NCPSSM Talks to the White House about Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid

Take the social security pledge: "not in my lifetime"

Social Security is the most successful long-term government social program in the history of the modern world

Social Security has kept tens of millions of Americans from poverty during their retirement or disability, and is ready to do so for tens of millions more people for generations to come. Social Security is currently keeping almost half of America's Senior citizens out of poverty. The program is stable, efficient, and effective. The program is solvent.

The program is under attack by extremists who hate government and by bankers who want to steal the trust fund and then sell it back to us.

Social Security is not welfare. Social Security is not an entitlement program. Social Security is a national retirement savings program. It is the national piggy bank. When you work; you save. When you retire; you benefit. This simple formula has been running smoothly for nearly eighty years. During wars and natural disasters, Social Security has worked. During stock market crashes and recessions, Social Security has worked. During Republican and Democratic Presidencies, Social Security has worked.

We should not be misled by self-interested liars into believing there is a crisis in this stable and solvent program. We should not be coerced by right-wing extremists into destroying Social Security merely because it is a government-run program. We should not let Wall Street banks privatize Social Security just so they can turn it into a high-fee casino that the banks run for their own profit. For years, bankers and wealthy extremists have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in advertisements and lobbying to convince America to shoot itself in the foot and hand over our nest egg to Wall Street.

The next time a politician or pundit claims that Social Security is bankrupt, ask them: why are you lying? Social Security has trillions of dollars in its savings fund, and will be able to pay all or most benefits for decades into the future. Decades into the future.

Social Security is a government program that works, and it works without the Wall Street banks getting a penny of it. And they hate that.

So take the Social Security Pledge: Not in my lifetime.
I will not let the banks steal Social Security in my lifetime.
I will teach my children that Social Security belongs to them.
Social Security is mine, and I won't give it up without a fight.

(Sorry.. I didn't finish and must have accidentally hit enter.)

I know that my husband and I never thought that we would be dependent on Social Security. We both had good jobs and saved during our adult years. But illnesses, various family crisis, and then the ultimate... a layoff from a long-term job that followed a disabling accident right in the middle of the recession... has changed our fortunes and our outlooks. And we are not alone.

We need Social Security and Medicare now more than ever.

I wish that more of the people who are younger than we are could also understand how essential Social Security and Medicare are. I didn't even give it a thought when the retirement age was raised by two years in the 80's. After all, we were young, healthy, gainfully employed, and thought we would keep our high-paying jobs and our health forever. I didn't count on ever needing Social Security back then.

So my other great concern is raising the age of Social Security and/or Medicare. It is very hard for older people who have been laid off during this recession to find work. I know older people who have gone back to school to get cutting edge training in one thing or another and they still haven't been hired; they are just out the cost of training. It was hard for older people to get hired BEFORE this recession. Adding a year or two to the retirement age is just going to make it more difficult for people in their 60's to survive. But too many people now in their 30's or 40's can't see that far into the future, just as I couldn't see the future back in the 80's.

I'd like to think that ObamaCares would fill in the gap if the qualifying age for Medicare is raised, but there are no guarantees of that, and I think that many millions of people 65 and 66 would wind up WITHOUT health care.

I hope that people are pushing against raising the retirement ages for these programs. It's tough out here for people who are in their early 60's or late 50's and don't have jobs and have gone through their savings.. or perhaps have never been able to save.

Certainly we shouldn't be cutting benefits for the aged, the infirm, or for our veterans. That's absurd. Too many people who can't work (or can't find work because they are older and/or disabled) are struggling and living in poverty as it is. If anything, these people need MORE benefits to survive with dignity. We're also facing millions of people who will retire in the next ten years, many of whom had their retirement savings and/or equity in their homes wiped out by the 2008 fiscal crisis. It's nice to think that all of those people have recovered, but anybody with any sense knows that isn't true.

Many people retiring in the next ten years will have many fewer assets on which to survive retirement than those who retired in the past ten years. These people didn't cause the housing crash, they didn't cause the huge debt because most of them were NOT rich people, and many did not support the unending wars.