Project 2025’s plan to gut checks and balances harms American workers

  Project 2025 is a plan to gut America’s system of checks and balances in order to enact an extreme, far-right agenda that would hurt all Americans. The plan proposes taking power away from everyday people to give politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives. Here are specific ways that Project 2025 harms American workers.

Will Congress act to shore up its financing?

  Social Security has grown far beyond its original mission. It now costs workers two and a half times what was originally planned, yet even so, the program faces a $19.8 trillion shortfall—the equivalent of $154,000 per household.

  Propping up the program through benefit cuts or tax increases alone would be a raw deal for current and future workers. There's a better way.

Coercion and charity are opposites

  The entire welfare-state way of life is based on the concept of force. Through the threat of arrest, prosecution, incarceration, and fines, the American people are forced to be good, caring, and compassionate to others.

  Here is how the process works. People are forced to deliver a percentage of their income to the federal government, which in turn delivers the money to others. It’s not a 100 percent turnover, of course, because some of the money is used to cover the expenses associated with performing this service, such as salaries for bureaucrats in the IRS and in the federal departments, and agencies that distribute the money.

Who actually pays tariffs?

  Donald Trump’s economic ignorance knows no bounds. And especially when it comes to the subject of trade.

  Trade is always a win-win proposition. In every exchange, each party gives up something valued less for something valued more. Each party to a transaction values differently the goods or services being exchanged. Each party anticipates a gain from the exchange or there would be no commerce between the two parties. And each party will repeat the exchange again if its estimated gain has proved to be satisfactory.

How a bold new Disability Insurance proposal would benefit individuals with disabilities and taxpayers

  A half-billion-dollar fraud conspiracy… thousands dying as they await their benefit hearings… Social Security’s Disability Insurance program does a good job making the news. Unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons.

  The Disability Insurance program is broken, both functionally and financially. It doesn’t serve disabled people well; it doesn’t serve taxpayers well. Its excesses have stripped about $150 billion from Social Security’s retirement program over the past three years.

  Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.) introduced a bill that addresses many of the program’s functional shortfalls. His Making DI Work for All Americans Act of 2018 (H.R. 6352) would also make the program solvent over the long run, setting the stage for a significant payroll tax cut.

Trump's unwitting devotion to socialism

  Donald Trump and, unfortunately, many of his conservative followers, are absolutely clueless when it comes to socialism. You couldn’t find a better example of this phenomenon than a Trump op-ed that was published in USA Today recently. In fact, Trump’s op-ed is a perfect demonstration of the life of the lie that has come to afflict the entire conservative movement.

  In his op-ed, Trump takes Democrats to task for supporting “Medicare for All,” which would essentially be a full-fledged socialist healthcare system. He says that this shows that Democrats are committed to turning the United States into another Venezuela, a country in chaos, crisis, poverty, and violence owing to its socialist economic system.

Social Security is more than unsustainable

  It seems that Russia is having the same problem as the United States when it comes to its government retirement system: the system is unsustainable because the number of retirees receiving benefits is growing faster than the number of workers supporting the system.

  Soon after his inauguration for a fourth term as president of Russia, Vladimir Putin spoke about his plans to cut poverty, boost economic growth, improve medical care, and increase life expectancy. When asked whether the retirement age would be raised, Putin gave an evasive response:

Laurence M. Vance: A divergent convergence of epic proportions

  Social Security is in dire straits. Payroll tax increases and benefit cuts are on the horizon.

  According to the latest annual report by the Social Security Board of Trustees (“The 2017 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds”), Social Security’s combined trust funds face depletion in 2034, which means that 23 percent of benefits would lack financing.

  That results from a number of divergent factors.

Richard M. Ebeling: The national debt limit equals a balanced budget

  Once again the United States government is rapidly approaching a fiscal debt ceiling: After March 16, 2017, Uncle Sam will not be legally allowed to borrow any more money to cover its budget deficits, unless Congress votes to raise the debt limit, once again, like it has every time in the past.

  Uncle’s Sam’s debt has been growing at a frightening rate over the last several decades. It took almost two hundred years, from around 1790, when the government of the United States was established, to 1980 for the federal government to accumulate $1 trillion of debt through deficit spending.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Help the poor by abolishing the income tax

  The standard leftist position on helping the poor is: Increase income taxes on the rich and give the money to the poor in the form of welfare. The idea is that it’s just not fair that someone has more money when someone has less money. By equalizing people’s financial conditions, through the force of a progressive income tax and a welfare state, the financial plight of the poor will be improved.

