Here we go again. The rich can hardly wait to widen the Gap

The U.S. Supreme Court requests $90.4 million ($2.7 million for mandatory expenses and $87.7 million for discretionary costs) in FY 2020 for the Salaries and Expenses account.

For fiscal year 2013, it will cost an estimated $5.9 billion to operate Congress and the rest of the legislative branch.

Projected four-year costs of Biden’s White House payroll could top $200 million.

The FY2023 defense budget request will exceed $773 billion, according to the House Armed Services Committee chairman. By 9 March 2022, a bipartisan agreement on a $782 billion defense budget had been reached, thus avoiding a government shutdown.

As of 10 March 2023, the presidential budget request for the fiscal year 2024 was $842 billion.

In January 2023, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced the US government would hit its $31.4 trillion debt ceiling on 19 January 2023; the date on which the US government would no longer be able to use extraordinary measures such as issuance of Treasury securities is estimated to be in June 2023.

On 3 June 2023, the debt ceiling was suspended until 2025. The $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) faces reconciliation of the House and Senate bills after passing both houses on 27 July 2023; the conferees must be chosen next.

As of September 2023, a Continuing Resolution was needed to prevent a Government shutdown. A shutdown was avoided on 30 September for 45 days (until 17 November 2023), with the passage of the NDAA  on 14 December 2023.

The Senate will next undertake negotiations on supplemental spending for 2024.

The Supreme Court wants $90.4 million; Congress votes and poof! The money appears. Congress wants $5.9 billion to operate. It votes, and the money is created.

The White House wants $200 million, which will be available as soon as Congress votes. The military wanted $773 billion but decided it needed $782 billion. Congress made a bipartisan agreement, and the money became available. Congress also suspended the debt ceiling and passed a new NDAA.

Congress will discuss supplemental spending in 2024.

Notice anything missing? Nowhere is there a discussion about “Where will the money come from?”

Congress votes; the President signs. And the money appears. It’s the way all federal spending is handled. The money doesn’t come from anywhere. It appears at the touch of a computer key.

Now compare that to this:

The total cost of the Social Security program for the year 2022 was $1.244 trillion, or about 5.2% of U.S. GDP.  Medicare spending grew 8.4% to $900.8 billion in 2021.

Raising the Social Security age? Ron DeSantis said no, and Haley said yes.

To raise Social Security’s retirement age or not — that was the question, and the only two Republican presidential candidates at CNN’s debate on Wednesday did not agree on the answer.

Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said, at least for now, he would not raise the retirement age for Social Security. In contrast, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said she would for younger constituents.

“We have to keep our promises to seniors, but we also can’t keep our heads in the sand,” she said. “Social Security is on a path toward insolvency.

“If nothing is done to fix the problem, the trust funds that support the program are expected to run out of money in about a decade; at this point, beneficiaries will see a cut to their checks every month.

“Congress has never let Social Security falter, but legislators have yet to decide how to repair the program.”

Do you wonder why the SCOTUS, Congress, the White House, and the military budgets are handled simply by the House and Senate passing bills and the President signing?

Why does no one ask, “Where will the money come from?” when Congress passes a “Continuing Resolution.”

Do you wonder how the so-called federal “debt” could rise from $300 billion in 1970 to $29 trillion in 2023, and there is seldom talk about the federal government being insolvent? It can’t. Not now, not ever.

Instead, the worry is about two federal agencies, Social Security and Medicare, going bankrupt.

And if the federal government can’t unintentionally become insolvent, none of its agencies unintentionally can become insolvent.

Potential solutions include increasing the retirement age, raising taxes, eliminating the income cap for high-earning individuals, or combining those and other proposals.

The real solution is for Congress to create a bill that allocates more money to Social Security and Medicare and for the President to sign it. Period.

The current Full Retirement Age, or FRA, is 67 for people born in 1960 and later.

The last time the FRA was raised was in 1983, from 65 to 67, which resulted in a 13% benefit cut. Moving the FRA from 67 to 70, as some have proposed in recent years, would “effectively cut currently scheduled benefits by nearly 20%,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The federal government can “create as much money as it wants. You can’t. So why do the politicians, the media, and even many economists worry that Social Security and Medicare will run short of dollars but don’t seem to fear that you will run short?

When beneficiaries claim Social Security benefits before their FRA, they receive a permanently reduced benefit. Raising the age could make those cuts feel even deeper.

Lower- and middle-income individuals would be worse off than their higher-earning counterparts, partly because they rely on Social Security more heavily and have not seen the same life expectancy increases as those with higher incomes, the CBPP said.

