AA-08-08-10

ACTION ALERT: August 8, 2010
Preserve and Improve Social Security for ALL Generations!

Social Security is the bedrock of our nation’s anti-poverty and social welfare programs. It protects older Americans who have retired, widows/widowers and children, and people living with permanent disabilities. Upon it is built our vital health care programs of Medicare and Medicaid. The new national health care reform law is constructing a new, national health care floor upon both these programs. Along with Social Security, all three are social insurance entitlement programs, meaning that they are part of our nation’s social contract between individuals and families, government, and the private sector. We all deserve them at some point in our lives in that we pay into them over time via payroll, income, and corporate taxes.

New Possible Threat: The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

In the wake of the substantial increase in federal government spending in response to the Great Recession, and deficit spending resulting from Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy and unfunded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, President Obama has established a special commission to a) review government spending and develop recommendations to balance the federal budget by 2015, and b) review long-term prospects for entitlement financing (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.) Members of the Commission were appointed by the President, and the Majority and Minority leaders in each house of Congress, and there are bi-partisan co-chairs. A super-majority of 14 of the 18 members are required to make recommendations to the President and Congress. They are to report by December 1^st of this year, and Congress is committed to an up-or-down vote on them before the end of the year. The Commission has been holding monthly public hearings in Washington since this spring. Full details are at www.fiscalcommission.gov

The Political Dynamics at Play:

Political conservatives, both in and outside Congress, are using this Commission to move an agenda they have long sought: to end our current entitlement programs as we know them today, and dramatically scale them back and/or privatize them (either fully or partially.) They are doing this by means of conflating the Commission’s two separate goals (one short-term, the other long-term) by saying that the only way to balance the budget by 2015 is to “reform entitlements.” Indeed, both the Commission’s co-chairs have stated that entitlement spending, particularly Social Security, will be in their cross-hairs. This, despite the fact that Social Security has nothing to do with causing the federal deficit, either up to now or in the foreseeable future. In fact, the surplus in its trust fund has helped to bail out the federal government for over the past 25 years, and the program, which has its own dedicated funding stream, is not projected to face any serious financial difficulties for at least another 30 years.

One of the main leaders of a nearly-40-year attack on entitlements is self-made billionaire Peter Peterson, former Treasury Secretary in the Nixon administration. He has since founded and led the Concord Coalition, an organization which for 30 years has spread propaganda that Social Security is going broke and not going to be able to be maintained for future generations, all a Big Lie. He recently pledged $1 billion of his own wealth to fund a campaign to influence the work of the Commission. Ideas he and his colleagues are promoting include raising the retirement age to 69, changing the initial benefit formulas, changing the cost-of-living adjustment formulas, and creating individualized private, personal savings accounts within Social Security. These forces have also pledged to not support any new forms of taxes to help balance the budget, but instead are advocating spending cuts to social programs. Should one or more of the ideas come to pass, the burden of poverty will be shifted back onto the backs of individuals and families themselves and away from our broader society where the young help sustain the old, the healthy sustain the sick, and the more-affluent sustain the less-affluent.

The good news is that a variety of forces are coming together nationally to counter the efforts of Peterson and his allies. Various progressive organizations, led by Social Security Works (www.socialsecurity-works.org) and the Alliance for Retired Americans (www.retiredamericans.org), among others, launched the “Strengthen Social Security Campaign” (SSSC) in Washington, DC last month. Their goals are to block the Commission from attaining a super-majority for any bad ideas, and to promote good ideas such as letting the Bush-ear tax cuts expire for the wealthy, raising payrolls taxes modestly for upper-income workers, and raising the limit on taxable earnings that fund Social Security. And once the Commission finishes its work, attention will be directed to Congress both for its lame-duck session this year, and its regular new session beginning in January 2011 through the 2012 elections.

What’s Happening Here in NY:

To kick-off this new SSSC across the nation, events are being planned this month to celebrate the 75 Anniversary of the signing of the first Social Security law by President Roosevelt on August 14, 1935. Here in New York City, 2 events will be taking place on Thurs., August 19:

· 10 a.m. at the Taino Towers Gymnasium at 240 E. 123^rd St. in East Harlem

· 1 p.m. at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, 68^th St. and Lexington Ave. in Manhattan

Other events are also being held across the state this month. We urge you to attend one of them. Members of Congress have been invited to attend, along with key leaders from organized labor, senior citizen, health care, disability, women, and children’s advocacy groups. These events will be positive in nature to celebrate and highlight the crucial and successful role Social Security and other entitlements play for working people and their families. For more information on NYC events, contact Nancy True at Teamsters Local 237 (212-8070555) or Pia Scarfo at the Institute for Puerto Rican and Hispanic Elderly (212-677-4181) For upstate events, contact Mary Clark at Citizen Action of New York (607-723-0110.)

Ongoing subsequent events here in NYC will be coordinated through the New York Network for Action on Social Security and Medicare (NYNAMSS), a coalition of senior, disability, and health care advocacy groups, along with our partners at the New York State Alliance for Retired Americans (www.nysara.org.) We here at the Metro NY Health Care for All Campaign are pleased to coordinate NYNAMSS along with New York Statewide Senior Action Council (www.nysenior.org) and the Joint Public Affairs Committee for Older Adults (www.jpac.org.) Watch for future emails from us!

By joining together across New York and America, we can not only protect our nation’s vital social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, we can also improve them so that many more may benefit from them for ALL generations to come.

Thanks for all you do in the fight for health care justice.