The Economic Policy Institute has looked at the so-called Social Security Reform Act a bit further, and still finds it will deliver a world of hurt to Social Security recipients -- which number will one day include you, of course. A little more than a quarter of recipients at the low end will get some benefit increases, it's true, but I'm pretty sure that's just so Republicans can run ads accusing Democrats of voting against benefit increases, when they vote against a bill that would cut the benefits of more than two-thirds of Social Security recipients! The bill would raise the retirement age to 69 -- which will of course cut everyone's benefits from 65 to 68! -- and use the hated "Chained CPI" method of calculating cost-of-living increases, when "Chained CPI," as we've discussed before, undermeasures inflation by assuming folks will simply buy different stuff when prices go up, which folks on a fixed income with fairly high health care costs simply cannot do. Oh, and if you were a mom or dad who spent years raising children instead of working a job? Yeah, this bill would cut your benefits, too. Hence the EPI helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the the so-called Social Security Reform Act. If any of them are so impertinent as to ask what your better idea is, you could simply tell them to remove the cap on payroll taxes so income over $117,000 can be taxed into the system. Like so many things our politicians somehow can't do, it ain't that tough.
Meanwhile, New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-27) plans to introduce a bill provocatively entitled the TRUMP Act, where TRUMP stands for "tax returns uniformly made public." Sen. Hoylman's bill would mandate that Presidential candidates release at least five years' worth of tax returns at least 50 days before a Presidential election -- or else the state would keep their names off the ballot and prohibit the state's electors from voting for them even if they won. Our Constitution basically lets states instruct their electors on how to vote, so it'd be difficult to claim this bill would be unconstitutional, though I know right-wingers will try. Of course, right-wingers only care about winning, whereas actual conservatives care about preserving our traditions -- and the tradition of releasing your tax returns when you run for President seems to be worth preserving, if only because what little we learned from Mr. Trump's tax returns may have helped him lose the popular vote by nearly three million votes. So Change.org helps you tell the New York state legislature to pass the TRUMP Act. (Oh, and personal to those whining that New York and California really won the popular vote for Mrs. Clinton and "they don't want California picking their President": you do realize we could say "we don't want the old Confederate states picking our President" just about every time a Republican wins, don't you?)
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