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For Immediate Release
May, 02 2023, 12:25pm EDT
Contact:
Linda Benesch, lbenesch@socialsecurityworks.org
Billboard Slams Rep. David Valadao For Voting to Cut Social Security and Veterans’ Benefits
Today, Social Security Works launched a billboard at Mohawk St & Walker Trl in Bakersfield, California, calling out Rep. David Valadao (R-CA22) for voting to cut Social Security and Veterans’ benefits.
Last Wednesday, Rep. Valadao voted for the Republican debt limit bill. The bill would cut funding for the Social Security Administration and VA by 22%. This would close offices, increase wait times, and force the agencies to lay off thousands of workers, making it far more difficult for seniors and veterans to access the benefits they've earned.
The billboard marks the launch of a campaign across California’s 22nd Congressional District organized by Social Security Works and the California Alliance for Retired Americans. The campaign, which will continue until the debt ceiling is hit around June 1st or until Congress passes a clean debt limit increase, will include gatherings outside of Rep. Valadao’s district offices.
“Rep. David Valadao voted to make it far harder for seniors and veterans to claim their earned benefits,” said Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works. “We are going to make sure that his constituents know it.”
Social Security Works' mission is to: Protect and improve the economic security of disadvantaged and at-risk populations; Safeguard the economic security of those dependent, now or in the future, on Social Security; and Maintain Social Security as a vehicle of social justice.
LATEST NEWS
'We Have a Better Idea': Sanders Unveils College for All Act as Trump Targets Higher Education
"Instead of increasing the cost of college in order to give more tax breaks to billionaires," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, "we are going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free."
May 21, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans move to gut federal student aid programs to help fund tax cuts for the rich, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday will introduce legislation aimed at making public colleges and universities tuition-free for most Americans.
The College for All Act of 2025, shared exclusively with Common Dreams ahead of its official introduction, would eliminate public college and university tuition and fees for students from married households earning $300,000 or less per year or single households earning $150,000 or less.
The legislation would also make public community colleges and trade schools tuition-free for all students, and provide grants to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and other institutions to eliminate tuition and fees for eligible students.
Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who will introduce identical companion legislation in the House, presented the bill as a direct counter to Trump and congressional Republicans, whose emerging reconciliation package and proposed federal budget for the coming fiscal year would enact deep cuts to federal higher education funding—while delivering huge tax breaks to the richest Americans.
"Instead of increasing the cost of college in order to give more tax breaks to billionaires, we have a better idea," said Sanders. "We are going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free so that working-class students can succeed and are not burdened with a lifetime of debt."
Jayapal, a senior House Democratic whip and chair emerita of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that "Congress can and must ensure that working families never have to take out crushing loans to pursue an education."
"The College for All Act will free students from a lifetime of debt, invest in working people, and transform higher education across America by making a degree more accessible to poor and working families across this country," she added. "This is more important now than ever as Trump continues to attack education in this country through attempts to strip funding from universities and to dismantle the Department of Education."
"Young people should not have to go deeply into debt to get the education they and our nation need. We must make public colleges and universities tuition-free."
The legislation stands no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Congress, but it represents an alternative vision for higher education that has proven extremely popular with the American public. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that 63% of U.S. adults support making public colleges and universities tuition-free.
More recent polling has shown similar support, with Democratic voters overwhelmingly backing the proposal as higher education costs rise and students graduate saddled with massive student loan debt.
Sanders plans to introduce the legislation Wednesday morning at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP Committee hearing on the state of higher education in the U.S., where public college costs more per student than in any other country except Luxembourg, according to the Education Data Initiative.
"Making public colleges and universities tuition-free is not a radical idea," declares a summary of the College for All Act provided by Sanders' office. "Other wealthy countries like France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland made their public colleges and universities tuition-free or virtually tuition-free several years ago."
"Over 50 years ago, many of our most prestigious public colleges and universities were also tuition-free or virtually tuition-free," the summary notes. "In a competitive global economy, we need the best-educated workforce in the world. Young people should not have to go deeply into debt to get the education they and our nation need. We must make public colleges and universities tuition-free."
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'They're Not Just Cutting Medicaid': GOP Bill Would Trigger Over $500 Billion in Medicare Cuts
"This is what Republicans do—pay for massive tax breaks for billionaires by going after programs families rely on the most: Medicaid, food assistance, and now Medicare."
May 21, 2025
The sprawling reconciliation package that House Republicans are rushing through committee would trigger over $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released late Tuesday.
The CBO analysis, requested by Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), came just hours before Republicans convened a dead-of-night House Rules Committee hearing on the budget legislation as they scramble to meet their Memorial Day deadline.
If enacted, the Republican bill would add trillions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade by delivering another round of tax cuts skewed to the rich, partially offset by huge cuts to Medicaid and other programs.
According to the CBO, the bill's addition to the deficit would trigger a process known as sequestration under the Statutory Pay‑As‑You‑Go (PAYGO) Act of 2010, a law long reviled by progressives that requires spending cuts equal to legislation's average deficit impact.
Unless lawmakers offset the deficit impact of the Republican bill or agree to waive the PAYGO requirements—which the GOP measure does not do—the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) "would be required to issue a sequestration order not more than 14 days after the end of the current session of Congress (excluding weekends and holidays) to reduce spending by $230 billion in fiscal year 2026," the CBO said.
"The deficit will explode so badly it will trigger automatic cuts, including over half a trillion dollars from Medicare."
Under PAYGO, automatic Medicare cuts are capped at 4%. The CBO estimates that the Republican legislation would trigger roughly $45 billion in Medicare cuts in 2026 and a total of $490 billion in cuts to the program between 2027 and 2034.
"This Republican budget bill is one of the most expensive—and dangerous—bills Congress has seen in decades," said Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "The nonpartisan CBO makes it clear: The deficit will explode so badly it will trigger automatic cuts, including over half a trillion dollars from Medicare."
"This is what Republicans do—pay for massive tax breaks for billionaires by going after programs families rely on the most: Medicaid, food assistance, and now Medicare," Boyle added. "It's reckless, dishonest, and deeply harmful to the middle class."
Boyle highlighted the CBO's findings during his testimony at the House Rules Committee hearing, which began in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
"This is really the breaking news," Boyle said. "Over the last several months, there's been no discussion of Medicare at all. There has been of Medicaid, but not of Medicare."
"Because of the size of the deficits, because of the PAYGO or Pay-As-You-Go Act, that would trigger sequestration of Medicare, and it would total over $500 billion," Boyle continued. "The official figure that CBO confirms is $535 billion in cuts to Medicare."
Boyle: "This is really the breaking news ... because of the size of the deficits, because of the paygo act, that would trigger sequestration of Medicare, and it would total over $500 billion. The official figure that CBO confirms is $535 billion in cuts to Medicare." pic.twitter.com/29mGQj0mgi
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 21, 2025
Boyle and other Democrats said the looming Medicare cuts amount to a betrayal of President Donald Trump's vow to shield the program—a promise that was included in the GOP's 2024 election platform.
"They're not just cutting Medicaid," said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), referring to the reconciliation bill's roughly $600 billion in proposed cuts to the healthcare program for low-income Americans. "They're cutting Medicare too."
House Budget Committee Democrats wrote on social media that "Trump promised to protect Medicare."
"He lied," they added.
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Rising Seas From Fossil Fuels Threaten Inland Migration 'Never Witnessed in Modern Civilization'
With governments "scaling back their already meager" actions to tackle climate breakdown, said one ecologist, "our present-day human culture is on a suicide course."
May 20, 2025
Less than six months away from the next United Nations summit for parties to the Paris climate agreement, scientists on Tuesday released a study showing that even meeting the deal's 1.5°C temperature target could lead to significant sea-level rise that drives seriously disruptive migration inland.
Governments that signed on to the 2015 treaty aim to take action to limit global temperature rise by 2100 to 1.5°C beyond preindustrial levels. Last year was not only the hottest in human history but also the first in which the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C. Multiple studies have warned of major impacts from even temporarily overshooting the target, bolstering demands for policymakers to dramatically rein in planet-heating fossil fuels.
The study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environmentwarns that 1.5°C "is too high" and even the current 1.2°C, "if sustained, is likely to generate several meters of sea-level rise over the coming centuries, causing extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and challenging the implementation of adaptation measures."
"To avoid this requires a global mean temperature that is cooler than present and which we hypothesize to be closer to +1°C above preindustrial, possibly even lower, but further work is urgently required to more precisely determine a 'safe limit' for ice sheets," the paper states, referring to Antarctica and Greenland's continental glaciers.
Co-author Jonathan Bamber told journalists that "what we mean by safe limit is one which allows some level of adaptation, rather than catastrophic inland migration and forced migration, and the safe limit is roughly 1 centimeter a year of sea-level rise."
"If you get to that, then it becomes extremely challenging for any kind of adaptation, and you're going to see massive land migration on scales that we've never witnessed in modern civilization," said the University of Bristol professor.
In terms of timing, study lead author Chris Stokes, from the United Kingdom's Durham University, said in a statement that "rates of 1 centimeter per year are not out of the question within the lifetime of our young people."
- YouTube
There are currently around 8.18 billion people on the planet. The study—funded by the United Kingdom's Natural Environment Research Council—says that "continued mass loss from ice sheets poses an existential threat to the world's coastal populations, with an estimated 1 billion people inhabiting land less than 10 meters above sea level and around 230 million living within 1 meter."
"Without adaptation, conservative estimates suggest that 20 centimeters of [sea-level rise] by 2050 would lead to average global flood losses of $1 trillion or more per year for the world's 136 largest coastal cities," says the study, also co-authored by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Andrea Dutton and University of Massachusetts Amherst's Rob DeConto in the United States.
DeConto said Tuesday that "it is important to stress that these accelerating changes in the ice sheets and their contributions to sea level should be considered permanent on multigenerational timescales."
"Even if the Earth returns to its preindustrial temperature, it will still take hundreds to perhaps thousands of years for the ice sheets to recover," the professor explained. "If too much ice is lost, parts of these ice sheets may not recover until the Earth enters the next ice age. In other words, land lost to sea-level rise from melting ice sheets will be lost for a very, very long time. That's why it is so critical to limit warming in the first place."
Not really a surprise We are already committed to a 12m+ sea-level rise, sufficient to drown every coastal town and city on the planet The only question is how long will this take www.theguardian.com/environment/...
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— Prof Bill McGuire (@profbillmcguire.bsky.social) May 20, 2025 at 7:50 AM
While the paper sparked some international alarm, Stokes highlighted what he called "a reason for hope," which is that "we only have to go back to the early 1990s to find a time when the ice sheets looked far healthier."
"Global temperatures were around 1°C above preindustrial back then, and carbon dioxide concentrations were 350 parts per million, which others have suggested is a much safer limit for planet Earth," he said. "Carbon dioxide concentrations are currently around 424 parts per million and continue to increase."
The new paper continues an intense stream of bleak studies on the worsening climate emergency, and specifically, looming sea-level rise. Another, published by the journal Nature in February, shows that glaciers have lost an average of 273 billion metric tons of ice annually since 2000.
Despite scientists' warnings, the government whose country is responsible for the largest share of historical planet-heating emissions, the United States, is actually working to boost the fossil fuel industry. Upon returning to office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump declared an "energy emergency" and ditched the Paris agreement.
Responding to the new study on social media, Scottish ecologist Alan Watson Featherstone called out both the U.S. and U.K. governments. He said that with many countries "scaling back their already meager and [totally] inadequate actions to address climate breakdown, our present-day human culture is on a suicide course."
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