U.S. debt default: Seniors should 'be prepared'

[Atticus Pizzaballa]

Social Security advocates brace for U.S. debt default: Seniors should 'be prepared'

With the odds of a U.S. debt default increasing, Social Security advocates warn beneficiaries they should be prepared in case their payments are interrupted.



Negotiations around whether the nation's ability to borrow money should be expanded have been ongoing, but Congress and the White House have yet to reach an agreement on the path forward.



The impasse has placed the U.S. in a precarious financial position, and leaves some of the most vulnerable Americans at risk.



Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said there is a "good chance" that in the event of a default, millions of Americans' benefits would be disrupted.



"Seniors should be prepared if they're financially able," Adcock said, adding they should consider putting off discretionary purchases "so they have enough to tide them over."



But millions of beneficiaries have no financial room to maneuver, Adcock said, noting that about 40% of Social Security recipients, which include Americans who are disabled and those who are widowed, receive 90% of their income from the safety net program. That equates to nearly 27 million people.



"Even though we're a few weeks before a default, they won't have enough to squirrel away to cushion for not getting their payments," Adcock said.



Not a foregone conclusion

Analysts suggest it isn't certain that the government will miss payments to Social Security recipients in the event of a default. The matter would likely depend on how much cash is on hand if or when the debt ceiling is breached.



The staggered schedule of Social Security payments, which relies on an individual’s birthdate to determine which part of the month they receive them, means not all beneficiaries would be equally affected in a missed or partial-payment scenario.


he White House and House Republicans remain at odds after meeting on Wednesday to discuss a resolution to the impasse. NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali reported the meeting was “tense.” Led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the GOP seeks spending cuts from President Joe Biden in exchange for an agreement to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default.



On Thursday, the White House said a scheduled follow-up meeting had been postponed.


Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned a default could come as soon as June 1. When asked for comment, a department spokesperson pointed to Yellen's recent remarks in which she said the Treasury might not be able to pay bills that come due on the day of a default, including payments to Social Security recipients and Medicare providers.



"This would be really the first time in the history of America that we would fail to make payments that are due," Yellen said.



A McCarthy spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment submitted Thursday. Following Tuesday's meeting, he told reporters there was no "new movement” in negotiating positions.



“Everybody in this meeting reiterated the positions they were at,” before the meeting, McCarthy said outside the White House.



Mary Johnson, policy analyst with the Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan advocacy group, said she is far more pessimistic about a resolution this time around compared with 2011, the last time a debt-ceiling crisis unfolded.



By law, Johnson said, the Social Security Administration cannot spend more money than it has on hand, which she said appears to pre-empt any other possible workaround, absent an agreement between Republicans and the Biden administration.



"We are so extremely divided, and there is such a big chance of a stalemate," Johnson said.



"And the longer we wait and get close to default, the greater the risk to Social Security benefits being held up and delayed, or not paid in full."


www.aol.com/finance/social-security-advocates-brace-u-100000311.html

I am sure many will be screwed one way or another......if this happens it will get ugly fast

[BHU]

Nice way to run the Country. Default on our debt putting at risk the entire economy just to make Biden look bad in deference to that idiot ex POTUS in Florida, golfing & dodging criminal indictments. Trump said to default on the debt because he's a moron & he doesn't give a damn how this kind of stupidity will affect the average person.

Biden needs to tell McCarthy & the rest of those lunatics to go piss up a rope.

[clarencebunsen]

I think we have an assemblage of lunatics on both sides. President Biden should also recognize that he is president of a republic, not a dictator. He has taken a "my way or the highway" approach to the budget. Constitutionally, revenue bills are the responsibility of the House. The President can ask for money and justify how he wants to spend it by proposing a budget but the House has the responsibility for determining how much he gets and how the money will be raised. He has been in government for most of my lifetime; he knows how it works but chooses brinksmanship.

