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senior citizens
Trump Continues to Falsely Claim He Eliminated Taxes on Social Security
The mainstream media need to highlight this deception.
May 05, 2026
At a campaign-like rally at The Villages, a retirement community near Orlando, Florida, President Donald Trump continued his campaign of deception about his record on Social Security. As he has many times in the last several months, Trump falsely claimed that his “One Big Beautiful Bill” eliminated taxes. This time however Trump took his campaign of deception to a higher level. The background for Trump included the words “Golden Age for Your Golden Years” and “No Tax on Social Security.”
Unfortunately, many in the mainstream media simply ignore Trump’s continued falsehoods on Social Security. Let’s look at the facts. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” did not eliminate taxes on Social Security. Indeed, the legislative process, “reconciliation,” which the Republicans used to pass the legislation, prohibits these types of changes in Social Security.
Rather than eliminate taxes on Social Security, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” according to CNN included some temporary tax cuts for certain Social Security beneficiaries:
Instead [of eliminating taxes on Social Security], the legislation will provide senior citizens with a $6,000 boost to their standard deduction from 2025 through 2028. The benefit will start to phase out for individuals with incomes of more than $75,000 and married couples with incomes of more than $150,000.Trump, GOP lawmakers, and administration officials have repeatedly claimed the package eliminates taxes on Social Security benefits. But that is not in the legislation, and the enhanced deduction would not be available to everyone who receives monthly payments from the agency—like people who elect to start receiving benefits at 62 but who are not yet 65.
The Bipartisan Policy Center points out that the Social Security changes in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will not help lower-income older Americans:
The additional $6,000 tax deduction for seniors will not benefit households with taxable income below the enhanced standard deduction. Because Social Security benefits—a major source of income for older Americans—are not counted in taxable income (see below) for approximately half of beneficiaries (and only partially counted in taxable income for the other half), the increased standard deduction in OBBB means that many older Americans with low income will not receive any benefit from the additional deduction.
While the benefits of the Social Security changes in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” have been grossly overestimated, not nearly enough attention has been focused on the damage it did to the Social Security program. The fact is that the bill increased Social Security’s fiscal problems. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reported last year that:
The Social Security and Medicare Trustees estimated in their 2025 annual reports on the programs that the retirement and hospital trust funds will become insolvent in 2033—only eight years from today. We estimate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) would accelerate Social Security and Medicare insolvency by a year, to 2032. That’s when today’s 60-year-olds reach the full retirement age and when today’s youngest retirees turn 69.
Social Security can be a difficult topic to cover. However, it is the federal program that impacts the most Americans. Literally millions of Americans depend on the program. According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), “Among Social Security beneficiaries age 65 and older, 39% of men and 44% of women receive 50% or more of their income from Social Security. and 12% of men and 15% of women rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income.”
I understand the mainstream media’s reluctance to continually report on Trump’s continued falsehoods about Social Security. However, the media has an obligation to call out Trump when he gets it wrong on Social Security. Millions of older Americans and their families are counting on the media to hold Trump accountable. As citizens, we have an obligation to hold our elected officials accountable as well.
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Senate Report Highlights 'Betrayal of American Seniors' by Trump
"The president has actively harmed the well-being of seniors and broken his promises... to stop inflation, not touch Social Security, and leave Medicaid alone."
Mar 26, 2026
US Sen. Kirsten Gillbrand on Wednesday unveiled a report detailing how President Donald Trump's attacks on Social Security, Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and other programs are harming the very senior citizens whose strong support was so instrumental in his reelection.
The report—which was authored by the minority staff of the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging at the direction of Gillibrand (D-NY), its ranking member—states that Trump "was tasked with leading a nation that is rapidly aging and facing critical decisions about the policies and resources needed to support a sizable demographic change."
"The United States must decide how to ensure the independence of its seniors, how to support caregivers, and how to assist entire aging communities," the publication continues. "After one year in office, President Trump has failed at his obligations to America’s seniors. In fact, the president has actively harmed the well-being of seniors and broken his promises to them—such as his promises to stop inflation, not touch Social Security, and leave Medicaid alone."
Trump has FAILED at his obligations to America’s #seniors. The president has actively broken his promises to stop inflation, not to touch #SocialSecurity, and to "leave #Medicaid alone." READ the minority report of the Senate Committee on Aging HERE::: www.gillibrand.senate.gov/wp-content/u...
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— NCPSSM (@ncpssm.bsky.social) March 26, 2026 at 9:56 AM
Gillibrand said in a statement introducing the report that it "shows that instead of fighting for seniors, the president has attacked the very programs that help them stay afloat."
Republicans' so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law last July, ushered in the biggest cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in US history.
Gillibrand's report "focuses on eight harms that represent the Trump administration’s failure to support seniors during his first year in office."
According to the publication, Trump:
- Broke his promise to tame inflation and expressed disdain for concerns about the cost of living;
- Used the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to attack the infrastructure supporting Social Security;
- Decimated Medicaid so he could slash taxes for wealthy Americans;
- Repealed key nursing home safety standards after being lobbied by wealthy nursing home executives;
- Disrupted services authorized by the Older Americans Act, including nutrition programs like Meals on Wheels;
- Created new red tape for seniors to access food assistance as another way to fund tax cuts for wealthy Americans;
- Proposed steep cuts for nonprofits that protect people with disabilities and seniors; and
- Attempted to dismantle the agency that guards Americans against financial crimes, including ones that target older adults.
"As a result, American seniors are sicker, poorer, and more vulnerable today than they were just a year ago," Gillbrand said. "This is devastating. I’ll keep fighting for legislation that counteracts the president’s efforts to undermine these programs so that our seniors can age with dignity and respect.”
