Medicare and Social Security advocates nervous about tax cut deal

Payroll tax cut worries Social Security advocates (AP)
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's plan to cut Payroll taxes for a year would provide big savings for many workers, but makes Social Security advocates nervous that it could jeopardize the Retirement program's finances. The plan is part of a package of Tax Cuts and extended Unemployment Benefits that Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would cut workers' share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011. Workers making $50,000 in wages would get a $1,000 tax ...

Raiding Social Security?
The plan to cut the Payroll Tax -- which finances Social Security -- hasn't drawn the volume of opposition that it might under, say, a Republican President, with AARP blessing it on the grounds that the Treasury has said it'll make the money up from general Tax Revenues. Bernie Sanders, though, railed against the suggestion of replacing the dedicated tax with the general fund as the first step toward destroying Social Security during his long Friday Speech in the Senate, and Josh Gerstein not...

Cut the Deficit! (But Don't Touch Social Security, Medicare...)
Cut the Deficit! (But Don't Touch Social Security, Medicare...) Cut the Deficit! (But Don't Touch Social Security, Medicare...) Forget your username or Password? Advertise Here! Currently 28 user(s) logged on. ...

Social Security advocates fear payroll tax cut
WASHINGTON— President Barack Obama’s plan to cut Payroll taxes for a year would provide big savings for many workers but makes Social Security advocates nervous that it could jeopardize the Retirement program’s finances. The plan is part of a package of Tax Cuts and extended Unemployment Benefits that Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would cut workers’ share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011. Workers making $50,000 in wages woul...

Social Security advocates fear payroll tax cut (AP)
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's plan to cut Payroll taxes for a year would provide big savings for many workers but makes Social Security advocates nervous that it could jeopardize the Retirement program's finances. The plan is part of a package of Tax Cuts and extended Unemployment Benefits that Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would cut workers' share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011. Workers making $50,000 in wages would get a $1,000 tax c...

On Liberal Purists and the Tax Deal
Mulling Obama’s tax deal with the Republicans, and the circumstances that led to it, I keep coming back to that very telling moment in last week’s presidential Press Conference—the part where Obama responded to liberal critics angry at him for giving so much ground. The essential problem with liberal critics, Obama suggested, was that they were “purists” more interested in symbolism than progress—that, in effect, they were letting the perfect be the enemy of ...

Obama gets Social Security facts wrong
Here's a book that needs to be on President Obama's immediate reading list: Nancy Altman's excellent The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision To Bush's Gamble. In it, Altman dispels the kind of Zombie Social Security lies that have been showing up in President Obama's talking points. Dan Froomkin has the details on how he got its history wrong. At the Press Conference (see the transcript), Obama defended his Controversial decision to give in to Republican demands for a massive Tax Cut ...

Robert Kuttner: Social Security: The Coming Cave-in
If you think the Democratic Base is mad at Obama now for making a craven deal with Republicans that continues Tax Breaks for the Richest Americans and adds new ones for their heirs through a big cut in the Estate Tax, just wait a few weeks until Obama caves on Social Security. How will this occur? The Deficit commission appointed by the President has called for an increase in the Retirement Age, as well as other cuts in benefits over time. And the deal that Obama made with the Republicans jus...

Harkin, Dean raise doubts on Social Security tax holiday; AARP silent
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.) are both raising doubts about an aspect of President Barack Obama's tax-cut deal that has not received much criticism: a one-year, two-percentage point cut in employees' share of the Social Security Payroll Tax. By contrast, a group which usually mounts staunch opposition to changes in the Social Security funding mechanism, the AARP, has remained silent about the proposed Payroll tax holiday. "That’s another thing that I rea...

Tax Cut Deal Wildly Popular
Mon Dec. 13, 2010 10:16 AM PST ABC News and the Washington Post have the first poll out about public reaction to the Obama Tax Cut deal. ABC created a colorful chart of the results, so I'll link to them: Support for the overall package was extremely high: 68% among Democrats and Independents and 75% among Republicans. But the breakdown in the chart above ought to give all of us lefties pause. It's great to see that extending Unemployment Benefits polled higher than any other element of the plan...

House Dems' Stew Over Obama's Tax Cut Deal
At Least 15 are Dead as the Storm Dumps Nearly Two Feet of Snow in Parts of Minn., Wis., Mich., and Ind. "Early Show" co-anchors stop by a Chargers game and a San Diego CBS station. "Baby Blues" Can Push New Mothers to the Brink. And Celebrity Moms Aren't Immune Week in Sports: Dec. 10 - 16 The week's biggest winners, losers and newsmakers....

Truth and Tax Cuts
But, back to the Senate Bill which proposes to extend the tax give-aways to the wealthiest. It provides for the beginning of the gutting of Social Security by reducing our contribution to our own retirements by 2%. This will "help us" by eventually making us dependent upon non-existent government welfare instead of our own Social Security benefits. This bill will be "good for The Economy" by putting more money in the hands of the rich who spend nothing to help us and will put us a Trillion or...

