The party of the rich is at it, again. Making life more difficult for the disabled.

Do you support the GOP? If so, you must be very rich, very mean, and/or very stupid. Sorry, but there are no other alternatives.

As if life isn’t difficult enough for the disabled, the Trump administration wants to make it even more difficult — and for no good reason. That’s known as “Making America Great, Again” compassion.

While you read the following, keep in mind three facts:

1. Contrary to popular belief, Social Security is not funded by FICA or any other taxes. Even if all FICA collections totaled $0, the federal government could continue paying Social Security benefits, forever.
2. It isn’t the very rich who need Social Security benefits. They can fund all their financial needs personally. Social Security, and especially its disability benefits, are most needed by the middle-income and the poor.
3. The GOP, the party of the rich, expends all its efforts toward widening the Gap between the very rich and the rest. Cutting Social Security, Medicaid, poverty aids, and other programs that help the not-rich, all are part of the GOP’s Gap-widening plan.

Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

Alan Greenspan: “Central banks can issue currency, a non-interest-bearing claim on the government, effectively without limit. A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”

St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e.,unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets (borrowing) to remain operational.

Here are excerpts from two articles describing the latest GOP war on the less fortunate.

A National Disgrace’: Trump Proposes Social Security Change That Could End Disability Benefits for Hundreds of Thousands
Posted on December 17, 2019 by Yves Smith, (By Jake Johnson, staff writer at Common Dreams)

The public comments period on the proposed rule change to make it more difficult to remain eligible for Social Security disability benefitsis open till January 31, 2020.

It is so depressing to see how mean-spirited the US has become. First imposing more stringent and often impossible-to-meet work requirements for SNAP beneficiaries, and now this.

Activists are working to raise public awareness and outrage over a little-noticed Trump administration proposal that could strip life-saving disability benefits from hundreds of thousands of peopleby further complicating the way the Social Security Administration determines who is eligible for payments.

Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams that the rule change “is the Trump administration’s most brazen attack on Social Security yet.”

“When Ronald Reagan implemented a similar benefit cut, it ripped away the earned benefits of 200,000 people,” Lawson said. “Ultimately, Reagan was forced to reverse his attack on Social Security after massive public outcry—but not before people suffered and died.”

Patient advocate Peter Morley, who lobbies Congress on healthcare issues, called the proposal “a national disgrace.”The process for receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is already notoriously complicated, and the Trump administration is attempting to add yet another layer of complexity that critics say is aimed at slashing people’s benefits.

As The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week, “those already receiving disability benefits are subject to so-called continuing disability reviews, which determine whether they are still deserving of compensation for an injury, illness, or other incapacitating problem as their lives progress.”

Currently, beneficiaries are placed in three separate categories based on the severity of their disability: “Medical Improvement Not Expected,” “Medical Improvement Expected,” and “Medical Improvement Possible.” People with more severe medical conditions face less frequent disability reviews.

The Trump administration’s proposed rule would another category called “Medical Improvement Likely,” which would subject beneficiaries to disability reviews every two years.

According to the Inquirer, “an estimated 4.4 million beneficiaries would be included in that designation, many of them children and so-called Step 5 recipients, an internal Social Security classification.”

Step 5 recipients, the Inquirer noted, “are typically 50 to 65 years of age, in poor health, without much education or many job skills [and] often suffer from maladies such as debilitating back pain, depression, a herniated disc, or schizophrenia.”

Jennifer Burdick, supervising attorney with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, told the Inquirer that placing Step 5 recipients in the new “Medical Improvement Likely” category and subjecting them to reviews every two years would represent “a radical departure from past practice.”

Lawson of Social Security Works said “Donald Trump and his advisers know that this will kill people, and they do not care.”

The proposal, said Democrat Sen. Bob Casey, “appears to be yet another attempt by the Trump administration to make it more difficult for people with disabilities to receive benefits.”

Boyle said the “changes seem arbitrary, concocted with no evidence or data to justify such consequential modifications.”

“This seems like the next iteration of the Trump administration’s continued efforts to gut Social Security benefits,” Democrat Rep. Brendan Boyle added.

The GOP endlessly tries to “save money,” by cutting benefits to the not-rich.  “Saving money” is unnecessary for a Monetarily Sovereign nation (which creates unlimited money at the touch of a computer key), but it is a bald-faced lie for a party that supports tax breaks for the rich.

Here is another commentary:

Trump administration proposes Social Security rule changes that could cut off thousands of disabled recipients
by Alfred Lubrano, Updated: December 12, 2019

The Trump administration is proposing changes to Social Security that could terminate disability payments to hundreds of thousands of Americans, particularly older people and children.

The new rule would change aspects of disability reviews — the methods by which the Social Security Administration determines whether a person continues to qualify for benefits.

Few recipients are aware of the proposal, which is open for public comment through January.

Critics of the plan liken it to the administration’s efforts to cut food stamps, among other entitlement programs, with insufficient information offered to explain curtailing benefits.

Social Security officials declined to comment. For years, Republicans have argued that Social Security benefits need to be reined in to save money.

The new rule, advocates for low-income Americans say, is just a way to push people off the disability rolls.

To the Republicans, any benefit to the not-rich is too much., They use words like “socialism,” or “unaffordable,” or “unsustainable,” or “promoting laziness,” or many other excuses for making the poor poorer and the rich richer.

There is not a single, valid reason to cut benefits to the disabled. In fact, a “great” America would increase benefits to these unfortunate, suffering people.

But despite red baseball caps and vague promises, this nation has moved a considerable distance from greatness, unless one counts being mean-spirited, hate-mongering, and serial lying as signs of greatness.

So yes, if you support the GOP and Donald Trump. you must be very rich, very mean, and/or very stupid.

There are no other alternatives.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The most important problems in economics involve:

1. Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
2. Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.

Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA

2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone

3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone

5. Salary for attending school

6. Eliminate federal taxes on business

7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually. 

8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.

9. Federal ownership of all banks

10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9% 

The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY