Apparently there are 6 million well paying tradesman jobs out there that are unfilled. Maybe they are trying to target those jobs.
“I don’t think people understand how expensive it is to society as a whole when people live beyond working age.”
People began to live too long. It definitely needs to be fixed.
CHIP was supposed to be renewed months ago. But now guess what?? No money for it.
There is not going to be any reconciliation bill and if it even gets to conference, sweeteners will be given out ( mostly future promises, promises for lots of campaign money, etc.) so conference agrees to accept Senate version. Retired R Congressperson Ney was just on my satellite radio station spelling it all out how it’s going to go down. This is a must pass bill for the R’s and it has to be done before they leave town to prevent hearing from unhappy constituents.
Next up will be Medicare and SS. This is their raison d’etre.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
At some point, extending the retirement age for social security/medicare really isn’t workable for an ever increasing number of people. “Continue to work 40 hours a day/ 52 weeks a year” isn’t something that a lot of people in their upper 60s can do. Assuming their employers even want them around longer.
I don’t think it is actually their voters who are super unhappy if this particular bill doesn’t pass. It is their large donors. Now their voters are unhappy about the appearance of incompetence, since they’ve gotten next to nothing done this session otherwise.
I don’t think the purpose of this thread is to debate Social Security and Medicare reform. The main impact on that from this bill is that it will likely trigger sequestration, and that will result in immediate cuts to Medicare. So that is on topic.
I hate this idea. Oh, it’s fine for the kind of people who are on this site, who have desk jobs, interesting ones that in a lot of cases we like.
But at the lower end of the income spectrum, lifespan is not increasing at all. So now you want to tell a hotel maid, daycare worker or construction worker, someone who does grinding physical labor all day, that they have to work until they’re 70? Someone who is breaking down their body with repetitive physical labor, they have to hurt in their jobs for another five years because we urgently have to give tax cuts to hedge fund managers? No. We’re better than this.
The cap on FICA tax needs to end.
It’ll never happen, but that’s the easy solution.
And has anyone recently seen Mr. Gore’s Social Security lock box? No? Hmmmm. That’s a different topic.
@emilybee So let me get this straight. We have $1 Trillion dollars to hand out as tax cuts to the wealthy class and to business but no money for CHIP?
Shameless!
There never was a social security lockbox. Social security has always been a pay as you go program. For decades though it ran surpluses. Rather than investing those, the surpluses were used for the general treasury. Essentially, folks in DC spent the surpluses.
It would be a little like saving for your kid’s college education and when you get to the end of the year (when you kid is not yet even in pre-school) saying you had a college cost surplus which you were using to take a nice vacation. Drop an IOU into your kids college fund and call it a day.
Back when the lockbox concept was floated, we had been spending the surpluses for decades. And based on actuarial analyses at the time, the days of social security surpluses were numbered. At this point going out to the horizon, there are social security deficits. Nothing to lockbox.
I’m sure in my ire, I can come across as a big blowhard. But I’m not always completely wrong:
https://rules.house.gov/sites/republicans.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-115HJResPIH-CRFY18.pdf
@Gatormama – exactly.
And another serious question that I know nothing about, if people have to work longer to qualify for social security benefits, doesn’t that reduce the number of jobs available to younger workers too? Wouldn’t that tend to suppress demand and economic growth? It seems logical, but does anyone know of any data on this subject?
Presumably the “replacement ratio” is greater than 1:1 when you consider the presumed higher cost/skills of the more experienced worker, but again, I don’t know of any data about this. Maybe with productivity growth 1 younger work == 1 experienced worker.
@saillakeerie , that’s the point. Anyone who is basing their retirement on SS will be unhappy sooner or later. If I was a college student I would vote for the ability to opt out and invest on my own.
“I don’t think it is actually their voters who are super unhappy if this particular bill doesn’t pass. It is their large donors. Now their voters are unhappy about the appearance of incompetence, since they’ve gotten next to nothing done this session otherwise.”
But they need those unhappy voters in their Congressional districts to get re-elected - so some may get squeamish if it’s not passed before they recess after hearing how much their constituents hate this piece of crap bill. Therefore, the House will either just agree to accept the Senate version or if it goes to conference it’ll all be buttoned down before hand and conference will just be for show.
Just saw this article in New York magazine.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/senate-gop-accidentally-killed-all-corporate-tax-deductions.html
” So let me get this straight. We have $1 Trillion dollars to hand out as tax cuts to the wealthy class and to business but no money for CHIP?”
Yep.
We’ve mentioned the estate tax quote of Senator Grassley about wine and women. (Apparently, he doesn’t like song.) I just saw what Senator Hatch from Utah said about reauthorizing CHIP:
I mean, some of these kids are 7 or 8 already, why aren’t they working?
“Just saw this article in New York magazine.”
They won’t let that happen - that’s for sure.
And now that Collins knows she sold her vote and got empty promises, to huge backlash, I wonder if she will reconsider. And would her vote change still leave it 50-50 for Pence to be a tiebraker