qualify for. For one thing, you must have paid into Social Security for 40 quarters (10 years worth). If you are a 40 year old roofer who fell off the roof and can no longer work as a result, yeah, you probably have enough quarters.
But if you are significantly younger and have only been only paying into Social Security for say, six years? You don’t qualify (I don’t know what these people do.)
Another catch is, you are not eligible for Medicare until you have been on SSDI for two years. I guess worker’s comp is supposed to cover you until then? You were disabled on the job, you surely have big doctors’ bills.
Anyway, that’s the best case scenario, as you point out, the majority of applicants are rejected and have to appeal (and appeals often fail too). Though I understand that people with terminal illnesses can be fast-tracked (If they have 40 quarters).
Now because he has a developmental disability (autism), Ohio Son was eligible for SSI starting at age 18 and a month. That comes with Medicaid.
When a parent starts collecting Social Security Retirement benefits, a person with a developmental disability who has been receiving SSI is transferred to SSDI, pretty much without question (at least in Son’s case). That person’s SSDI benefit is based on half of the (better paid) parent’s retirement benefits. So if your dad was ditch digger, you get the minimum, if he was a brain surgeon, you get the maximum.
I am very fortunate that our county board of Developmental Disability has a department of fabulous benefits advisors. I’d be lost without them.
Ohio Mom
@CarolPW: (blushes) Thanks.
raven
@RSA: When I broke my back in a car wreck in 1975 I was not hurt badly enough for SSDI and I was hurt too badly for unemployment because I couldn’t look for work!
Ohio Mom
@Gvg: Add this to your excellent list: reinstate orphan’s benefits for college students.
It used to be that if your parent died, you were eligible for orphan’s benefits until you graduated high school, if that was the end of your education, or undergraduate college (I had a college roommate whose dad had died and she got orphan’s benefits. She was envious of anyone who took a year off because she couldn’t, that would end her benefit).
Reagan changed that, now all orphan benefits end at high school graduation. As if paying for college isn’t hard enough.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
UncleEbeneezer
Daniel Goldman is killing it!
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Linking to Twitter is lazy, man.
Omnes Omnibus
@Poptartacus:
You seem nice.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus:
Are you smoking that crap again tonight?
Ken
Not just programs, all legislation. Hopefully they’ll get most of them back in place promptly, so that we don’t get “The Purge” as reality.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: Consider an eyebrow arched as it was typed.
danielx
@Frank Wilhoit:
The Social Security trust fund, including all those IOUs from the Treasury Department, is the single largest pool of finds in this country remaining unlooted by Wall Street vampires. They’ve been salivating over the prospect for decades.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@UncleEbeneezer: Goldman is really impressive.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
very bizarre to see a group made up mostly of ex-Republican operatives and ad-makers suddenly defending the safety net, but hey, it’s a hard fight and allies are welcome
RaflW
To Mike Rounds, I just want to say “Up yours you, you utter dingleberry. Working people pay into Social Security and Medicare year after year, decade after decade. We’re banking on the promise that the money we hand over will come back for the length of our retirement (or disability).
You cannot possibly be serious that we pay taxes for 40 years, and you get to dangle the return on investment in one year little spasms/hostage situations. Fuck all the way off with that nonsense.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@RaflW: Eloquently put!
Ocotillo
There should be more personal attacks on Scott about how he stole from Medicare back in the day as well.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Active shooter reported on the Michigan State campus in East Lansing. Multiple injuries. Still ongoing.
Ruckus
@Dan B:
I’m 73, retired about 1 1/2 yrs ago, and I’m not working anymore. I’ve put in way too many years already, I paid in to SS for nearly 6 decades, it’s my money. I’m getting it back like I was told I would eons ago.
We need to keep banging them over the head with this asinine concept of fucking over every senior citizen who’s done the same as me, no matter their party affiliation, that these clowns want to screw them out of the money we put into SS all these decades so we could retire in shitty style rather than starve to death.
Redshift
@FastEdD:
I feel like they’ve gotten substantially worse at talking about this stuff, maybe partly because they spend all their time in an information bubble where everyone agrees with them, and partly because the same things has happened to “intellectual” conservatives.
They used to be smart enough to make clear nothing would change for current seniors and those near retirement, to defuse at least some of the third rail. Now they just say the quiet part out loud about everything.
japa21
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My Alma Mater.
