News

  • Legislative Update June 2010 Advisor

    As you may have heard, Social Security recipients received a cost-of-living increase this year. This is good news for seniors, but it's not good enough. .Despite tightening the law, Congress did not fix a policy loophole that would be inadvertently triggered with the passage of comprehensive immigration reform legislation. When determining entitlement for insured status, and when calculating the initial retirement benefit, the Social Security Administration (SSA) uses all reported earnings from covered employment in the United States, even if the earnings were from illegal or "unauthorized" work. (2) .Only one other time in recent years, in 2009 at the peak of Great Recession job losses, has the AWI ever gone negative. The 2009 AWI dipped by 1.51% and retirees who were born in 1949 were affected. Although the problem was known at the time, the reductions to benefits were considered small and Congress took no action to prevent those reductions. … Continued

  • Is Congress Putting Profits Ahead Of Patients Feed

    The Social Security Fairness Act, if adopted, would make the Social Security program more equitable by repealing the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). These two provisions of law unfairly cut the Social Security benefits of millions of teachers, police officers, and other state or local government employees, often by 40 percent or more. By repealing both provisions, the Social Security Fairness Act would ensure that public servants receive the Social Security benefits they have earned and deserve. .The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the number of beneficiaries that will be required to pay the increased Medicare premiums will almost triple over the next decade rising from five percent of beneficiaries in 2011 to 14 percent in 2019 due to the expansions of "means testing" in the PPACA. By 2019 one out of every five new enrollees will have to pay higher premiums. The Senior Citizens League strongly opposes the "means test" and supports efforts to repeal it. To learn more, please visit . ."Miracle cures," which claim scientific breakthroughs or contain secret ingredients, are likely a hoax. … Continued

The Senior Citizens League believes the inflation index that is currently used to calculate the COLA – the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners (CPI-W) – underestimates the inflation that Social Security beneficiaries experience largely because it fails to account for rising Medicare costs. .This week, one new cosponsor – Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD-7) – signed on to the Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers (CPI-E) Act (H.R. 1030), bringing the bill's total up to twenty-five. If signed into law, the CPI-E Act would base the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) upon the spending patterns of seniors. Currently, it is based upon the way that young, urban workers spend their money – a method that underestimates the spending inflation that seniors experience. A study conducted by TSCL this year found that seniors have lost 31 percent of their purchasing power since 2000 – a clear sign that the current COLA is growing too slowly. .Unless something totally extraordinary happens, the President is expected to sign the bill prior to midnight on the 28th and at long last the federal government will be fully funded through the remainder of fiscal year 2021 and much needed economic stimulus and rescue money will be sent to taxpayers and businesses alike. .TSCL believes the drug problem could explode this year. Citing massive "sequester" budget and staff cuts, federal officials are set to scale back or drop investigations into Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse cases. The Department of Health and Human Services may lose a total of 400 staffers and the existing staff is stretched so thin that it was unable to investigate about 1,200 cases of Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse last year. .We cannot afford to overlook the financial risks associated both with the U.S.-Mexico totalization agreement and with any immigration plan that includes an amnesty provision at the expense of first securing our borders against additional illegal immigration. .SSA Rescinds New Online Security Policy .Radical Medicare Overhaul Proposal In Senate .The credit for qualifying children is fully refundable, which means that taxpayers can benefit from the credit even if they don't have earned income or don't owe any income taxes. .On June 3, 2011, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security held a hearing on the Annual Trustees Report. The Subcommittee heard from the two Public Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Board: Charles Blahous III and Robert Reischauer.