Senate Republicans held a Budget Committee hearing Wednesday with the very unsubtle title "The coming crisis: Social Security Disability Trust Fund Insolvency," because if you're a Republican you always want the words "crisis" and "insolvency" associated with the words "Social Security." The hearing was the Republicans next step in the
manufacturing of a real crisis begun by the House last month, when they passed a rule to prevent Congress from doing a simple transfer of funds between the old age program to the disability program to keep benefits flowing to the latter in 2017, when the program will face a shortfall. President Obama urged such a transfer, which has been done 11 times previously by Congress, in his budget, but Republicans want to at least pretend they'll force the disability program into insolvency in an attempt to extort "reforms" to the program as a whole. And by reforms, they mean cuts to future beneficiaries.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) previewed the hearing, and Republican motives, in an interview with the Washington Post's Greg Sargent.
"Republicans have made it clear that they intend to pursue 'entitlement reform,' which is code for cutting Social Security and Medicare," Sanders said in an interview today. "This is their first step forward. Whether they will focus on disability, or cuts in the retirement program, I don't know. But there's no question that they intend to push forward and try to cut Social Security."
They in fact focused on both disability and retirement, with several Republicans, but especially Sen. Lindsey Graham, musing—and trying to force acting Commissioner Carolyn Colvin into testifying about—why President Obama didn't include any real things like means testing or raising the retirement age for Social Security in his budget. Colvin couldn't, of course, testify to what Obama might be considering. She did, however, have
blunt words about the fire the GOP is playing with.
A failure by Congress to shore up the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund would be a “death sentence” for its beneficiaries, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration said Wednesday. […]
"I don't want to be dramatic, but I've worked with this population my whole career. I think we [would] give them a death sentence," acting Commissioner Carolyn Colvin said. […]
Colvin said that on average, recipients get about $1,200 a month and depend on it for paying rent, buying food and other necessities.
"You're barely surviving," she said. "If you get a cut there, you're not going to be able to survive."
Democrats, including Sens.
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), along with Sanders talked about the increase in income inequality and the fact that much of the huge wealth growth in recent decades has not been subject to payroll taxes. In fact, February 11 is the day that
the one percent stops paying their Social Security payroll taxes for the year. These Democrats all made the case for raising or eliminating the payroll tax cap, now set at $118,500.