RaflW
@Bostondreams: Wow. This just seems like a guy who has gotten way too wrapped up in his own pinched orbit.
Maybe I’m wrong, or things have changed a lot since I was a kid in a heavily Republican, upper middle class suburb (TX rather than FL, but they seem to have similarities in politics, lib-owning, and revanchism), but many of the college-bound students with said Republican upper middle class parents were APing and placement testing aplenty.
And even if I get the electoral politics of this issue wrong, what an absolutely bananas and toxic thing to do to an already at-risk education system in Florida.
It sounds like the College Board letter from a day or two ago really, really got under Ron’s brittle skin and all he can see is retribution, not consequences to him or ‘his’ state.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
The GOP is a fucking disgrace.
I think they’d have to come up a few dozen miles on the shitometer to be just a fucking disgrace.
Shalimar
@Anne Laurie: thank you for the great summary of the current situation. It is much appreciated wherever you get it from. I am sure when an alternative to Twitter becomes viable for gathering these links, you will be the first to notice.
mrmoshpotato
Assholes.
Redshift
@mrmoshpotato: Oh, Republican promise they don’t want to get rid of it, and if Democrats don’t either, they’ll gladly give the GOP what they want when they hold it for ransom every few years
mrmoshpotato
Read the entire post and, the GOP are MAJOR FUCKING ASSHOLES!
danielx
@RaflW: Well said.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I guess my question really is what do the rethuglicans expect to get out of ending SS?
How do they expect to have any support when their conservative supporters find out that they got fucked right along with all the liberals that collect SS? Or people who are 70 yrs old or younger and have paid into SS their entire lives? Where does all that money go?
I say we have to get the word out because most of the people I know live on SS or other benefits of the Social Security system even if they have a pension and if I’ve been making deposits out of my paychecks since the first one I’ve gotten, and I have, so has everyone else my age or younger.
Ruckus
@mrmoshpotato:
Read the entire post and, the GOP are MAJOR FUCKING ASSHOLES!
Yes, but this is absolutely nothing new.
satby
TPM had a great and sharable explainer on the multiple ways SS funding has been deceptively described for decades. Worth keeping to hand out to whoever of your acquaintances buys the GOP bullshit.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus: I think it’s part of why they need to have the Dems take the blame for it. Then they can turn to everybody who gets shafted and say “y’see! They’re out to screw you! Government doesn’t work! We need to free people to rely on themselves! It’s those people who screwed you! Put us in power, and we’ll make ’em pay!”
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: Clearly I’m lazy.
Ksmiami
@MomSense: and a fucking menace to humanity…
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
THIS.
It should be obvious that most if not all rethuglican politicians care only about their bank accounts and fucking over everyone beneath them on whatever pecking order pole they think they have stuffed up their asses.
danielx
“How unfair and unsporting of you to point out that we’re a bunch of lying shitweasels by quoting our own words!
Dear me, I can tell it’s prime pearl clutching time for the Villager, time to – dare I say it? – to view with alarm!
RaflW
@Brachiator: I know that average life expectancy and what ripe old age any one of us manages to pull off are apples-oranges, but in aggregate, the US is a basket case compared to out putative peers.
UncleEbeneezer
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yeah. I became such a fan during the impeachment. He’s obviously very sharp and doesn’t fuck around.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: +1
These benefits are too hard to get, and too easy to lose, as it is. But all of that is by design. My autistic brother likes working, but will lose his benefits if he works more than about 8 hours a week. It’s insane.
As usual, the GQP takes a small problem (a few undeserving individuals intentionally cheating) and uses it as a cudgel to bash a necessary safety-net and earned benefit program that is uncontroversial in modern society, while supporting massive waste and fraud by those who effectively steal from the public purse for their own enrichment. (c.f. Rick Scott).
The problem with America isn’t that the poor have too much money…
Grr…,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: they do know how to go for the rhetorical kill, so I’ll accept their help rn
Ksmiami
@RaflW: it really comes down to wealth inequality tbh… and we are in a second gilded age.
