Although immigration law forbids work without authorization, immigrants do find jobs and employers report their earnings to SSA. Currently there are no official published data on the amount of money paid into the Social Security system by aliens whether legal or illegal.(5) Social Security's Chief Actuary, Stephen C. Goss, however, has been quoted in the news media as saying that about three quarters of "other–than–legal" immigrants pay payroll taxes.(6) .CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf made the report to President Obama's Fiscal Commission which is developing a plan to shrink the national deficit by 2015 — a target that TSCL believes will be extremely difficult to achieve without deep cuts to Social Security and widespread tax increases on middle-income taxpayers. .With about 1 million supporters, The Senior Citizens League is one of the nation's largest nonpartisan seniors groups. Located just outside Washington, D.C., its mission is to promote and assist members and supporters, to educate and alert senior citizens about their rights and freedoms as U.S. Citizens, and to protect and defend the benefits senior citizens have earned and paid for. The Senior Citizens League is a proud affiliate of The Retired Enlisted Association. .Low and middle-income earners pay taxes on all of their earnings. In recent years, however, the share of total wages earned in the U.S. and subject to Social Security payroll tax has declined because the earnings of the most highly paid workers have grown rapidly. Most of the proposals to increase the taxable maximum would also raise benefits of the affected workers by counting earnings above the old cap in the benefit formula. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that eliminating the taxable maximum would extend the Social Security solvency as much as 50 years.[1] .Second, in October, Congress passed legislation to strengthen Social Security's Disability Insurance (DI) program. Many of the recommendations that TSCL made to the House Ways and Means Committee back in August were signed into law, including provisions that will ramp up fraud prevention and test new work incentives for beneficiaries. Most importantly, the law prevents a 20 percent benefit cut that was scheduled to hit 11 million disabled beneficiaries in December 201A cut of that size would have been truly devastating for enrollees, and TSCL applauds Members of Congress for averting it. .So far, many accomplishments have made the first session of the 113th Congress a memorable one for TSCL. To read more about our latest efforts, check out our Legislative Updates. .TSCL supports legislation that would provide a more fair and accurate COLA by basing it on a senior index like the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E). If seniors received a COLA based on the CPI-E, TSCL estimates that seniors with average benefits of ,200 per month in 2014 would receive ,753 more over a 30-year retirement. By their final year, their benefit would be ,652 per year more than if the CPI-W were used. .Mail order can also help you save if your drug plan is increasing co-pays or drug costs, dropping coverage or making similar changes for 201Orders placed by December 31, 2011 will be filled by your 2011 drug plan mail order pharmacy, and covered at the costs when you place your order your prescription in December. .Action on Capitol Hill this past week was limited as Congress re-convenes this week. Meanwhile, a Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) report indicates the effects of House member office budget cuts, and the Congressional Budget Office released a report that would save Medicare 500 billion dollars.