Other Democratic members of Congress including Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) and Reps. Melanie Stansbury (NM) and John Larson (NJ) pointed out how Trump administration policies—including those mentioned in this piece and others like the billion-dollar-per-day war on Iran—are harming seniors by spending money that could have been allocated for their benefit or, in the case of Stansbury, by noting GOP attacks on mail-in voting, upon which many seniors rely.
"Seniors today are having a very hard time getting their benefits.Why?Social Security has pushed out 7,700 workers since Trump took office."
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— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) March 26, 2026 at 9:03 AM
"'America first' was bullshit," Duckworth said on Bluesky. "With the $200 billion Trump wants for Iran, we could fund a decade of free, universal preschool; provide seniors with Medicare dental, vision, and hearing coverage for three years; build 2 million+ affordable homes. He promised to end wars."
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Medicare Defenders Slam 'Obscene' Looming Cuts to Telehealth Coverage
"We have trillions to spend on tax breaks for the rich and corporations," said one economic policy expert, "but we can't afford to cover telehealth visits for seniors?"
Feb 21, 2025
The announcement Thursday that Medicare will no longer cover many telehealth services starting April 1 prompted elder and telemedicine advocates to urge the Trump administration to continue the provision of vital remote care for millions of Americans.
According to the Medicare website, "you can get telehealth services at any location in the U.S., including your home" until March 31. Beginning April 1, "you must be in an office or medical facility located in a rural area... for most telehealth services. If you aren't in a rural healthcare setting, you can still get certain Medicare telehealth services on or after April 1."
These services include monthly kidney dialysis treatments; diagnosis, evaluation, or treatment of acute stroke symptoms; and mental and behavioral health services, including addiction treatment.
"What is the rationale for this, other than making life more difficult for many seniors?"
The announcement came as the White House signaled Republican U.S. President Donald Trump's openness to slashing Medicare's budget under the guise of the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) mission of reducing "waste, fraud, and abuse."
"Unreal," economic policy expert Michael Linden
said on social media. "We have trillions to spend on tax breaks for the rich and corporations, but we can't afford to cover telehealth visits for seniors?"
One Trump supporter asked on social media: "Why is Medicare eliminating telemedicine? I'm a senior and find it very convenient. If it's fraud, figure out a way to prevent fraud. Have calls made over a government app! I want to know why!"
Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) asked, "What is the rationale for this, other than making life more difficult for many seniors?"
Campaign for New York Health executive director Melanie D'Arrigo accused Trump of "killing telehealth for seniors, because many seniors will skip seeing a doctor if they have to go in person."
"Patients skipping appointments saves money, but also leads to more preventable deaths," D'Arrigo added. "Guess which he cares about more?"
Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, quipped: "Not sure who this is a handout to. I know Trump wants to burn as much fossil fuel as possible, so that is one motivation. Maybe people were getting fewer unnecessary tests with telemedicine, so the medical testing industry could also have been a factor. Any other explanations?"
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association—an advocacy group for U.S. public health professionals—told Route Fifty's Kaitlyn Levinson Thursday that "the federal contribution is absolutely essential for [telemedicine] to be a seamless system."
However, Benjamin said that "it is unclear what the Trump administration's financial policies will be in terms of supporting telemedicine and incentivizing telemedicine."
Benjamin added that he hopes the Trump administration will "provide supplemental funding and support for states that want to beef up their telemedicine capacity."
The American Telemedicine Association (ATA), another advocacy group, last month praised Trump for temporarily expanding Medicare telehealth coverage during the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Trump can cement his legacy as the president to modernize the American healthcare system by permanently enabling omnichannel care delivery that leverages both in-person and virtual care," ATA senior vice president for public policy Kyle Zebley said in a statement.
"In doing so," Zebley added, "he will expand access to needed care for millions of patients, boost a beleaguered provider population, and create greater efficiencies and operational successes for struggling healthcare organizations."
American Medical Association president Dr. Bruce A. Scott said last month that "congressional action is required to prevent the severe limitations on telehealth that existed before the Covid-19 pandemic from being restored."
"We must make these flexibilities permanent and secure telehealth's future as an essential element of our patient toolbox, and ensure that all Americans—including rural, underserved, and historically marginalized populations—can receive full access to the care they need," Scott added.
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A Call to (Old) Arms: Don’t Let Trump Define What It Means to Age
We have to weaponize old age for good causes and shake a mindset that allows us to warehouse people because their presence is an inconvenience while covering up for those with money and power.
Oct 11, 2024
After U.S. President Joe Biden was shuffled off stage on trumped-up charges of senility, I started thinking seriously about the weaponization of old age in our world. Who gets credit for old age and who gets the boot?
At 86, I share that affliction, pervasive among the richest, healthiest, and/or luckiest of us, who manage to hang around the longest. Former President Donald Trump is, of course, in this same group, although much of America seems to be in selective denial about his diminishing capabilities. He was crushed recently in The Great Debate yet is generally given something of a mulligan for hubris, craziness, and unwillingness to prepare. But face it, unlike Joe B., he was simply too old to cut the mustard.
It’s time to get real about old age as a condition that, yes, desperately needs and deserves better resources and reverence, but also careful monitoring and culling. Such thinking is not a bias crime. It’s not even an alert for ancient drivers on the roads. It’s an alarm for tolerating dangerous old politicians who spread lies and send youngsters to war, while we continue to willfully waste the useful experience and energy of all ages.
Once you’ve accepted that you’ll look, feel, and be treated differently in old age, you’re also ready to accept the fact that you can be the master of your attitude and response.