Tony G
The Republican Party has wanted to destroy Social Security since 1935, and has wanted to destroy Medicare since 1965 — (along with wanting to destroy all other government programs that prevent people from falling into poverty). That has been their real agenda at least since FDR became president almost 90 years ago. Everything else — abortion, gays and transgender people, “gun rights” the recent hysteria about “Critical Race Theory”, etc. — are just shiny objects to distract their stupid voters from the fact that they want to make the rich richer and everyone else poorer.
randy khan
@Uncle Cosmo:
The last time they tried the privatization idea, it did not go well for them. I don’t really expect it would go any better today, particularly the way the stock market has been going the last year plus.
Another Scott
@Jeffro: Plus, they refuse to pass a budget on time every year. What makes them think we believe that they would actually vote on time to prevent a popular program from sunsetting??
“I’m sorry, Old Widow Constituent, I support extending Medicare and Social Security, but my good friend, the Senator from Arkansas, would not let us hold a vote until the Demonrats agreed to his demand to fire the head of NORAD because of the Jyna Balloon Invasion. And they won’t do that.
“So, it’s the Demonrats’ fault.
“Please send me a campaign donation. God Bless America!”
:-/
It’s all performative nonsense with these monsters. They never tell the truth about anything.
Grr…,
Scott.
Eric S.
@Baud: 64 years, 364 days from today and everyone today will be 65 or older. Me good at maths.
RaflW
@randy khan: Plenty of people will remember* the sickening feeling they got looking at their 401(k) and IRA statements in late 2008, as often one third of their nest egg vanished.
Younger(ish) people like me who kept our jobs could just work through it, and – dare I say it – probably dollar-cost-average bought some cheap stocks in the aftermath.
But people close to retirement suddenly recalibrated. And people already retired were often kinda screwed.
2008 is starting to feel like a long time ago in our foreshortened, news-cycle driven lives. But it’s not that long ago for a lot of motivated voters.
*And, of course, Democrats and interest groups should be doing some reminding of that sickening feeling, if the GOP does dare start talking openly about privatization.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@RaflW: a lot of people talking about their 401Ks the last few months, too, even though the fall-off has been far less dramatic
danielx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
A hell of a lot more boomers being struck by 401k blows now than there were in 2008.
mrmoshpotato
@Ruckus: True, but it deserves being pointed out – yet again.
rikyrah
Marketing exec explains Rihanna’s business savvy with regards to the Superbowl
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTRtyrPY9/
Ruckus
I may have to walk away for a bit and what, watch cartoons on TV or something.
This almost 1/4 of a century has been my worst out of the almost 3/4 of a century that I’ve lived.
Rethuglicans have gotten worse and worse and how the fuck do they keep getting even worse? Shit For Brains was president? What the ever loving fuck? How is it that we have arrived where we are, that complete and utter rethuglican liars get elected to the house, where there are more billionaires in this country than ever before, even shit for brains is a billionaire – sort of, maybe, but still how did we get where our politicians are actively fucking us over or at least attempting to and do it thinking it is the best outcome for the country? Or are they just so fucking selfish that their only concern is selfish monetary enhancement so billionaires can become much richer? We really, really, really need a magic mirror that shows us how bad it is, because we can absolutely not depend on the press to do anything other than pad their own pockets and play to the billionaires, after all they are the ones doing it right and becoming Scrooge McDuckies.
rikyrah
Uh huh😒😒
Virginia Democrats (@vademocrats) tweeted at 4:13 PM on Mon, Feb 13, 2023:
🚨 BREAKING: Youngkin’s admin is advocating for law enforcement to have access to menstrual cycle tracking apps.
This comes after Youngkin proposed a budget with money earmarked for prosecuting and imprisoning women/doctors who receive/perform abortions.
(https://twitter.com/vademocrats/status/1625256809668681730?s=02)
Ruckus
@mrmoshpotato:
True, but it deserves being pointed out –
yet again– fucking constantly.Fixed it for you….
Dan B
@Ruckus: I’m also 73 with almost 6 decades of paying in. I’ve got a very small savings. SS is my income. Fortunately I managed to buy a house 8n the Boeing bust and downsize when the neighborhood got very desirable. Bought in a lower middle class 10% white neighborhood at the beginning of the recession. Now houses are selling for $900,000, three times what I paid for my house. I own the house free and clear. That’s security which is amazing since I was kicked out of college.