This isn’t the first time Haley has made her pitch to reform the Social Security program.

Tell it like it is, Haley. It’s not “reform.” It’s a benefit cut. You want to cut federal benefits going to the people who need it most, the poor and middle classes.

Under Haley’s proposal, younger Americans, such as those in their 20s, would have a higher retirement age, while older Americans near claiming age would see no change made.

Haley also noted DeSantis has voted to increase the retirement age for Social Security in the past. The Florida governor voted for proposals that included changes to Medicare and Social Security eligibility and full retirement ages in the early 2010s. However, he has said that his position “had shifted in more recent times,” according to Factcheck.org.

DeSantis said now is not the time to make any changes to the retirement age for Social Security. “The problem is, now, life expectancy is going down, so I don’t see how you can raise the retirement age when life expectancy is collapsing,” he said.

The Florida governor also said the cost of living, including prices for groceries and rent, is “through the roof,” and the cost-of-living adjustment under Social Security isn’t enough to cover those increases.

“I’m not going to mess with seniors’ benefits.” To that, Haley argued Florida is one of the hot spots for inflation.

When asked what the new retirement age would be or if workers in their 20s should plan on working until they’re 70, the former governor did not have a specific answer but did say they should expect an increase in the age.

“We have to start looking at how to get out of this,” she said during the debate. “We want to make sure everyone was promised and gets it, but we also want to ensure our kids have something when they get it too.

She wants to ensure everyone gets what was promised — by unnecessarily cutting benefits?

Social Security and Medicare cannot be insolvent unless Congress wants it to happen. Why would Congress want it? Because they are bribed by the rich.

The rich grow richer only by widening the income/wealth/power Gap below them. To widen the Gap, the rich must get more for themselves or make those below them have less.

That is why cutting Social Security benefits makes the rich richer. It widens the income/wealth/power Gap between them and us.

To make you compliant and willing to have your benefits cut, the rich bribe your critical sources of information: The politicians, the media, and the economists.

The rich bribe the politicians with campaign contributions plus promises of lucrative employment. The rich bribe the media with ownership and advertising dollars. The rich bribe the university economists with university donations and promises of employment at think tanks.

The rich even use the word “socialism” to discourage federal support for Social Security and Medicare. It is a lie. Socialism is government ownership and control, not merely funding. The VA hospital is socialism; a fully funded Medicare is not.

The other false claim that the rich use to discourage benefits is the false claim that federal spending causes inflation.

The cause of every inflation in history is not interest rates being too low, which is why raising rates doesn’t cure inflation. In fact, raising interest rates makes things more expensive. It is inflationary.

The cause of inflation always is shortages of critical goods and services, most often oil and food. The cure for inflation is more government spending to increase the public’s access to the scarcities causing inflation.

Finally, some feel it’s “unfair” to benefit those who don’t pay for them. If federal support is “unfair,” what about all those tax loopholes available to the rich but not everyone else. All taxes are unfair in some way, with the regressive FICA tax being the least fair of all.

There are so many excuses for not giving you benefits: “Unaffordable,” “unsustainable,” “unfair” — all false, all promulgated to widen the Gap.

This is not to say that all politicians, media, and economists intentionally lie. A great many of them (most?) have been indoctrinated just like the public and sincerely believe that federal taxes fund federal spending and that Social Security and Medicare can become insolvent.

And that is the problem. The false belief is so ingrained that it’s difficult to dislodge. But the world is not flat, and even Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics. That is how we progress.

SUMMARY

Neither Medicare nor Social Security can become insolvent unless Congress and the President want them to. They are agencies of a Monetarily Sovereign government that has the infinite ability to create U.S. dollars.

Even without collecting a penny in taxes, the federal government could continue spending forever. The sole purposes of federal taxes are not to fund spending but to control the economy, assure demand for the dollar, and to convince the public that dollars for benefits are scarce. ) City, county, and state governments are monetarily non-sovereign, so they need and use tax dollars to fund spending.

The U.S. government is controlled by the rich, who grow richer by widening the income/wealth/power Gap between them and those below. Falsely claiming that Medicare and Social Security benefits are unaffordable and unsustainable helps justify cutting benefits to those who are not rich, thereby widening the Gap.

Federal funding of Medicare and Social Security would not be “socialism,” the other epithet the wealthy use to discourage benefits.

Federal spending does not cause inflation, and federal support of benefits to those who don’t pay for them is not “unfair”.

The federal government can, without collecting taxes, fund a comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare for people of all ages and a Social Security that provides a living wage.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY