There is no reason, none, to cut Social Security in any way.
There is no validity in claiming those earning above the SS taxable wage base are not paying their fair share.
Most risky of all are changing the dedicated funding or privatization of Social Security, even partially.
“Make no mistake: Social Security is on the ballot this November,” Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said Monday in a statement.
This morning, Trump “went on television and called for cuts to Social Security, along with Medicare and Medicaid,” Altman said.
On CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Joe Kiernen asked Trump his opinion on entitlement spending in the face of a ballooned federal deficit.
“First of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of, also, the theft and bad management of entitlements,” Trump responded. “Tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement.”
“This is consistent with Trump’s record as President, when he proposed cuts in every single one of his budgets and tried to permanently eliminate Social Security’s dedicated funding,” Altman continued. “It is consistent with Trump’s past calls to privatize Social Security and raise the retirement age, as well as his slandering it as a ‘Ponzi scheme.’”
ThinkAdvisor
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
As I understand it, there is no link between increasing taxes for wealthy individuals and large corporations and resolving the Social Security shortfall.* Increased taxes on the wealthy are not meant to cover SS shortfalls.Social Security (and Medicare) are a separate problem requiring it’s own solution.
There IS a connection between increasing taxes on the wealthy and “lowering costs for workers and families” i.e. tax “cuts” in the form of low income and childcare tax credits.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2169
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So you’re not in favor of cleaning up theft and bad management? You’d rather ignore it, interesting.
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Richard likes to preach about how SS needs to be fixed to ensure benefits for future generations, yet when Trump even hints at it, there is Richard to bring out left-leaning Nancy Altman to try and crucify him. Which is it Richard? Can we discuss needed changes to SS or can’t we? Or this just another day that your TDS is acting up?
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The quotation attributed to Trump was about mismanagement of funds, not cutting the program. It is well known that Social Security has billions in overpayments. The Atlanta local news has carried various stories of people who have been told by the SSA they must pay back and the people cry over the payback because they have already spent the money. I don’t know if this is what Trump’s referring to or not. I keep an open mind.
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It was both.
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If I’m not mistaken Richard you have multiple times in thepast talked about fixing Social Security. Is it just your ideas that are important or can we hear what everyone has to offer? Might be difficult but you should give it a try………
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I don’t understand how Trump supporters try to make excuses for him. The only way he can realistically support his proposed tax cuts is to cut social security and Medicare/Medicaid. He has made many statements along these lines. If you are a Trump supporter, just embrace it, just like his pro Russian and pro Chinese stuff, his attempts to overturn the election and suspend the Constitution, and his poor character which affects corrupts everything around him. That is your guy. Own it. Be grateful to give up a portion of your monthly social security or pay higher Medicare, because at least your guy will be in the whit house owning the libs. It is worth it right ?
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Talk about character– let’s ask ourselves who took classified documents as a senator from the sciff where he read it and then was required to return it–what about the only president I know of who had classified documents scattered all over his garage and various residences and for an $8 million book contract gave numerous documents to his ghost writer–who told us he had no knowledge of those classified documents but years before went to them and used them for his book contract,–he told us a few weeks ago he was outraged the the special prosecutor brought up his dead son when in fact he himself brought up the issue .
This clown didn’t know when he became VP–or that he even was VP at one time.
Too forgetful and senile to be charged but not too stupid to run again for president.
Trump is no paragon of virtue that’s for sure but the clown on the other side is an embarrassment. What a choice we have–dumb and dumber.
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Biden has a proposed plan too. His plan is not to cut social security or Medicare like Trump. It is to raise taxes on individuals making more than $400K per year. Not ideal but at least there is a proposed plan to pay for it.
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That’s okay as long as those taxed earnings are counted in some way in the SS benefit formula. If not we are on the road to making SS another welfare program and that was not the intent.
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Al, I don’t think you realize all the senility stuff has already been debunked. You can read the transcript for yourself. Or just watch his State of the Union address, where he was so much more coherent than Trump, who is seriously declining. You are just still listening to right wing media, the same ones that tried to get you to believe all the Hunter Biden stuff that turned out to be a Russian agent. Stop listening to the spin and just listen to Trump’s own words about cutting social security (the point of this article). He is saying it out loud, not trying to hide it.
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Waste, fraud, and abuse.”It is well known that Social Security has billions in overpayments.”
Breaking news…
Social Security fraud is costing taxpayers millions, possibly billions of dollars a year.(Investopedia, September 02, 2022)
According to 2024 2024 Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget,
“• According to the Social Security Administration, all improper payments, including payments to the deceased and the very old, are estimated at about $3 billion per year.
Total Social Security benefits in 2016 will exceed $900 billion, so eliminating $3 billion per year of improper payments would reduce costs by at most 0.4 percent, extending the program’s solvency by about 3 months.
Cutting improper payments for only the very old or the deceased would reduce program costs by between 0.00002 and 0.002 percent, extending the program’s solvency by between six minutes and 12 hours.”
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So it’s not worth dealing with? Only 3 billion and that’s self reported. I say let’s forget about hiring more IRS agents since the extra they collect over their cost probably won’t run the budget more than a few days. I get what you’re saying but John Q Public doesn’t want a tax increase when he/she hears billions misspent.
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Depends…
I understand the $80 B (over ten years) will only bring staffing back up to 2010 levels, and…
“A funding and staffing surge at the Internal Revenue Service could lead to as much as $850 billion in new revenue over the next decade, according to a revised estimate by the Biden administration.”
Who knows? The devil is in the details, but it’s what my wife calls “ifcome” anyway.
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MAGA no do math good. Seriously though, anyone with experience in public service understands that there is a point in administering any program where it takes more money to prevent waste than the money you would recover. we would often say that we are not going to spend 5 million trying to save 1 million. This is not to say that we should strive to be as efficient as possible under cost effective terms, but also we needed to understand real costs of tracking and anti fraud measures. Some measures are very cost effective while others are extremely expensive and cost more than savings.
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Our friend Richard loves to misquote people in the name of moving his agenda forward. Actually he’s pretty good at it! His post here is living proof.
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Please tell me what you refer to. I will never knowingly or ever hopefully misquote anyone.
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