Cameron
@Ocotillo: I wasn’t here back then, but I believe that was actually pretty well known when he was elected governor. The real Floridians here would know the score.
mrmoshpotato
@Ruckus: Haha, thanks.
randy khan
I am both impressed and amused by this. The Republicans, thinking they would have great leverage and that there was nothing Biden could do about it, practically bragged that they were finally going to get a chance to “fix” Social Security and Medicare. They never considered that the Dems would have a game plan, even though that plan was as obvious as it could be and they’d already seen the Dems doing the same thing on abortion. (In fairness, they probably were drinking their own Kool Aid and thought that their fake polls reflected what was going to happen in November.)
randy khan
@rikyrah: Cuddly moderate Glenn Youngkin strikes again.
Ken
I worry, though, that the Democrats might lose their edge. Surely at some point “just keep quoting the Republicans” will stop working.
P Thomas
All that sweet, sweet money in the SSA Trust Fund.
All that sweet, sweet money going to fund schools.
It is always true: Follow the Money. They want it.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Republicans here are trying to keep up with the Tories in the UK. The Conservative government has been fighting cost of living increases for nurses and various public sector workers, but will be giving themselves a pay increase effective in March or April. The Tories are also working hard to undermine the National Health Service. And the icing on the cake is that BREXIT promises continuing decline in the GDP. Still, a good chunk of the British public continue to support BREXIT because they want to keep foreigners out.
Ruckus
@Dan B:
Seems you might be better off than me. I live in a seniors apt complex run under a federal program that subsidizes the rent. It’s actually pretty nice place to live, lots of nice folks to talk to. I can live off my SS income reasonably comfortably. I use the VA for my healthcare and now that I’m retired, it’s extremely reasonable cost wise. My point is that because I have a modicum of an idea how to exist in a world that would just as soon that I kicked off tomorrow and dane to take up any more oxygen in their high falutin, steal everything not tied down world I’m going to last as long as I can and be a pain their snooty asses. I suggest that we all do this and maybe, just maybe, we can make this a better world.
Don’t forget not to hold your breath.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah:
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
So being selfish assholes is working out well for them……
piratedan
well, I await Poptarticus mining all of the other social media platforms to share with us takes on how the GOP is looking to fuck over everyone who ever paid into Social Security.
I am worried that despite it all, the GOP may STILL do their damndest to wreck Social Security and MediCare, after all; they took out Abortion despite public sentiment and they’re doubling down on that in State Houses across the country.
These fuckers are going after it ALL and they don’t seem to be worries about public sentiment.
Sister Golden Bear
@Tony G:
With all due respect, Republican can multi-task and they genuinely hate gays, trans people, n-clangs! etc.
Dan B
@rikyrah: Youngkin campaigned as a reasonable moderate with a nice persona. There were warnings from Democrats that he was not, and voila! He’s right out of Gilead, headship and all.
Chetan Murthy
@rikyrah: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I remember when Fleece-vest Nazi was running for gov, and he was quoted saying that he couldn’t openly advocate for anti-abortion laws at the moment, but once he got in ….. It was the moment when I really despaired for our country, when I thought “women aren’t even going to fight back against this, against this, even against this!”
Thankfully, I was wrong. Roe and abortion are a red line. Thankfully.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
We will never win over everyone but maybe, just maybe if we expose them for the deranged, stupid, jack offs that they are and that they want to know things they have less than zero right to know, and want all the money for their worse than useless selves, we might just make this thing actually work.
Gvg
@Ken: including murder? Scott might want to reconsider that one. I realize that sounds like a threat, but he is proposing the apocalypse to a lot of peoples lives as if it is nothing. I think a mob would kill them as soon as the result sunk in. They really don’t comprehend how….big their spite bombs would be. It also boggles me that the finance people don’t seem to understand economics either. As in destroy the system that they are wealthy and powerful in so that something new and surprising can replace them red of tooth and nail. We have to stop them before it happens.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh😒😒
⚖️ 💛🐝THEE Most Passionate Twist🇱🇨🇺🇸 (@Ms_MMMJ) tweeted at 8:15 PM on Mon, Feb 13, 2023:
National media isn’t covering the East Palestine derailment because they haven’t finalized their disaster for Biden narrative yet.
It’s not about informing the public it’s about fomenting outrage for ratings and clicks.
