[While corporate politicians consider cuts to essential programs
like Social Security, the ultra-rich continue to exploit dodgy tax
loopholes for their own personal gain.]
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SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS ARE NOT A GIFT, BUT A SACRED CONTRACT WITH
WORKING PEOPLE  
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Tom Conway
January 26, 2023
Inequality.org
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_ While corporate politicians consider cuts to essential programs
like Social Security, the ultra-rich continue to exploit dodgy tax
loopholes for their own personal gain. _

Activists participate in a rally urging the expansion of Social
Security benefits in front of the White House July 13, 2015, Getty
Images

 

Cliff Carlton was the 10th of 11 children and one of three still
living at home when his father, a coal miner, died unexpectedly at 67.

Only his dad’s Social Security benefits, along with vegetables from
the family’s small farm in southwestern Virginia, kept the household
afloat during the lean years that followed.

That battle for survival made Carlton a lifelong champion of Social
Security and a tireless opponent of the Republicans in Congress
who keep trying to kill
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lifeline for the middle class.

“It’s not a gift. It’s money that we’re due,” explained
Carlton, vice president of the Steelworkers Organization of Active
Retirees (SOAR) Chapter 8-UR2 and president of the Virginia Alliance
for Retired Americans.

“We put money into it. We deserve it back,” continued Carlton, 70,
a retired tire manufacturing worker and longtime member of the United
Steelworkers (USW) who’s attended rallies and lobbied Congress on
behalf of Social Security for 30 years.

Republicans long hoped to privatize Social Security, preferring
to gamble Americans’ futures on the stock market
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than force the wealthy to pay their fair share
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the taxes needed to sustain the program. Fortunately, congressional
Democrats, union members
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other Americans torpedoed these schemes.

But now there’s a new threat. To secure enough votes to become
speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy toadied to extremist Republicans
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demands for radical budget cuts
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again put Social Security and Medicare at risk.

Pro-corporate Republicans openly plot to cut Social Security benefits
and raise the retirement age
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moves that would force millions of Americans to work longer
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delay their retirements. Some Republicans even want to gut the current
funding formula, slashing payments
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Americans with other income, regardless of how much they pay into the
program.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare
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that this kind of con, called means-testing, would end Social Security
as Americans know it and take benefits even from those with “very
modest incomes.”

“If you lose something, you don’t ever get it back,” observed
Carlton, who fears that Republican toying with Social Security will
break seniors already living on the margins amid skyrocketing medical
costs and mounting bills stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic.

In addition to providing a buffer against unexpected health crises,
Social Security is the only resource many retirees have when they
outlive the nest eggs they accumulated during their working years.

“My grandmother is 102 years old. She retired at the age of 65 the
year I was born, so I’ve never known her except in a retired state.
She still lives on her own,” said Mike Budd, 37, a Marine Corps
veteran and member of USW Local 12775, who credits Social Security
with enabling his grandma, a former bank teller, to maintain her
independence and high quality of life for decades.

“In fact, that’s the reason I’m very passionate about keeping
this program around,” said Budd, who works as a substation
electrician at Northern Indiana Public Service Co. (NIPSCO).

Democratic President Joe Biden and the Democratic-controlled
Senate will continue to protect Social Security—and Medicare—from
the Republicans
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narrowly regained control of the House in November. Still, the
Republicans vow to stage a showdown over America’s debt and allow
the nation to careen toward default
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a reckless gambit to commandeer the spending cuts they want.

Ironically, many of the same Republicans bent on eviscerating Social
Security have huge personal fortunes
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top of congressional pensions
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enjoy a level of financial security out of reach of most Americans.

“It’s certainly easy to tell people to make do with less when they
have more,” noted Budd, chair of Local 12775’s Veterans of Steel
Committee, who deployed to Iraq three times from 2004 to 2009 as an
aircraft mechanic with Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 14
(MALS-14).

“There were no millionaires deployed with me,” noted Budd, only
“a lot of working-class people” who loved their country and
believed in the American dream that Republicans now threaten.

Some Republicans attempt to soft-pedal their shenanigans by saying
they won’t cut benefits for current recipients, only future
retirees
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would have “time to adjust
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to the changes, likely by working longer.

That angers Budd, who’s been paying Social Security taxes since he
was a 16-year-old with a summer job at an equipment rental company and
expects the long-promised return on his ongoing investment.

He’s already laying the financial groundwork for his golden years,
and those plans hinge on a robust Social Security program that will
not only let him retire at a decent age but support him as well as it
has his grandma should he also live to 102.

Instead of cutting essential programs, TJ Stephens said, he’d like
to see Republicans agree to fairly tax uber-rich Americans who use
dodgy loopholes to pay little or nothing now. And he’d like to see
more wealthy tax cheats and deadbeats run to ground.

Stephens, a member of USW Local 9231 and an electrician at the
Cleveland-Cliffs complex in New Carlisle, Ind., regards Social
Security as America’s contract with working people—one as
inviolable as the one he signed when he joined the Air Force at 19 and
went off to serve as a satellite communications technician at Langley
Air Force Base.

“Inhumane is the best word I can think of,” Stephens, 37, said of
Republican plans to move the goalposts on those already paying into
Social Security and force younger Americans to “work ourselves into
the grave.”

Ultimately, Carlson predicted, public anger will stop the Republicans
in their tracks. He’s planning to ratchet up his activism and get
more retirees to join him.

“It makes a difference,” he said of Social Security. “It’s not
something we’re going to give up without an extraordinary fight.”

===

Tom Conway is the International President of United Steelworkers

* Social Security; Steelworkers;
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