  The left, however, is wrong. As our American ancestors, who lived without income taxation for more than a century, learned, the best way to help the poor would be by abolishing the income tax (and the IRS).

Yet another reason raising the Social Security retirement age is a terrible idea

  Social Security has long been a bedrock of economic security for American workers and their families, helping them stay afloat when a breadwinner can no longer work because of old age, disability, or death. Today, some 240 million Americans ages 20 and older are insured under the program.

  The benefits that Social Security provides are modest—the typical retired worker receives just $16,140 each year, not far above the federal poverty line. But these benefits are vital to Americans’ retirement security. More than half of seniors rely on Social Security for all or most of their income, and the program protects more than 16 million elderly Americans from poverty each year.

How the House budget sides with the wealthy over everyone else—even Republican voters

  The fiscal year 2017 House budget introduced by Republican leaders in March 2016 calls for massive spending cuts that would devastate working families while protecting the wealthiest Americans and big corporations from any tax increases. This approach is deeply unpopular with the American people—including a majority of Republican voters—but it is popular among wealthy Republican donors.

  Large majorities of voters across party lines reject the cuts that Congress would have to make in order to address long-term fiscal challenges without any tax increases—particularly with regard to Social Security and Medicare. The wealthiest Americans, however, support these cuts. While the House budget attempts to avoid this tension by proposing a combination of unspecified and extreme cuts to other programs designed to benefit low-income Americans, Republican leaders in Congress have made clear that they are ultimately willing to side with the wealthy in cutting programs that otherwise enjoy broad public support.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Conservatives and the free market

  One of things that conservatives love to tell people is how devoted to the free market they are. A recent example involved GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who criticized Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for being socialists while Rubio, as a conservative, was supposedly devoted to free enterprise.

  What a joke. Conservatives are no more devoted to the free market than leftists are. They just like to tell themselves that and others as well. But their pro-free-enterprise proclamations are nothing more than empty bromides and pabulum.

The 50th Anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid: Providing hope for the ACA’s future

  Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which introduced Medicare and Medicaid into the American health care system. The programs currently enjoy widespread public support, with the majority of Americans indicating that Medicare and Medicaid, respectively, are “important to them and their family.” But the popularity of these programs stands in stark contrast to the political resistance they faced before their passage.

Melissa Boteach: Reimagining our social contract

  Every year, the Bureau of the Census releases its estimate of how many Americans lived below the federal poverty line at a specific point in time during the previous year. For the past several years, the official poverty rate has remained steady at about 15 percent.

  Hearing this statistic, one might conclude that the same 15 percent of Americans remain stuck at the bottom, year in and year out, constituting the nation’s poor. But look beyond the point-in-time data, and you will find an important but rarely discussed fact: It is not the same 15 percent year after year.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Conservatives are doomed

  If you attend any conservative conference, I will guarantee you that you will encounter the following mantra countless times: "free enterprise, private property, and limited government." You will hear it in speeches, read it in brochures, hear it in casual conversations, and see it prominently displayed at exhibit booths. It is the guiding mantra of the conservative movement.

Patrick Oakford: Top 5 reasons why immigration reform means more tax revenues

  Last year, the Senate passed the bipartisan Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, or S. 744, which the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, found would have significant fiscal and economic benefits for the nation. Yet since its passage, the House of Representatives has dragged its feet and failed to act on meaningful reform. This inaction means that the United States has already missed out on billions of dollars in potential tax revenues.

Cameron Smith: Five questions to ask Alabama’s federal candidates

  Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District, which encompasses the suburbs of Birmingham, may be the only hotly contested election this cycle, but that is no excuse for voters to give the remaining federal candidates a free pass on detailing their solutions to the challenges facing Alabama and the nation.

Robert Wilkerson: "Entitlement" is not a dirty word

  The word "entitlement" is not a dirty word. Although certain individuals and political parties have tried to convince us that it is. The word simply means "a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract."

  Programs designed to aid and assist needy Americans began with President Theodore Roosevelt, and they were added, or expanded, by several presidents following him as need dictated. They were created to help alleviate the suffering and distress among needy people who, due to no fault of their own (old age, disability, etc.), could not work. They were never for those who could work, but would not!

Katherine Green Robertson: Turning a blind eye to fraud in benefits administration

  Amid the news of the debt ceiling debate and the government shutdown, a disturbing report was released in the U.S. Senate on October 7 revealing rampant abuse in the approval process of Social Security Disability benefits. The report, issued by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, offers a peek into just how loosely at least one government benefits program is administered and sheds light on the need for more oversight of the programs that swallow 10% of the nation’s GDP.