Congressman Elijah Cummings (MD-7), Ranking Member of the Committee, agreed, saying: "Drug company executives are lining their pockets at the expense of some of the most vulnerable families in our nation … [People in my district] struggle every single month to pay the increasing cost of housing, education, and health care. They live from paycheck to paycheck and sometimes from no check to no check." He went on to promote his bill, the Prescription Drug Affordability Act, which would take several steps to ensure more affordable prescription drugs, including greater price transparency. .It also included a second round of direct payments of ,200 per person, and up to ,000 per household. The bill also extended the 0 per week federal unemployment insurance benefit through January, which expired at the end of July. .I heard that Medicare would be mailing new cards. When can I expect to get mine? .Before the Affordable Care Act, seniors could deduct out-of-pocket medical costs that exceeded 7.5 percent of their Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). Starting in 2017, however, the law increases this threshold to 10% of a person's AGI – effectively lowering how much can be deducted at the end of the year and increasing how much seniors will pay in taxes. .Spousal and survivor strategies also are important. One example is file-and-suspend, which allows a spouse to claim a spousal benefit while the individual defers claiming. Another is "claim now, claim more later," where the high earner in a married couple claims a spousal benefit based on the lower earning spouse's record, while delaying his or her own retired worker benefit. The idea is to generate higher benefits both for the individual as well as higher survivor benefits for widows. .Advocates who help retirees enroll in these programs say that, even if your income is slightly above the eligibility limits, you might still qualify because certain types of income and assets may not be counted. .Congress recently enacted legislation that ended two so-called Social Security benefit "loopholes" — known as "file and suspend" and "restricted application." Details about the changes, which affect some married couples and took effect on April 30th, 2016 — can be found in the Social Security Q & A. .Social Security's Disability Insurance program is littered with waste. Last year, for example, .8 billion in overpayments were made to those collecting disability benefits. In addition, the administration has allowed an enormous backlog to accumulate for Continuing Disability Reviews, which are conducted to determine whether a beneficiary has recovered enough to return to work. Currently, every dollar spent reviewing cases yields more than ten dollars in savings; if the backlog were eliminated, more than billion in savings would be returned to the Trust Fund. The potential savings from eliminating waste within Social Security are enormous and could cover the cost of the Notch Fairness Act. Second, Congress could increase the amount of income subject to the Social Security payroll tax – an option that sixty-seven percent of TSCL members strongly supported in this year's Senior Survey. Currently, yearly income earned above 0,100 is not subject to the payroll tax. .The legislative proposal also does not specify whether the locality pay adjustment would be applied in addition to the COLA or used instead of a COLA. If the intention is to add a second adjustment in addition to the COLA my guess is that many retirees would welcome the additional boost. Should the proposal be intended to replace the COLA that brings a higher level of uncertainty to the annual adjustments than we already experience. For people who live in areas where private sector pay is on an even level with federal pay or lower, those retirees may wind up with little or no locality pay adjustment, perhaps over the course of many years.