Tag Archives: entitlement reform

Fiscal Cliff: Who is “entitled” to what?

  By Liz Iacobucci | December 4, 2012 - 5:10 pm | ,
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Washington Post Poll September 11 2001

Something else to remember, as you’re watching news coverage of the Fiscal Cliff negotiations:

The tax rates that GOP Congressional leaders are trying so hard to defend are relatively recent – and the public has never supported them.

Washington Post Poll September 11 2001Just months after the first round of tax cuts was passed, in 2001, a Washington Post poll found that 57% of Americans wanted to roll back the tax cuts in order to preserve the federal budget surplus. (Yes, we had a surplus, back then.)

There’s more:

President Bush’s budget director had just warned congressional Republicans that “it was likely the government would tap the Social Security surplus this year, contradicting what he had been saying only a few weeks earlier.”

That same Washington Post poll found that “an overwhelming 92 percent of those surveyed said they opposed using Social Security funds” for things other than retirement benefits.

That was in 2001. Two years later, it was clear that the first round of Bush tax cuts hadn’t “jump-started” the economy – so the White House pushed through another round. This time, the bill had so little support it almost didn’t pass the Senate. GOP stalwarts John McCain, Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe all voted against it. The Senate split 50-50 – and Vice President Dick Cheney cast the deciding vote.

That’s right… Dick Cheney was responsible for passing the tax cuts that House Speaker John Boehner is now trying so hard to defend.

“Entitlements”?

In recent weeks, Speaker Boehner has been talking about tax cuts for the wealthy as if they’re somehow sacred. He doesn’t seem to care what he has to sacrifice, to protect those high-income taxpayers.

Speaker Boehner is insisting on cuts to “entitlement programs” such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – before he will agree to any fiscal cliff “compromise”.

And if taxes are going to be raised – well, guess who Speaker Boehner expects to pay the price? Here’s Senate President Harry Reid’s analysis of Speaker Boehner’s latest proposal, earlier today:

“Their proposal would raise taxes on millions of middle-class families,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “Their plan to raise $800 billion in revenue by eliminating popular tax deductions and credits would reach deep into pockets of middle-class families.”

Speaker Boehner wants to cut “entitlements”?!

The working families of America have paid into the Social Security system for decades, expecting to get benefits back when we retire.

High-income taxpayers owe their low tax rates to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Who, exactly, should be entitled to what?

Read more about the fiscal cliff here.

Two Things to Remember

  By Liz Iacobucci | November 29, 2012 - 10:26 am | ,
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Social_Security_card

Sample Social Security CardAs our country heads toward the fiscal cliff, Republican Congressional leaders are going to be talking a lot about “entitlement reform”.  Their position: they believe any “compromise” they make on tax revenues should be matched by deep cuts to “entitlement” programs.

Two things to remember, as you listen to Karl Rove and his buddies try to sell their position to the American public:

  1. For more than a decade, our country has borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
  2. The Social Security system has already turned the corner.  On average, working families will receive less in Social Security benefits than we have paid into the system in taxes.  “A married couple retiring last year after both spouses earned average lifetime wages paid about $598,000 in Social Security taxes during their careers. They can expect to collect about $556,000 in benefits, if the man lives to 82 and the woman lives to 85.”

Just how much more do they want us to “compromise”?

Looking Over the Fiscal Cliff

  By Liz Iacobucci | November 26, 2012 - 12:27 pm | , ,
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Tax Receipts 1952-2012

Congress returns to Washington DC today – but “fiscal cliff” negotiations aren’t expected to resume until next week.

The delay may allow Congressional GOP leaders to bring a different position to the bargaining table.

Immediately following Election Day, GOP leadership seemed stuck in their “no new taxes” campaign rhetoric.

Since then, several prominent Republicans have questioned the wisdom of sticking with Grover Norquist’s infamous “pledge”.

Over the decades, Norquist’s “pledge” has not been a fiscally-conservative position.  It works like a ratchet wrench: things can only go in one direction; taxes can only go down.  And taxes have gone down – considerably – since Norquist started agitating.