[Atticus Pizzaballa]

Apparently McCarthy and Biden are getting close on a deal. Republicans again want a work requirement placed on those getting Medicaid which I hope Biden does not allow. They had that requirement attached to those getting public assistance but many got out of it with a Doctors notice statement the person can't work for one reason or another. I think it was 20 hours a week through volunteer work at various agencies. Sad think is that many of those people have no work experience and some cannot even tie there shoes. I remember this blonde lady who did her volunteer work mopping the floors. When I saw what she was doing I called up maintenance and told them to tell her to put WATER in the bucket to wash the floors!!!!!!!

Democrats warn Biden not to make a deal with McCarthy over debt ceiling

This is in todays news and the main sticking point is what I am talking about. 


Democratic lawmakers are warning President Biden against negotiating with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.


Until yesterday, talks have resulted in little movement, with Democrats maintaining their position and Republicans demanding spending cuts drawn out in their Limit, Save, Grow Act be paired with any increase in the debt ceiling.



"Kevin McCarthy has two main requests: Attack ordinary, working families across America by cutting the foundations for health care, housing, education and good-paying jobs, and unleash fossil fuels on America. And both of those are absolutely unacceptable," said Democratic Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley.


He continued, "I want the president to see that he has the support in the Senate to use the 14th Amendment. He has support to say no to outrageous demands from the radical right."


www.foxnews.com/us/democrats-warn-biden-not-make-deal-mccarthy-debt-ceiling

Biden should use the 14th amendment to raise the limit.

[Atticus Pizzaballa]

Excellent opinion today.

www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/opinion/debt-ceiling-republicans-poor.html

How to Use the Debt Ceiling to Inflict Cruelty on the Poor

May 17, 2023

Seen from outside Washington, the debt ceiling battle might seem like an abstract argument between the political parties over federal spending and deficits. But for millions of low-income Americans who depend on the federal government for health care and basic nutrition, the debate is about their very lives. That’s because Republicans have singled them out, yet again, as a prime target in this year’s extortion scheme.

The bill that Speaker Kevin McCarthy muscled through the House last month would impose tough new work requirements on Medicaid, food stamps (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) and welfare for needy families. The demands would effectively cut off health care for 1.7 million low-income people and cut off food stamps for 275,000 people. House Republicans say that if their demands are not met, they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling, plunging the country into an unprecedented default and almost certainly creating a recession.

It’s not that there is some crisis or scandal gripping those federal programs; Republicans are making these demands simply because the debt ceiling gives them the opportunity to do so. And they are going after the same group of people their party has demonized for decades.

“I don’t think hard-working Americans should be paying for all the social services for people who could make a broader contribution and instead are couch potatoes,” said Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. (His deep concern about excessive spending didn’t stop him from requesting a $141.5 million earmark for a helicopter training hangar at Naval Air Station Whiting Field in his district.)

“Couch potatoes” isn’t that far from the “welfare queen” myth conjured by Ronald Reagan or Newt Gingrich’s 1994 claim that a system of orphanages was necessary because low-income babies were being dropped off balconies or showing up in dumpsters. None of these slurs had any significant basis in reality, and all were intended to whip up fears among members of the white middle class that they were being played for fools by people of color who were lazily living it up on taxpayer dollars and ignoring their family responsibilities.

But these largely racist attacks, very much including the one now on the table, persistently ignore the little-mentioned fact that a vast majority of the people receiving these benefits are already working or are unable to work. In 2021, 61 percent of the 25 million people on Medicaid were working in full- or part-time jobs. The rest were retired or disabled or taking care of small children or in school. Similarly, most food-stamp recipients work, and able-bodied adults younger than 50 are required to work in order to get more than three months of benefits in three years, unless they are taking care of children.


The existing work requirements don’t get discussed by the drill sergeants who want to whip the vast army of couch potatoes into shape; they want more people to work and to work longer hours. Mr. McCarthy’s bill would require adults 50 to 55 to work at least 20 hours a week to receive food stamps, no matter that people in that age bracket often find high barriers to employment.

