The Daily Elephant

Benefit Cuts of 23%—and 4 Other Things to Know About the Government’s New Social Security Projections

The state of the economy is dreadful, which is well known.

But because of Joe Biden, things might get far worse for millions of Americans.

Social Security beneficiaries may experience a reduction of up to 23%.

This is based on a prediction made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

This news comes shortly after Congress passed a huge omnibus spending measure that no one had time to read in its entirety before it was passed.

But it was approved by the Senate and the House.

And the cost will be carried by millions of Americans.

What you need to know is as follows:

The federal government has handled the social security program horrendously.

However, rather than addressing the issue, they keep passing huge spending bills that simply serve to worsen inflation.

This harms not only the social security recipients’ wallets but also the program as a whole!

According to The Epoch Times, payouts will shortly be drastically reduced by 23%:

A new Congressional Budget Office report projects an even more dire outlook for Social Security’s future than was previously calculated. Without action to fix the situation, huge benefit cuts for recipients will begin in 2033. And preventing those cuts will require massive tax increases for working Americans beginning immediately.

[…]

Social Security has a spending problem. Social Security started out as a 2 percent tax, and the program promised to never take more than 6 percent of workers’ paychecks. Today, it takes 12.4 percent, and even that falls far short of the program’s ever-rising costs. The CBO projects that Social Security’s costs will increase by 42 percent over the next 75 years as its revenues remain stable. Protecting Social Security requires reining in its excessive cost growth.

Inaction means benefit cuts of 23 percent beginning in 2033. Current law requires that Social Security benefits come from within the program, so once the trust fund runs dry, Social Security will only be able to pay as much in benefits as it receives in taxes. That will mean a roughly $5,000 cut in annual benefits for a typical retiree and about $4,000 less for the average disability beneficiary. No one—not even 98-year-olds—will be exempt from these cuts.

Democrats’ apparent preference for other issues over Americans only serves to exacerbate the situation.

Democrats are giving the war in Ukraine top priority.

Why?

They keep sending billions to Ukraine, for reasons we don’t understand.

Second, Democrats are giving priority to the massive influx of illegal immigrants coming across the wide open southern border.

It makes sense why the social security system is a disaster.



It appears that the social security program is currently refusing to pay disabled people!

The program is a complete mess!

Joe Biden is in charge of all of this, but he is not held accountable.

I can assure you that the media would be reporting this outrage constantly if it took place while President Trump was in office.

The Washington Post reports:

Every year, thousands of claimants like Heard find themselves blocked at this crucial last step in the arduous process of applying for disability benefits, thanks to labor market data that was last updated 45 years ago.

The jobs are spelled out in an exhaustive publication known as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The vast majority of the 12,700 entries were last updated in 1977. The Department of Labor, which originally compiled the index, abandoned it 31 years ago in a sign of the economy’s shift from blue-collar manufacturing to information and services.

Social Security, though, still relies on it at the final stage when a claim is reviewed. The government, using strict vocational rules, assesses someone’s capacity to work and if jobs exist “in significant numbers” that they could still do. The dictionary remains the backbone of a $200 billion disability system that provides benefits to 15 million people.

It lists 137 unskilled, sedentary jobs — jobs that most closely match the skills and limitations of those who apply for disability benefits. But in reality, most of these occupations were offshored, outsourced, and shifted to skilled work decades ago. Many have disappeared altogether.

Since the 1990s, Social Security officials have deliberated over how to revise the list of occupations to reflect jobs that actually exist in the modern economy, according to audits and interviews. For the last 14 years, the agency has promised courts, claimants, government watchdogs and Congress that a new, state-of-the-art system representing the characteristics of modern work would soon be available to improve the quality of its 2 million disability decisions per year.

But after spending at least $250 million since 2012 to build a directory of 21st century jobs, an internal fact sheet shows, Social Security is not using it, leaving antiquated vocational rules in place to determine whether disabled claimants win or lose. Social Security has estimated that the project’s initial cost will reach about $300 million, audits show.

“It’s a great injustice to these people,” said Kevin Liebkemann, a New Jersey attorney who trains disability attorneys and has written extensively on Social Security’s use of vocational data. “We’re relying on job information from the 1970s to say thumbs-up or thumbs-down to people who desperately need benefits. It’s horrifying.”

Just wait till benefits are reduced by 23% if you think the situation is bad now.

In 2033, they will be reduced by 23% if Congress does nothing.

There doesn’t seem to be much chance that they will be able to control this issue, especially given the fact that they are simply making the economic situation WORSE.

What’s worst?

They created this catastrophe, so it is their fault.

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