Social Security Advocates Fear Payroll Tax Cut
Like this Story? Share it: (AP) President Barack Obama's plan to cut Payroll taxes for a year would provide big savings for many workers but makes Social Security advocates nervous that it could jeopardize the Retirement program's finances. The plan is part of a package of Tax Cuts and extended Unemployment Benefits that Mr. Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would cut workers' share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011. Workers making $50,000 in wages would ge...

Social Security advocates fear payroll tax cut
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's plan to cut Payroll taxes for a year would provide big savings for many workers. But Social Security advocates are nervous that it could jeopardize the Retirement program's finances. The plan is part of a Tax Cut and extended Unemployment Benefits package that Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would trim workers' share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011. Workers making $50,000 in wages would get a $1,000 tax cut; th...

President Obama Gets Leading Proponent of Social Security Privatization and Bubble Economy to Tout Budget Deal
That could have been the lead of a front page Washington Post news story reporting on a Press Conference in which former President Bill Clinton touted the Budget deal that President Obama negotiated with the Republicans. Remarkably, President Clinton’s record on these issues was never mentioned in the article. As many former aids have acknowledged, President Clinton had been considering a variety of options for partially privatizing Social Security in the beginning of 1998 when the Lewin...

Senate Takes Up Tax Cut Deal
The Senate will hold a Cloture vote on the Obama Tax Cut deal starting around 3 p.m. ET. This is not the final vote, but it's the key procedural vote. The bill is expected to get the 60 votes needed to cut off debate and proceed to a final vote later in the week. ...

Video: Stockman Says Tax-Cut Deal Is Bad Policy
Former Reagan White House Budget director David Stockman says the tax deal emerging in Washington is “Keynesian flimflam” that won’t help stimulate The Economy. In an interview with Simon Constable, he rails against the current system of Deficit financing and warns the U.S. faces a crisis of indebtedness in the long run. ...

U.S. Senate Voting on Tax Cut Deal, Udall Summarizes Opposition
We're awaiting a directly viewable copy of Sen. Mark Udall's comments today in opposition to the deal on extending the Bush Tax Cuts, as brokered between President Barack Obama and Republican leaders a week ago. In the meantime, click below to watch his Speech on C-SPAN: ...

The Era Of Oligarchy
Chris Hayes, on the Tax Cut deal: "It's the standard Bribery model of legislating that has come to characterize Washington in the era of oligarchy: if you want to put food on the table of the unemployed, you must lavishly wine and dine the CEOs and Bankers who laid them off." ...

Obama Tax Cut Deal: John Avlon Applauds Presidential Act
While Conservatives and Liberals criticized the president for his Tax Cut deal, John Avlon says his defensive Press Conference was his most presidential moment since the campaign—and he finally laid out clear principles to fight for....

Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Obama/GOP Tax Cut Deal
While Extremists in both parties are pushing for rejection of the Tax Cut deal between President Obama and the GOP, a new poll shows that the vast majority of...

Tea Party Ramps Up Efforts Against Obama-GOP Tax Cut Deal
The Hill: Conservatives aligned with the Tea Party ramped up pressure Monday on Republicans to vote down the tax deal before Congress. Read the whole story: The Hill Get HuffPost Politics On Twitter and Facebook! Subscribe to the HuffPost Hill newsletter! Know something we don't? E-mail us at [email protected] ...

The Deal Will Lead To Less Fiscal Stimulus
In an otherwise typically intelligent col;umn, Paul Krugman seems oblivious that The Deal will lead to less Government Spending NEXT Fiscal Year. Krugman writes: I’m often asked how I can oppose that deal given my consistent position in favor of more stimulus. The answer is that yes, I believe that stimulus can have major benefits in our current situation — but these benefits have to be weighed against the costs. And the tax-cut deal is likely to deliver relatively small benefits in return for..

Even the Liberal New York Times...
Ugh. But with Republican Deficit hawks taking control of the House next month, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will no longer have billions of dollars to use at his discretion (my emphasis).That's Sam Dillon, getting massively spun in the New York Times. There's simply no justification for a neutral-voiced article calling the incoming Republican majority "deficit hawks." Republicans do claim to be for a Balanced Budget. So do Democrats (and dissenters are, as far as I can see, more or less equ...

GOP makes a cash grab
President Obama should be commended for fighting to include additional Tax Cuts for working Americans during negotiations with congressional Republicans over the approaching expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Giving struggling American families extra spending money will provide our economy with a desperately needed boost. Yet, one method by which the Compromise tax bill provides American workers with $120 billion in tax relief reveals an ulterior motive on the part of Republican negotiators. Inste...