(https://twitter.com/Ms_MMMJ/status/1625317790893723649?s=02)
Peke Daddy
The 5th. Circuit is preparing to declare permanently funded programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid unconstitutional, requiring Congress to pass regular, scheduled funding for these programs. The unelected super legislature will strike again.
rikyrah
@CarolPW: ICAM
Peke Daddy
@Ken:
Not if they keep providing new material with the same frame.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Sister Golden Bear: Thank you.
“It’s the
economyHATE, stupid.”They really do hate us. It’s not just evil Machiavellian manipulation of the rabble.
There is hate in their hearts. It is ugly. They want to hide it. We shouldn’t offer them excuses.
Sister Golden Bear
Good piece on how mainstreaming anti-trans rhetoric in the UK led to a 16-year trans girl being stabbed to death by two classmates in a busy public park — and then the press actively digging up her deadname and using it in articles. Brianna Ghey’s death was a tragedy waiting to happen.
Kelly
My final employer’s 401K worked great for me but it was a exceptional program. They kicked in 12.5% of my gross whether I contributed or not. This was over twice the average employer contribution. I was vested in my previous job and was able to roll money from the previous job pension plan into the 401k so instead of small payments based on old wages it grew with the rest and is portable. Nothing typical about it.
I have several friends that were screwed out of their potentially very comfortable Consolidated Freightways pensions by a “restructuring” that that split the company in 3 new companies. Oddly enough all the 50+ folks with fat pension possibilities into a doomed company that promptly went bankrupt leaving them with half pensions a decade later than promised. Completely legal.
Ohio Mom
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: IANAL, but don’t the authorities need to prove they think a crime has been committed before they can be issued search warrants?
The pendulum can not swing hard enough or fast enough in the other direction.
Sister Golden Bear
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: THIS!
randy khan
@Ken:
I expect that it won’t work for everything. But it does seem to work when the Democratic position has a lot of support and the Republican position basically has none. One reason for that probably is that it’s good to say you support popular things. And Republicans seem to have lost the ability not to say how much they hate things that most Americans like a lot.
James E Powell
George W Bush was pushing “put your social security into the stock market” in 2000. I had tote-bagger friends who thought it was a great idea. Reminds me what a stupid asshole George W Bush is. If not for 9/11, he’d have had a terrible time as the second one term loser in his family. I hate that guy and everybody who voted for him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oxford, MI, was the site of a school shooting a little more than a year ago
Citizen Alan
@Peke Daddy: This is my big fear. Thanks to the people who could not bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton, a 3rd of the federal Judiciary is now trump appointees. And the majority of them are federalist society members who genuinely don’t think we should have a federal government for anything except national defense and roads
Citizen Alan
@James E Powell:
The main reason I flirted with 911 conspiracy theories back in the day is because no political party has ever benefited from an absolute disaster that happened on their watch the way Bush and republicans benefited from 911.
Rudi666
Something kinda uplifting for the open thread.
https://www.tmj4.com/service-dog-honored-final-flight-home?dicbo=v2-4z8ufbr
mrmoshpotato
MLive
At least 5 shot at Michigan State University; suspect at large
Updated: Feb. 13, 2023, 11:26 p.m.|Published: Feb. 13, 2023, 11:15 p.m.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mrmoshpotato: msnbc saying three killed
prostratedragon
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: East Lansing police (or campus?) are updating at midnight, in a few minutes.
RaflW
@piratedan: “These fuckers are going after it ALL and they don’t seem to be worries about public sentiment.”
That was their strategy going into the mid-terms, and while yes, they eked out a narrow House majority, it was the worst out-party mid-term in multiple decades.
Their ignorance of how much of the electorate feels or believes isn’t a superpower. It’s a bubble and massive weakness.
Ksmiami
@Citizen Alan: they are flirting with their own destruction… seriously the bench will be first against the wall when chaos takes hold
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: If BJ only had a refund policy to assuage the resentment. (Both sides.) //
Kathleen
@Baud: 2008 called and has offered its services!
jefft452
next stop – asking SCOTUS to declare SSI unconstitutional
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: WTF?
J R in WV
@Poptartacus:
Pop Tart asshole is the first troll I’ve pied is quite a while. So long, asshole~!!~
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
And somehow, I don’t understand why, but I keep getting older, doomed to age every year, perhaps until I finally die of something.
;~)
Tony G
@Sister Golden Bear: Well, that’s true. They actually hate everyone except for a handful of white billionaires.