Unfortunately, due to the polarizing nature of our political establishment in Washington today, it seems like our work is never done. We need to make sure that the 113th Congress does no harm to the programs that working class Americans so desperately need and depend on.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid must be protected. You will be hearing a great deal about the “Chained CPI” in the days and weeks to come. This proposed approach to control the cost-of living adjustment for Social Security recipients, will take money out of retiree’s pockets in an attempt to address our nation’s deficit. This is the wrong approach to deficit reduction.
Medicare does have a long term projected budget imbalance, but that can be addressed by making the delivery of health care more efficient. Medicare and Medicaid can both be improved, but it makes no sense to squeeze costs out of both of these programs, only to see them piled onto the back of the current beneficiaries, or shifted to private sector health insurance.
We need to support policies that promote full employment and family sustaining incomes that will continue to grow us out of this recession. Good paying jobs, elimination of tax breaks to companies that outsource jobs overseas, regulating Wall Street and ending two unfunded wars would be a good place to start, if our elected officials are really concerned with the debt issue. We need to fight! We must protect these vital programs that retirees depend on. However, it cannot happen without all of us staying involved and working as hard as we can to protect the policies and programs that built the middle class.
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