We have to weaponize old age for good causes. We have to shake a mindset that allows us to warehouse people because their presence is an inconvenience while covering up for those with money and power. Out of shame or guilt or that feeling of elder helplessness, even smart old people all too often go along with arbitrary cut-off dates. I remember my dad, at 75 and retired, inveighing against the “dead wood,” especially in his field (education) that blocked progress and discouraged young energy and innovation. By 75, he maintained, people were sliding downhill, which was his way of justifying being shelved himself. He became increasingly depressed and listless, not because he was too old but because he had been made to feel useless.
Then, at 76, he was given the chance to help other old people with their tax returns and, ultimately, their confrontations with local government. He promptly perked up and became an active advocate for elder rights until his accidental death at 100.
My old friends and I talk constantly about our aging, how to suffer it, outwit it, gang up on it, or even strategically give in to it. We’ve decided that nobody in power is doing anything meaningful about it because, beyond exploitive eldercare, they haven’t figured out how to turn a profit.
Meanwhile, the really rich coots like Rupert Murdoch, at 93, are still tomcatting around and fussing with succession plans, while Warren Buffet, at 94, is cagily toying with his billions to avoid inheritance taxes.
Those old boys are anything but role models for me and my friends. After all, they’ve been practicing all their lives how to be rich old pigs, their philanthropy mirroring their interests, not the needs of the rest of us. In my pay grade, we’re expected to concentrate on tips from AARP newsletters on how to avoid telephone scams and falls, the bane of the geezer class. And that’s important, but it’s also a way of keeping us anxious and impotent.
Those Falls
This screed isn’t just the product of my stewing over old age. An incident in the parking lot of a big box store on the day after The Great Debate set me off.
Here’s what happened: An elderly man in the car beside mine stepped out of the driver’s seat, lowered his cane to the concrete, and pitched over flat on his face. His wife immediately ran to him from the passenger’s seat. I got there next, phone out, and asked her if I should call an ambulance. She was adamant: No! Within two minutes there were six of us, including four elderly gents, helping him turn himself over and sit up. There was no blood on his face, just one skinned kneecap.
He shook off attempts to help him stand, looking angry, humiliated, and embarrassed. I finally rolled a shopping cart next to him and he used it to clamber to his feet. Even with his cane planted on the concrete, he still seemed shaky, but he got right back in his car with his wife and hurriedly drove off. The rest of us looked at each other and wordlessly drifted away.
I then sat in my car trying to sort out what I had just experienced. On the one hand, the quick response of a largely elderly crew was thrilling proof that we were still up for the game, that we could still help each other. But I found the embarrassed, almost hostile response of the fallen man—and the wife who obviously knew what he wouldn’t stand for—discouraging. Why hadn’t he acknowledged our desire to help him? Why had he driven off so brusquely without even checking himself out?
And why should he have felt so obviously mortified by a common accident? Because it was such a marker of old age? Why hadn’t the rest of us, me included, tried to be more persuasive about helping him? Were we too inappropriately understanding of old age’s sense of vulnerability, weakness, helplessness? The seeming diminution of manhood? Would a woman have acted differently?
I then mentioned it to a woman—my wife Lois and she promptly asked me, “Did it remind you of your fall?”
How had I forgotten that?
Just last winter, while walking the dog, my legs had slid out from under me on my icy driveway. I was suddenly flat on my back. I thought about inching down the driveway to a fence where I might be able to pull myself up. It would be a long trip, but…
A voice suddenly boomed out behind me. “You alright?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said as cheerily as I could.
“Yeah, right. It’s Jim Read.”
The local chief of police! I felt embarrassed. Strong hands boosted me up, guided me down the driveway to safe ground, and frisked me for broken bones. I barely had a chance to say thanks, before he was back in his patrol car, pulling away.
A few months later I ran into him. He shrugged off my thanks, as if he either didn’t remember my fall or considered it too commonplace to dwell on.
Role Models
Those incidents stay in my mind as symbolic of how routinely we oldsters shrink from confronting our vulnerabilities. And then I thought about two people I had once known and one I still see who faced them head-on
My prime role model, my dad, helped form my attitude toward aging and, in my own old age, he—or at least his memory—lives with me still. Above all, he taught me not to be afraid of the whole process. The second crucial figure—remember for years I was a sports reporter for The New York Times—was New York Yankee and then New York Mets manager Casey Stengel who showed me how aging could be used, for better and for worse. And my current inspiration, the 95-year-old artist Jules Feiffer, continues to offer me a blueprint for having a late working life. What they’ve all taught me is this: Once you’ve accepted that you’ll look, feel, and be treated differently in old age, you’re also ready to accept the fact that you can be the master of your attitude and response.
I met Stengel in 1962 at the first spring training of the New York Mets. He was then 71 years old, incredibly old to the 24-year-old sportswriter Robert Lipsyte. (And remember that “old” started much sooner then.) He was bitter at having recently been fired after a long and historic winning career with the Yankees. “I made the mistake of getting old,” he would tell me.
It does seem that old age almost always arrives at a bad time and it’s hard to kick the bad guys in the butt when you can’t raise your knee.
Most sportswriters readily accepted the decision of the Yankees and treated Stengel as a comical figure, too old to manage effectively. They wrote him off as “the ol’ Perfesser” and his rambling monologues as nonsensical “Stengelese,” when all conversation with him required was careful attention. (Mind you, I’m not innocent here. More than 60 years later, I still cringe at descriptions in articles I wrote then of his “pleated face” and scuttling, crab-like gait.)
Stengel could be cruel. One spring, he called a press conference and trotted out the two least talented rookies in training camp. He regaled the sportswriters with predictions about their potential and how they represented the future of the brand-new Mets. National and local press and TV outlets featured them. A few days later, they were cut from the team and never heard from again, corollary casualties of Casey’s revenge on the media.