Right now, the federal tax burden – tax revenues as a percentage of the economy – is at one of the lowest points in modern history.

Much of the decline was caused by cuts to corporate taxes.

Next week’s “fiscal cliff” negotiations need to be framed by this reality.  Particularly in a down economy, Congress can’t just cut its way to a balanced federal budget.  (They have tried that in Europe; it’s not solving anything.)

America’s working families know that you can’t balance the budget if revenues keep declining.  We’ve tried to keep our own books balanced despite declining wages.  Too many families have ended up doing just what the federal government has done: borrow money to make ends meet.  And that doesn’t work out very well, over the long term.

As the “fiscal cliff” negotiations continue, keep an eye on your Social Security and Medicare benefits.  It’s just like what happened with the NH Retirement System: the politicians want to cut our benefits, after we spent decades paying into the system.

Right now, even the politicians who are forswearing Norquist’s “pledge” are insisting on “entitlement reforms” in exchange for “new revenue”.  But that’s a false choice.  They are simply trading one way of ratcheting-down taxes for another.

Returning tax revenues to their previous (pre-Norquist) levels would go a long, long way toward solving our country’s debt crisis.

 

[Tax revenues shown above do not include Social Security, Medicare or other retirement program revenues.  Data is from Table 2.3 of http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/hist.pdf.]

Promises, promises…

  By Liz Iacobucci | November 18, 2012 - 8:43 am | ,
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EGTRRA signing

A lot of promises were made, back when the Bush tax cuts were first enacted.

Back in 2001, the Heritage Foundation projected that:

  • “Under President Bush’s plan, an average family of four’s inflation-adjusted disposable income would increase by $4,544 in fiscal year (FY) 2011, and the national debt would effectively be paid off by FY 2010.”
  • “The plan would save the entire Social Security surplus and increase personal savings while the federal government accumulated $1.8 trillion in uncommitted funds from FY 2008 to FY 2011.” (“Uncommitted funds” is a fancy way of saying “surplus”.)

Did your family’s disposable income increase by $4,544 last year? (Wondering how the top 1% are doing? Browse through “How to Spend It” here.)

Has the national debt been paid off?
Is the Social Security surplus “safe”?
Has your family been able to increase your savings?

What happened to the $1.8 trillion federal surplus that was supposed to appear, after the tax cuts stimulated the economy and the “job creators” created jobs?

Lots of promises were made, back when Republican Leadership was forcing the Bush tax cuts through Congress. [Historical footnote: both the 2001 tax cuts and the 2003 tax cuts were passed in a way that made them exempt from Senate filibuster. In 2003, the Senate vote was 50-50 after Republican Senators John McCain, Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe voted “nay”; and Vice President Dick Cheney cast the deciding vote to enact the bill.]

Those promises never panned out. But now, Republican leaders in Congress are acting as if high-income taxpayers are somehow entitled to the low tax rates they have been enjoying for the last decade

What’s up with this idea of “entitlement”?

Millions of American workers have paid into the Social Security system for decades, based on the promise that we would get Social Security benefits when we retired. Isn’t it reasonable for all of us workers to think we’re entitled to the benefits we contributed to? But now, Congressional Republicans are insisting on “adjustments to eligibility and benefits in the Social Security and Medicare programs.”

One man – Dick Cheney – cast the deciding vote to give the wealthy their tax cuts; but now Congressional Republicans think those tax cuts are somehow sacred. Just two days ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told a hometown newspaper that any “fiscal cliff” deal “must not raise taxes on wealthy.”

Sense of “entitlement”?

“Gifts” from the government?

The Bush tax cuts were supposed to “jump-start” our economy. They were supposed to “trickle down” and enrich working families. They were supposed to eliminate the country’s debt. They didn’t do any of that – but now Congressional Republicans want us to pay the price, through cuts to our Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Didn’t they get the memo? Romney-Ryan lost.