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ICYMI: Senate Budget Dems Check MAGA Republican’s Math on Social Security
During their hearing on “Protecting Social Security for All,” Democrats on the Senate Committee on the Budget debunked the long-running Republican talking point that protecting our nation’s finances requires slashing earned benefits like Social Security.
During this spring’s debt ceiling negotiations, MAGA Speaker McCarthy signaled support for efforts to slyly slash Social Security, including a budget proposal that would have raised the retirement age to 69 – effectively cutting benefits by 13 percent every year.
But there’s a clear solution to this budgeting debate that Wall Street and their MAGA allies would like you to ignore: making the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share in taxes instead of gutting a lifeline for millions of seniors, children, and people with disabilities.
Here are a few highlights from Senate Budget Democrats’ takedown of Republicans’ MAGA math on Social Security:
Senator Whitehouse explains how income inequality impacts America’s ability to fund Social Security.
In an exchange with Ms. Amy Hanauer, the Executive Director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Senator Whitehouse broke down how wealth hoarded by the richest Americans has “moved beyond the reach of the existing Social Security revenue system.”
If the wealthiest Americans actually paid their fair share, we can protect Social Security for all without cutting benefits.
It makes sense that our federal tax code should require billionaires to contribute more than Americans struggling to get by. But as Senator Murray pointed out, our method of funding Social Security forces those who earn the least to pay the most.
“If you make around $160,000 a year, you are paying the same amount into Social Security each year,” explained Murray. “As a billionaire, someone can make over 12,000 times your salary, and yet their Social Security tax rate is a fraction of a fraction of what your rate is.”
Senator Padilla is on the money – nothing that protects tax-dodging corporations can be good for working Americans.
Yet, MAGA Republicans have been consistently on record endorsing benefit cuts aimed at protecting wealthy tax cheats and leaving wasteful Trump tax breaks in place for big corporations that profiteer and offshore American jobs.
This spring’s MAGA debt ceiling crisis wasn’t the first time Republicans have proposed gutting Social Security to preserve tax cuts – and it certainly won’t be the last. Follow us on Twitter and Threads as we bring a dose of reality to Republican’s Wall Street rhetoric.