At the time, I felt sorry for those young players. But even as one of the victims of his nasty prank, I couldn’t help appreciating how he had used our ageism against us. We swallowed his story. After all, how could that old coot bamboozle us?
But there was another side to Casey. That same first season with the Mets, on a muggy night in Houston during pre-game batting practice, I watched him respond to a middle-aged man, dragging a sullen-looking teenage boy, who beckoned from the stands. “I wonder if you remember me, Case,” he said, mentioning his name. “I pitched against you in Kankakee.” (He was referring to a pre-World War I minor-league team in Illinois at the start of Stengel’s long playing career.) The teenager kept trying to pull his father away.
Casey read the situation. He said, “The old fireballer himself. Why I was sure glad when you quit that league, I never could hit you a-tall.” Casey kept talking until it was time to manage the game.
The man and the boy returned to their seats, grinning, shoulders bumping. When I caught up to Casey, he just shrugged and then admitted he had no memory of who the man was.
Later, I told the story to one of the “Stengelese” sportswriters and he suggested Casey had staged the scene to impress The New York Times’ soft-hearted, liberal rookie reporter. “You should write that,” I responded. “It’s another way of looking at him, proves he’s still pretty sharp.”
“It’s not what the fans and the editors want,” the older sportswriter said. “They like the nutty old-fart stuff. It sells.”
The nutty old-fart stuff still sells—in the case of Joe Biden as a way to diminish, dismiss, or even demonize him. Soon after his debate debacle with Donald Trump, a stylish young editor at GQ asked me to write an old man’s take on the president’s situation, a welcome nod to experience. The first thing I thought of was how hard it is for any of us to give up what I call “the warm,” that cheering spotlight of attention. I thought of heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, who I had ever so long ago covered as a reporter and how, in his final fights, he was humiliated because he couldn’t acknowledge getting older, losing strength and power, stuck as he was in the victory culture male’s sense of power and triumph, of never surrendering.
Biden must have shared that until he committed what functionally was political suicide, even if it was acclaimed as a selfless sacrifice.
My current inspiration, my friend and former neighbor Jules Feiffer, the famed Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, is seriously hearing- and sight-impaired and can barely walk. But he can still think, laugh, and draw. Every day.
Jules is one of those “shining examples”—especially after his first attempt at a graphic novel for middle-graders, Amazing Grapes, just got a rave review in The New York Times and tons of attention (“mostly because I’m so old,” he assured me). But it’s his spirit, often mislabeled as “youthful” instead of humane, that offers hope. Even as he admittedly struggles to hang on to what’s left of his Bronx-born American dream in the Age of Trump, he never gives up on himself or his ability to keep nudging his readers toward their own sense of possibility and change. His nearly completed next book—yes, there already is one!—will be an illustrated commentary on his (and our) strange times.
Okay, so where do I go from here? In fantasy, Dad, Casey, and Jules would make a fine team to deal with this increasingly disturbed and disturbing world of ours. If only. But how exactly do we put such a team together? We’re all short-timers, no matter how old we get, but we can’t let the bad guys wait us out. We need to treat old age as an identity and ourselves as part of an ethnic-style group deserving attention.
Yes, it does seem that old age almost always arrives at a bad time and it’s hard to kick the bad guys in the butt when you can’t raise your knee. And somehow the shining examples of individual super seniors like Dad, Casey, and Jules tend to remain just that—shining examples—rather than models for small-scale collective action.
But consider this my call to (old) arms. After all these years, haven’t we earned the right to be loud and obstreperous?
A Gang of Elders
As the former president of my town’s senior citizen organization let me tell you this: Old age is just a wrinkled extension of who you’ve always been, whether you end up frolicking in a golf cart at a luxury retirement community or waiting in semi-darkness for Meals on Wheels.
The board of my group was made up of a dozen oldsters who variously worked remarkably hard or were remarkably lazy, proved innovative or simply obstructive in distinctly alert or zombie-like modes—pretty much, I thought, as they must have acted all their lives. The nice ones could be passive, the mean ones relentless. Institutional memory was generally a good thing, but all too often presented itself as numbing anecdotage. Those seniors I dealt with then defined themselves by class, education, or economic position, but rarely age. Beyond creaky joints, treated with wry humor, and recommended doctors, old never seemed to be a shared identity.
Why not? Maybe because we didn’t have a clear social mission. The group’s main job was supporting—by fundraising and lobbying—the town’s senior services, mostly nutritional and logistical. We did that well, from buying an $85,000 wheelchair-accessible bus to renovating the local church kitchen that serves much of the food at senior events. But we could never get it together for the next major step—creating a political force. Maybe we could get seniors out on election day, but we couldn’t get them to vote for the candidates that might serve their immediate interests, much less help deal with climate change, water quality, community housing, medical and healthy food accessibility, and the like.
We couldn’t mount a resistance. We couldn’t recapitulate the spirit of the Gray Panthers, the group formed in 1970 to combat forced retirement, reform nursing home practices, and protect social security. Founder Maggie Kuhn said: “Old age is not a disease—it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.”
The Gray Panthers were created to be an intergenerational group although its energy came from the anger and experience of its older members. The Gray Panthers exist, working for peace and equal rights. Understandably it’s not a commercially sexy group and doesn’t get a lot of publicity. Still, in the age of Donald Trump, go join them anyway and remind the world that he is not what it means to be old, although statistically he would be our oldest president if the worst-case scenario occurs in November.
Or start your own club. Be a club of one. Register old people to vote and drive them to the ballot box. Don’t be shy. What have we got to lose? They can’t eat us, can they? Sharpen the end of your cane, affix spurs to the front of your wheelchair. Die trying.
While you’re at it just try not to fall. And if you do, let someone help you up.
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Progressives Say 2.5% COLA Increase Is a Reminder That Social Security Is on the Ballot
"Older Americans should pay close attention and make sure they support candidates who will protect the benefits they have earned—and even increase them—in the fast approaching November elections," said one advocate.
Oct 10, 2024
The cost-of-living adjustment announced Thursday by the U.S. Social Security Administration for more than 72 million senior citizens should serve as a reminder, said economic justice advocates, that the monthly Social Security payments—the "bedrock" of financial security for 58% of recipients—are on election ballots this year.
The administration announced a 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment, commonly known as COLA, for 2025. People who get retirement benefits through the broadly popular New Deal-era program will see their payments adjusted starting in January 2025, and people with disabilities who rely on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) will receive increased benefits starting in December.
To Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works (SSW), which advocates to protect and expand the program, the COLA announcement underscored the vast differences in how Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are likely to approach the Social Security program should they win the presidency in November.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, both co-sponsored legislation to update the COLA formula to better reflect the cost of living for seniors and people with disabilities, noted Altman.
" Republicans have a different perspective," she said. "The Republican Study Committee (which comprises over 80% of House Republicans) proposes annual budgets that include Social Security cuts. Page 104 of the Fiscal Year 2025 Republican Study Committee Budget calls the automatic nature of COLAs a 'problem' and implies that they should be subjected to annual Congressional approval. It also claims that the current COLA formula is too generous. Social Security beneficiaries likely disagree!"
The authors of Project 2025, the right-wing policy agenda co-written by dozens of people who worked in the Trump White House from 2017-21, have also endorsed increasing the full retirement age from 67 to 69, which would cut benefits for nearly three-quarters of Americans.
The current formula for the COLA is based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), but advocates have called for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to instead take into consideration the CPI-E, which measures the spending of Americans 62 years of age and older.
"The formula currently used to calculate annual COLAs under-measures the expenses that Social Security beneficiaries face," said Altman. "Seniors spend a greater proportion of their income on medical expenses―and the Social Security COLA should reflect that."
For beneficiaries who last year received $1,870 per month, the 2.5% increase will give them an additional $46.80 each month, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst Mary Johnson told Newsweek.
"That's only going to buy about 14 gallons of gasoline per month at today's prices, or maybe enough groceries for one to last two or three days," she added.
Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said the group welcomes the COLA, but warned that "many older Americans struggle to make ends meet and afford even the most basic necessities like housing, food, and prescription drugs."
"We need a COLA that better reflects how seniors spend their money," said Fiesta. "Strengthening Social Security and increasing benefits must be a national priority. If billionaires and the top 1% pay their fair share into the system, we can afford to increase benefits across the board and ensure Social Security is there for our children and grandchildren."
"Raising the retirement age, slashing benefits and privatizing the program are among retirees' top concerns," he added. "Older Americans should pay close attention and make sure they support candidates who will protect the benefits they have earned—and even increase them—in the fast approaching November elections."
Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) pointed to the Social Security 2100 Act, legislation that would apply federal payroll taxes to earnings above $400,000 to ensure millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share toward funding and expanding Social Security.
"There is an urgent need to act to not only protect Social Security from the cuts that my Republican colleagues have proposed [but to] enhance benefits," said Larson.
Ahead of the elections, said Altman, "the bottom line is that Democrats want to make annual COLAs more accurate and generous, while Republicans want to make them stingier."
"Democrats also support other policies that would lower costs for Social Security beneficiaries, including Harris' recently released plan to expand Medicare to include home care, hearing, and vision benefits," she said. "Older voters should bear that in mind this November."
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Advocates Applaud Harris' Plan for Medicare to Cover Home Health Aides
"In this presidential election, we have the choice between a candidate who has a plan for working families and one who has only offered 'concepts of a plan,' including gutting the Affordable Care Act," said one labor leader.
Oct 08, 2024
Labor unions and consumer advocates were among those applauding Tuesday after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced her proposal for home healthcare coverage under Medicare—a broadly popular idea, according to polls, that supporters said would be a "game-changer" for millions of families.
On the ABC talk show "The View," Harris spoke about the "sandwich generation"—middle-aged Americans who find themselves caring for aging parents while they're also raising their own children.
"There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle," said the Democratic presidential nominee. "And it's just, almost, impossible to do it all, especially if they work. We're finding that so many are then having to leave their job, which means losing a source of income, not to mention the emotional stress. And so what I am proposing is that basically what we will do is allow Medicare to cover in-home healthcare."
Medicare currently only covers in-home healthcare for short periods of time, such as in cases of a patient recovering from surgery. But the number of aging Americans who need need prolonged healthcare at home is expected to explode in the coming years as members of the baby boomer generation reach their 80s.
Medicaid covers home care for low-income people who are elderly or have disabilities, but waiting lists are long and beneficiaries are required to max out their savings before qualifying.
Covering at-home healthcare for Medicare's 67 million beneficiaries would "provide much-needed relief and financial support" to about 37 million people who currently provide unpaid eldercare to their family members, said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen, said that "home health expansion through Medicare is a smart and desperately needed place to start" on the road to expanding and improving Medicare.
"This important expansion would finally allow Medicare to cover crucial services where many beneficiaries would prefer to receive them—in the safety and comfort of their homes," said Gilbert. "Such an expansion would lay the groundwork for even further improvements and expansions to Medicare including hearing, dental, and vision services. A low out-of-pocket cap on medical expenses would ensure seniors can afford to get the care they need, and by reining in Medicare Advantage overpayments, we could fund many of these priorities."
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president April Verrett said the plan offers the latest contrast between Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who aims to repeal the Affordable Care Act and has said he has "concepts of a plan" to replace the law.
"Along with her proposals to invest in childcare, in paid leave, and to make Medicaid investments in home care, as well as lower costs for working families and raising wages for care workers, Kamala Harris is showing that she's been listening to working families," said Verrett. "In this presidential election, we have the choice between a candidate who has a plan for working families and one who has only offered 'concepts of a plan,' including gutting the Affordable Care Act and the nonsensical idea of paying for childcare through tariffs, which would actually raise prices."
"Care workers rallied to elect President [Joe] Biden and Vice President Harris, and this administration has demonstrated again and again that they stand with us," added Verrett. "Now we need to finish the job with Kamala Harris as president, making home care accessible to all and delivering the historic investment in care that our nation desperately needs."
The vice president said Medicare negotiations over drug prices, which were begun under the Biden administration over the objections of Republicans and which she supports expanding, would pay for the new Medicare benefit.
"Part of what I also intend to do is allow Medicare to continue to negotiate drug prices against these big pharmaceutical companies, which means we are going to save Medicare the money, because we're not going to be paying these high prices, and that those resources are best then put in a way that helps a family," said Harris.
Gilbert expressed hope that the new benefit, which would need to be approved by Congress, would be just one step toward expanding Medicare coverage to all Americans.
"We must continue to expand the availability of Medicare by lowering the qualifying age," she said, "so we can finally build a healthcare system that ensures that every American can get the care they need when they need it without going bankrupt."
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'Austerity Is Labour's Choice': Outrage as Starmer Cuts Winter Fuel Allowance
"Cutting winter fuel allowance is not a tough choice," Jeremy Corbyn said. "It's the wrong choice—and we will not be fooled by ministers' attempts to feign regret over cruel decisions they don't have to take."
Sep 11, 2024
Progressive critics and lawmakers are expressing outrage after the U.K. Parliament on Tuesday voted to cut a winter fuel allowance for millions of Britons, calling the move by the ruling Labour Party, which took power in July, a continuation of the Conservative Party's austerity policies.
The measure turns the allowance, which provides £200 to £300 ($262 to $293) per year to senior citizens for heating bills, into a means-tested program in which only the poorest will qualify. It's expected to reduce the number of people receiving the winter payment from 11.4 million last year to 1.5 million this year. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it a "tough choice" that was necessary because of the poor state of the British treasury.
A vote to overturn the cut lost 348 to 228 on Tuesday after Labour successfully whipped enough its members of Parliament into supporting the cut. Fifty two Labour MPs abstained, at least 20 of whom had expressed opposition to the plan, and one voted in opposition.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who now represents voters as an independent, condemned Starmer's move.
"Cutting winter fuel allowance is not a tough choice," Corbyn wrote on social media. "It's the wrong choice—and we will not be fooled by ministers' attempts to feign regret over cruel decisions they don't have to take."
"Did he get permission from the Tories to reuse their trademark slogans?" he asked of Starmer in an a Tuesday op-ed in Tribune.
Under the headline, "Austerity Is Labour's Choice," Corybn railed against Starmer and his allies for falling back on the kind of neoliberalism that has dominated the U.K. for decades. He wrote:
It is astonishing to hear government ministers try to pull the wool over the public's eyes. The government knows that there is a range of choices available to them. They could introduce wealth taxes to raise upwards of £10 billion. They could stop wasting public money on private contracts. They could launch a fundamental redistribution of power by bringing water and energy into full public ownership. Instead, they have opted to take resources away from people who were promised things would change. There is plenty of money, it’s just in the wrong hands.
The winter fuel payment was introduced as an unconditional cash transfer in 1997 under then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Some economists have argued that U.K. pensioners are in better position today than than were then, and thus the payment no longer makes sense; others have noted that in real terms, the payment is far lower than it used to be, due to inflation, and thus had become a relatively insignificant benefit anyway.
However, progressives have called the cuts, which were first proposed after Labour took office and weren't mentioned during the election campaign, far too drastic, given the roughly 10 million people they'll effect. Meanwhile, Corbyn and others have argued that Labour's move marks a loss for universalism and could auger more cuts to come:
A universal system of welfare reduces the stigma attached to those who rely on it, and removes barriers for those who find it difficult to apply (both are reasons why the take-up of means-tested payments is so low). What next for means testing? The state pension? The NHS [National Health Service]?
Some commentators have objected to rich pensioners receiving benefits such as the fuel allowance. Progressives have responded that the money should simply be clawed back through higher tax rates on the wealthy.
"In my view the government should be looking to raise revenues from the wealthiest in society, not working class pensioners," Jon Trickett, the only Labour MP to vote to nix to the cut, said in a statement issued on social media.
Universal programs make it easier to reach all those who need help, progressives argue. The new winter fuel payment will be set up so that only those who receive a Pension Credit or other similar government benefit will be eligible for it. But only 63% of pensioners who qualify for the credit actually receive it, government statistics show. The government has announced a campaign to try to increase uptake of the credit.
Trickett said that he feared it would lead more senior citizens to fall into poverty during what he predicted would be an "extremely difficult" winter for his constituents in West Yorkshire. "After years of obscene profiteering by energy companies, they are hiking bills yet again," he wrote.
Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said the cut would save the treasury £1.4 billion ($1.8 billion) this year. She argues that the Conservatives, who held power from 2010 until July, initially as part of a coalition, left the national finances in a dire state and Labour must fill a £22 billion ($28.7 billion) budgetary "black hole."
Labour hasn't released an official impact assessment of the winter payment measure. Reeves, like Starmer, has said she didn't want to make the cut, but two weeks ago a video clip of her proposing to cut the allowance as an opposition MP in 2014.
Rachel Reeves has repeatedly said she didn't want to cut the universal winter fuel allowance for pensioners but it was a tough decision forced on her because of the financial black hole left by the last govt
Here's Reeves 10 years ago: pic.twitter.com/1BAIL4racv
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) August 28, 2024
Reeves and Starmer have long tried to establish their fiscal prudence and distance themselves from purportedly free-spending progressives in their party. A progressive commentator on Novara Media called their winter allowance cut an "incredible political fumble."
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Project 2025's Plan to Kill Medicare Via Default Enrollments in For-Profit Alternative
"If implemented, Project 2025 would lead to a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees and taxpayers," warns a new Center for American Progress report.
Aug 15, 2024
Project 2025—the far-right initiative to expand U.S. presidential power and purge the federal civil service—poses a dire threat to the government-run healthcare coverage enjoyed by tens of millions of senior citizens by making private, for-profit Medicare Advantage plans the default option for all Medicare enrollees, a report published Thursday warned.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) report said the goal of the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups behind Project 2025 involves "pushing the United States toward a future of fully privatized Medicare."
"If implemented, Project 2025 would lead to a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees and taxpayers, and at the expense of Medicare's financial sustainability," CAP said, noting that "Medicare Advantage costs the Medicare program 22% more per enrollee than traditional Medicare."
"If Project 2025's plan to make MA the default option were to expand the proportion of Medicare beneficiaries in MA to 75%—up from its current enrollment level of 51%—CAP estimates that wasteful spending could approach an eye-popping $2 trillion over 10 years," the publication states.
Furthermore, the report says that "making Medicare Advantage the default option would restrict more Medicare enrollees' options over which doctors and hospitals they can receive care from."
Report co-author and CAP research associate for health policy Brian Keyser said in a statement that "Project 2025's plan to make Medicare Advantage the default option would give corporations even more power and strip doctors and patients of the freedom to make decisions about what care enrollees can or cannot receive."
"Project 2025's plan makes it clear—its priority is to help boost profit-driven corporations' bottom lines at the expense of Medicare enrollees' access to care and the future solvency of Medicare," Keyser added.
Often derided as "Medicare Disadvantage" by critics, MA was created by a GOP-controlled Congress and signed into law in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush "as a way of routing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies," according to frequent Common Dreams opinion contributor Thom Hartmann.
A report published last year by Physicians for a National Health Program revealed that MA plans are overcharging U.S. taxpayers by up to $140 billion per year, enough to completely eliminate Medicare Part B premiums or fully fund Medicare's prescription drug program.
The MA report is part of a CAP series on Project 2025—which also includes an analysis from last week showing how the initiative "would make it easier for big corporations to dump dangerous toxins that poison Americans."
According to the report, the initiative's plan to dismantle environmental regulations—as former President Donald Trump, the 2024 GOP nominee, did during his first term—threatens to reverse progress in protecting Americans from toxins like lead, soot, and other poisons including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as "forever chemicals" because they don't break down easily over time.
In an attempt to distance himself from the extremist agenda, Trump has claimed that he "knows nothing about" Project 2025 or who is behind it.
However, at least 140 people who worked in the first Trump administration have been involved with Project 2025, and last week The Washington Post published an article revealing that Trump took a private jet flight with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts to a conference where the GOP nominee said that the conservative think tank is "going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do."
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Trump Eyes Social Security Cuts By Slashing Payroll Tax
"He is dusting off the old Republican playbook and bringing back the strategy known informally as 'Starve the Beast,'" said one advocate. "In this case, Social Security is the beast."
Apr 18, 2024
Amid new reporting that former U.S. President Donald Trump's economic advisers are urging him to cut the federal payroll tax, a key revenue source for Social Security and Medicare, advocates on Thursday urged voters to remember that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has long threatened to do just that.
"Don't be fooled," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, which lobbies to strengthen the social safety net for retired Americans. "At the end of his term in office, Trump delayed Social Security's dedicated revenue paid from workers and their employers. He was quite explicit that, if reelected, he would convert that delay into a permanent cut."
Altman was referring to an executive order Trump signed in August 2020, allowing companies to delay payroll tax payments—an option most companies declined to take as the Treasury Department made clear they would have to pay all of the deferred taxes the following year and that employees would see smaller paychecks as a result of the program.
Trump promised to make the payroll tax cut permanent, and as Reuters reported late Wednesday, the former president is discussing the proposal with economic advisers including Fox News host and former National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and right-wing commentator Stephen Moore.
The former president is weighing cuts to Social Security's revenue stream even as Republicans complain that the popular program is unaffordable and push to raise the retirement age to delay Americans' use of the funds.
The GOP has long claimed Social Security is headed toward insolvency and pushed to privatize the program or cut benefits, but last year's Social Security trustees report found that the program's trust fund currently has a $2.85 trillion surplus and could pay 80% of benefits for the next 75 years even if Congress takes no action to expand it—as long as it continues to be funded through taxes.
"Social Security can only pay benefits if it has sufficient dedicated revenue to pay its costs. That is why it doesn't contribute even a penny to the deficit," said Altman. "If Trump succeeds in slashing that dedicated revenue so that it is no longer sufficient to fully cover the cost, it will result in an automatic benefit reduction. This would happen without any Republicans having to vote for the cuts, or Trump having to sign them into law."
"He is dusting off the old Republican playbook and bringing back the strategy known informally as 'Starve the Beast,'" said Altman of Trump. "In this case, Social Security is the beast."