The bill would also require many adults 19 to 55 to work 80 hours a month to receive federally subsidized health coverage from Medicaid. (States could pick up the cost of those who are cut off, but many would not.) As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, this requirement would particularly hurt low-income beneficiaries in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and seems designed as a backdoor way of undermining the expansion. Republicans couldn’t repeal the act through the front door, so they are using the leverage provided by the debt ceiling to try to achieve their ideological aim. It’s yet another illustration of why the ceiling needs to be abolished.

It’s been clear for years that these kinds of work requirements don’t actually put people back to work; they just pry people away from the benefits they need. In 2018, Arkansas became the first state to impose very similar work requirements on Medicaid, before a federal judge ended the experiment the next year. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that 13 percent of Medicaid recipients there lost their health coverage — about 17,000 people — but that there was no significant change in employment.


One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that it’s very difficult for the subjects of these cruel experiments to report their employment or their search for a job to the state. Many people in Arkansas didn’t know about the work requirements or didn’t understand the rules or lacked internet access, the study found. But since the goal of Republicans is cutting spending, not putting people back to work, the burdensome rules do save billions through human suffering. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the work requirements in the McCarthy bill, which the speaker said on Tuesday were a “red line” for his caucus, would save $120 billion over 10 years.

Once President Biden made the unfortunate decision to negotiate on the debt ceiling with the House hostage takers, the work requirements were on the table, and the president has not been clear about his intentions. On Sunday he told reporters that he had voted for work requirements currently in the law, apparently referring to cash welfare, and was waiting to see what the Republican proposals were. That was not exactly a comforting sign, particularly because the proposals are quite clear, though he did suggest that Medicaid changes were off the table. After progressives raised concerns, he issued a tweet on Monday condemning the harsher requirements for food benefits.

But with the default clock ticking and lives on the line, Mr. Biden needs to do more than send out a tweet. The most important thing the White House could do right now is say explicitly that using the debt ceiling as a cudgel to change federal safety net policy is unacceptable and inappropriate and will not be the subject of negotiation. Mr. McCarthy shouldn’t be the only one at the table with red lines, particularly when the health of millions of people is at stake.

[Atticus Pizzaballa]

I would like to see Biden increase taxation on the wealthy. Anyone making over 1 Million a year pays there fair share so as to increase the debit ceiling. Let's attack them and leave the poor alone especially poor working families.

[BHU]

May 18, 2023 8:49:44 GMT -5 clarencebunsen said:

I think we have an assemblage of lunatics on both sides. President Biden should also recognize that he is president of a republic, not a dictator. He has taken a "my way or the highway" approach to the budget. Constitutionally, revenue bills are the responsibility of the House. The President can ask for money and justify how he wants to spend it by proposing a budget but the House has the responsibility for determining how much he gets and how the money will be raised. He has been in government for most of my lifetime; he knows how it works but chooses brinksmanship.

McCarthy & his crew weren't worried about the defecit when they raised the debt ceiling 3 times when that monster Trump was POTUS. Now they want to use the debt ceiling as a way to punish the working poor, veterans, seniors & kids getting free school lunches. Nice people.

If SS checks are halted we won't be hurt here. We have savings, the wife has a paycheck & I have a pension. But plenty others will be in the GOP's scheme to use working people & seniors as pawns to get even with Biden & to make him look bad. 

[BHU]

May 18, 2023 10:26:57 GMT -5 Atticus Pizzaballa said:

I would like to see Biden increase taxation on the wealthy. Anyone making over 1 Million a year pays there fair share so as to increase the debit ceiling. Let's attack them and leave the poor alone especially poor working families.

Ever since that louse Reagen was POTUS tax cuts to the top 2% & corporations have cost the U.S. Treasury trillions of $$$. He got the ball rolling.  Reagen should have been impeached over Iran Contra but he wasen't because Hinckley filled him with lead & people felt sorry for him which was unwarranted. He was a bigger bullshi**er then that bump on a log Trump.

