The Cowardly Backdoor Efforts to Cut Social Security

Incredibly, austerity measures passed by Congress have shut down numerous Social Security Administration field offices in the past year--even though those field offices are funded out of Social Security's trust fund.

Unknown to many older citizens (and younger) the Social Security System has been under covert attack by the “fix the debt’  ghouls and GOP austerity vampires in Congress since 2010. Since they’ve not been able to get their way with the chained CPI (Obama had the good sense to table it) they’re now using a cowardly ‘end around’:  cutting Social Security Admin. budgets in order to shut down access to Social Security offices.

 Make no mistake these are the same dastardly vermin  who held our nation’s credit hostage, threatened to shut down the government, and forced congress through a nauseating series of self-inflicted crises. They have even gutted the IRS to the tune of nearly $8b over the past 4 yrs., thanks to phony attacks and GOP anti-tax hysteria– thereby limiting the agency’s power to go after tax avoiders and other tax scofflaws. They are, in effect, denying revenue to this country when it needs it the most.

When at long last the shrill cries to cut S.S. benefits subsided, the assorted array of GOP congressional and Tea party rats decided to  adopt cowardly, invisible tactics unseen by most Americans. This entailed rejecting fourteen of the last sixteen Social Security administration budget requests, despite the fact that Social Security is not in debt, has not engendered any debt and pays its own freight via the payroll tax!  Thus, the GOOPr congress is acting as if there is no payroll tax at all.

 

Bear in mind, the payroll tax was created explicitly by FDR to ensure the system’s sustainability along with having current workers pay in to support already retired workers. True, in 2011, the Dems suddenly became morons and decided to cut payroll taxes by 2.4%, - but when we on the Left yapped on them, they came back to reality. Despite two years of this nonsense, it wasn’t nearly enough to justify the GOOPs’ current tactics.

The outcome? The S.S.A. has been forced to close dozens of field offices around the country, thereby limiting access to seniors whose only way may be face-to-face appearance with administrators.   Meanwhile, the Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing after a bipartisan report showed Social Security has closed 64 field offices since 2010, the highest number of closures in a 5-year period in history. (Denver Post, June 19, ‘Agency closes field offices’, p. 18A)

 

Interestingly, as the article also points out (ibid.):

“The closings came as applications for retirement and disability benefits are soaring”.

 

In other words, these rabid rats and scum balls are adopting the exact same back-handed methods they did with injured vets seeking VA care. In that case, the miserable fuckers declined to approve $24b to expand VA facilities for care – thereby creating the recent crisis we beheld. Now, having succeeded there, they’re going after vulnerable seniors needing Social Security!

According to the Post article, again echoing what’s gone on with vets seeking care in the VA system:

“Seniors seeking information and help from the agency are facing increasingly long waits, in person and on the phone.”

Is this American? No, it is fascist to the core!

Blogger R. J. Eskow wrote on the Huffington Post that:  “many disabled and elderly Social Security recipients depend on field offices, and the workers in them.” And as Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times said, “They haven’t been able to cut benefits, so they’re doing the next best thing: making it hard for you to know what you’re due, and harder to get it when it comes due.”

The bottom line is, Americans came together to create the Social Security system to provide a basic, reliable foundation for retirement and disability. Closing field offices and making it more difficult to access benefits information is an attempt to dismantle that foundation. It’s time we get going to stop it. Readers interested in signing on can go to this link:

 

https://www.care2.com/news/member/774550352/3780474

 

There are also other links - from assorted organizations -  that can be found via Google!