Along with cutting payroll taxes, which are paid by workers and employees and amount to 7.65% of each employee's gross pay in order to fund senior citizens' post-retirement income, Trump has proposed extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the vast majority of which benefited the wealthiest Americans, according to the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy.
Altman noted the contrast between Trump's tax proposals and those of President Joe Biden, who has proposed strengthening Social Security and extending its solvency by requiring people with wealth over $100 million to pay at least 25% in income taxes, raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, and quadrupling the stock buyback tax to disincentive companies lavishing their shareholders with their profits instead of investing in their workforce.
"The choice this election is clear: Trump and the Republicans will cut Social Security and give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires," said Altman. "The Democrats will expand Social Security, paid for by requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share."
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In 'Landmark' Ruling, Top EU Court Rules Swiss Climate Inaction Violates Human Rights
"This ruling is a call to action for the climate movement—we will not stop demanding action from governments on their clear obligations, set out in this ruling, to prevent climate catastrophe," said one attorney.
Apr 09, 2024
A decision handed down by one of the European Union's top courts on Tuesday should signal to governments across the bloc and beyond that their time may soon be up when it comes to delaying climate action, as the panel ruled the Swiss government has violated the human rights of its senior citizens by refusing to abide by scientists' warnings and swiftly phase out fossil fuel production.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) announced its decisions in three separate climate cases, including one brought by the KlimaSeniorinnen, or Senior Women for Climate Protection, in Switzerland.
The group of about 2,400 women aged 64 and up argued last year that the Swiss government has violated their rights by failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to stop intensifying heatwaves and other climate impacts from affecting citizens.
The plaintiffs cited research showing that older women are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illnesses and death.
Switzerland has pledged to cut planet-heating fossil fuel emissions by 50% from 1990 levels by the end of the decade. In 2021 voters rejected a proposal to tax airline tickets and fuel to help the country meet its goal.
According to the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, Switzerland is warming at twice the rate of the global average.
The Climate Action Tracker has classified Swiss climate policies and actions as "insufficient," partially because it has implemented agreements with other countries to offset its domestic emissions in an attempt to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Gerry Liston, an attorney representing another group of litigants from Portugal, told The New York Times that the ECHR's acknowledgment that Switzerland's policies are not based in science was especially significant.
"No European government's climate policies are aligned with anything near" the Paris climate agreement's goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C, Liston said, "so it will be clear to those working on climate litigation in those countries that there is now a clear basis to bring a case in their national courts."
Joie Chowdhury, senior attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law, said the ruling—the first by an international human rights court on governments' climate inaction—is likely "to influence climate action and climate litigation across Europe and far beyond."
"Today's historic judgment... leaves no doubt: The climate crisis is a human rights crisis, and states have human rights obligations to act urgently and effectively and in line with the best available science to prevent further devastation and harm to people and the environment," said Chowdhury. "The ruling reinforces the vital role of courts—both international and domestic—in holding governments to their legal obligations to protect human rights from environmental harm. It also affirms the power and courage of those who speak out and dare to demand a livable future for all."
The other two cases on which the ECHR ruled Tuesday, finding them "inadmissable," were brought by a former mayor of a town in France and a group of six Portuguese children and young people, ranging in age from 12-25.
Damien Carême, former mayor of Grande-Synthe and now a member of the European Parliament for the Green Party, argued France had taken insufficient steps to protect the coastal town from flooding. The ECHR ruled that the case was not admissible because Carême no longer lives in Grande-Synthe.
The six Portuguese plaintiffs had argued that the effects of fossil fuel-driven planetary heating—including heatwaves and wildfires—have and will continue to affect their lives and wellbeing. The court ruled the group had not exhausted all its legal options in Portugal.
The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), which represented the Portuguese group, said the court's decision was still "a win for all generations," because the court made clear that "government failure to rapidly cut emissions is a violation of human rights."
"This ruling is a call to action for the climate movement—we will not stop demanding action from governments on their clear obligations, set out in this ruling, to prevent climate catastrophe," said GLAN.
The Council of Europe's 46 members, which includes all 27 E.U. countries, are bound by the ECHR's rulings, and the verdict opens the countries up to similar cases in national courts.
Delta Merner, lead scientist at the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the court's mixed rulings "underscore how difficult it can be for impacted communities to demonstrate in a legal setting what science has clearly shown for decades: the direct connection between heat-trapping emissions, climate change, and the extreme weather impacts they are experiencing such as heatwaves and wildfires."
"The uphill battle for climate accountability persists as vulnerable communities bravely challenge entrenched political, economic, and legal systems that have historically prioritized the fossil fuel industry and private interests," said Merner. "The courts still have a critical role to play in holding high-emitting entities accountable for their role in the climate crisis, helping to address historical responsibility for the release of heat-trapping emissions resulting in climate injustice, and protecting human rights for current and future generations."
The ECHR has had six other climate cases on hold pending the decisions handed down Tuesday, including one against the Norwegian government. Plaintiffs in that case argue Norway violated human rights by issuing new licenses for oil and gas drilling in the Barents Sea beyond 2035.
Scientists and the International Energy Agency have said in recent years that there's no place for new fossil fuel production on a pathway to limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C.
Courts in Australia, Brazil, Peru, and South Korea are also considering human rights-based climate cases.
Despite the ECHR's mixed rulings, Merner called the decision regarding Switzerland "groundbreaking."
"This ruling highlights the undeniable link between government climate policies and the fundamental rights to life and family," said Merner. "With extreme weather events like heatwaves becoming more frequent and intense due to fossil fuel exacerbated climate change, this landmark judgment sends a clear message: Governments must strengthen their efforts to combat climate change, not just as a matter of environmental policy, but as a crucial aspect of protecting human rights."
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