[clarencebunsen]

There is a difference between an income tax and a wealth tax. Income taxes are are on money a person makes this year. We then see stories about a person who has a lot of wealth pays very little income tax.

[Atticus Pizzaballa]

Biden should use his power to use the 14th Amendment to end this and to prevent McCarthy from getting his way by using the poor as pawns

[Clipper]

Biden doesn't need to use the 14th amendment. Biden needs to sit down and negotiate with McCarthy. Spending cuts MUST be made. WHERE they are made needs to be the subject of negotiations and in today's world the military should not be the first place that is cut. With all the aid, weapons, and resources that we are sending to Ukraine, coupled with the costs of the border crisis we can't just keep writing checks and printing money to back them. Biden with the stroke of a pen has devastated the petroleum industry to the point that they have drawn our strategic petroleum reserves down significantly. We need infrastructure improvements, but take a closer look and fund only the most critical. We need to move toward more green energy but we need to move more slowly and effectively. Some of these cans should be kicked down the road temporarily until the economy recovers a bit. It is pretty damned sad that we are depending on oil from countries that hate America, and may have to buy oil to restore the strategic reserves.

Does anyone realize that if we are all forced to drive electric cars and trucks, a single EMP attack on the power grid could leave the country unable to move. Trucks and cars would have no ability to recharge. Without power all industry and computer systems would be shut down. The Amish would be the only ones that know how to survive without power. Cut some of the funding and grants for research and development and let automakers fund it themselves. The idea that we will ALL be driving electric vehicles anytime in the near future is a fallacy.

Our two party system hasn't accomplished much of anything productive, and WON'T until they focus on something other than blocking anything the opposition tries to put through. It is a two party system that has worked fairly well until recent years. It seems that our representatives no longer represent their constituents or their desires. The system has evolved into a system of mutual denigration, political brinksmanship, and mutual obstructionism by both parties. America is not a fiefdom and Biden is NOT a feudal Lord who can singlehandedly dictate from on high. Our elected legislators and party leadership are elected to serve the people and the country, not their personal agenda. They are elected to legislate and negotiate solutions, not to do battle.

[BHU]

There's no money in the Treasury for infrastructure etc because of the trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthy & corporations that Republicans have been handing out since Reagen was gasbagging in the W.H. , not because of kids getting school lunches,, Medicaid & other social programs that guys like McCarthy want us to believe.. The Republicans are howling mad because Biden hired IRS agents to enforce tax laws. The top 2% have been cheating the Treasury out of billions of dollars a year in unpaid taxes because the IRS is underfunded thanks to people like Ted Cruz who cut funding for IRS enforcement agents. One of their demands is to not fund those agents. Gee, I wonder why. Because their cronies are the ones ripping off the rest of us, that's why.

[Atticus Pizzaballa]

Plenty of spending cuts can be made without doing it on the backs of the poor and working poor. Hey a 25% cut in pay for every member of Congress. End the loophole that the wealthy use to avoid paying high taxes. Federal taxation of all properties that includes religious institutions. McCarthy wants to stick HIS plan up the backends of the poor and working poor. Why take away from them or require work for those receiving of all things Medicaid and or SNAP and I bet HEAP. If Biden cannot prevent that from happening then either default or he can use the 14th Amendment. The negotiating team for McCarthy said today that the talks have now stalled.

[Clipper]

I am glad you are able to blame the republicans for the entire financial crisis. I love that "republican crony thing." Are you under the delusion that there are no cronies on the Dem side of politics? One would have to go a long way to find anyone any more corrupt than the Kennedy family. Who do you think donors to democrats are? Do you think that they fund their campaigns selling cookies and lemonade? The democrat political machine has ALWAYS been equally known for it's corruption. One doesn't have to look far if they are familiar with Utica NY's political history.

[Atticus Pizzaballa]

I cannot believe the talks have ended with no progress. I wonder if I will be homeless next month when I can't pay rent due to no Social Security check. Guess it is not security any more. Wow no internet or tv.