Opinion
Breaking the Social Security Pledge
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
B ERNIE F OSTER
Founder/Publisher
B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER
Executive Editor
T ED B ANKS
Advertising Manager
J ERRY F OSTER
Account Executive
L ISA L OVING
News Editor
H ELEN S ILVIS
Multimedia Editor
B RUCE P OINSETTE
Reporter
D AVID K IDD
Graphic Designer
M ONICA J. F OSTER
Seattle Office Coordinator
J ULIE K EEFE
S USAN F RIED
Photographers
The Skanner Newspaper, established
in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
tion, published each Wednesday by
IMM Publications Inc.,
415 N. Killingsworth St.,
E
ven
before
President
Obama released his budget
proposal this week for the
next fiscal year that begins Oct. 1,
preliminary details about his plan
to effectively cut Social Security
cost of living increases has caused
a firestorm among supporters who
now feel betrayed.
Under the plan, Obama would
shift the way federal benefits are
indexed from the Consumer Price
Index (CPI) to the “chained” CPI,
gradually reducing benefit pay-
ments. Without getting overly
technical, the chained CPI – a way
of indexing living costs – has
grown on average by about 0.3
percentage points per year more
slowly than the official CPI.
Social Security actuaries assume
the gap between the two CPIs will
continue to average 0.3 percentage
points per year in the future;
Former Clinton Labor Secretary
Robert Reich said in a
MoveOn.org press release that
“Social Security is not driving
the deficit, therefore it should not
be part of reforms aimed at cutting
the deficit.” He added, “The
chained CPI, deceptively por-
trayed as a reasonable cost-of-liv-
ing adjustment, is a cut to Social
Security that would hurt seniors.”
White House officials point out
that the chained CPI would not
affect initial Social Security bene-
fits because they are based on
wages. It is the subsequent cost of
living increases that would be
affected.
According to an analysis by the
Associated Press, Social Security
benefits for a typical middle-
income 65-year-old would be
T HE C URRY
R EPORT
George E.
Curry
about $136 less a year under the
new indexing. At age 75, annual
benefits would be $560 less. At 85,
the cut would be $984 a year.
While that might not seem huge to
some, it represents a significant
loss of income from the elderly
living on a fixed income.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
shares Robert Reich’s outrage.
“If Obama is serious about deal-
COLAs are not limited to the eld-
erly. According to the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities,
approximately 6 million children
under age 18 (8 percent of all U.S.
children) lived in families that
received income from Social
Security in 2011. That includes
children who received their bene-
fits as dependents of retired, dis-
abled, or deceased workers as well
as those who live with parents or
relatives who received Social
Security benefits.
Democrats are irked that Obama
is breaking a pledge he made in
2008 not to cut Social Security.
And regardless of how he couches
it, that’s the net effect of his
action.
“You can’t call yourself a Demo-
Social Security is not driving the deficit,
therefore it should not be part of
reforms aimed at cutting the deficit
ing with our deficit, he would not
cut Social Security – which has
not added one penny to the
deficit,” Sanders said in a state-
ment posted on his website.
“Instead, he would support legisla-
tion that ends the absurdity of one
out of four profitable corporations
paying nothing in federal income
taxes. He would also help us close
the offshore tax haven loopholes
that enable large corporations and
the wealthy to avoid paying $100
billion a year in federal taxes.”
Social Security payments and
crat and support Social Security
benefit cuts,” said Stephanie Tay-
lor, co-founder of the Progressive
Change Campaign Committee.
“… The president has no mandate
to cut these benefits, and progres-
sives will do everything possible
to stop him.”
Critics note that any “savings”
from the chained CPI would go
into the government’s general
fund, not the Social Security Trust
Fund. Therefore, it does nothing
to “strengthen” Social Security.
“It’s not the president’s ideal
approach to our budget challenges,
but it is a serious compromise
proposition that demonstrates that
he wants to get things done,”
White House Press Secretary Jay
Carney said Friday.
As I have noted in this space
before, Obama is an Apprentice
Negotiator. We saw that in 2012
when Republicans goaded him
into extending the Bush tax cuts.
In a failing effort to garner Repub-
lican support, Obama keeps offer-
ing up programs cherished by
progressives, sometimes before
the negotiating begins.
President Obama’s new proposal
also calls for placing a 28 percent
cap on tax deductions and other
exclusions. Because the change
would raise taxes of the wealthy,
GOP leaders are expected to reject
the plan.
Social Security provides month-
ly benefits to more than 50 million
retired workers and workers with
disabilities, their dependents, and
their survivors. Obama faces con-
siderable opposition from his own
party, largely because of the
importance of the popular retire-
ment program.
“Social Security benefits play a
vital role in reducing poverty,”
observed the Center for Budget
and Policy Priorities. “Without
Social Security, 21.4 million more
Americans would be poor, accord-
ing to the latest available Census
data (for 2011). Although most of
those whom Social Security keeps
out of poverty are elderly, nearly a
third are under age 65.
Read the rest online at
www.theskanner.com
P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228.
Telephone (503) 285-5555.
E-mail: info@theskanner.com
World Wide Web site:
http://www.theskanner.com
Fax: (503) 285-2900
The Skanner is a member of the
National Newspaper Pub lishers Associ-
ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers
Association.
All photos submitted become the
property of The Skanner. We are not re -
spon sible for lost or damaged photos
either solicited or unsolicited.
© 2012 The Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED.
REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART
WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED.
To see The Skanner
News on your smart
phone go to
theskannermobile.com
or scan this QR code
with your app.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Local news
Opinions
Jobs, Bids
Sports
Entertainment
Music reviews
Bulletin board
RSS feeds
Page 4 The Portland Skanner
Coming to Grips with Gay Civil Rights
Y
ou can call it the “band-
wagon effect,” or “political
opportunism,” or, the
“wake-up-call effect,” or, less cyn-
ically, an old American tradition.
Whatever you call it, in the last
month it seems everybody and
their momma in the political arena
has been expressing support for
gay rights and same-sex marriage.
The support has come from
opposite ends of the political spec-
trum: from Ohio Republican Sena-
tor Rob Portman, who also
revealed that his son is gay, to for-
mer Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton, who said she
was free to speak her mind now
that she has left office. Even the
Republican National Committee
seemed in its white paper explor-
ing the causes and implications of
the Party’s decisive defeat last
November to call for a softening
of the GOP’s hard line on gay
rights and same-sex marriage lest
it find itself in “an ideological cul-
de-sac.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., whose
commitment to justice for all got
him killed 45 years ago this
month, would be pleased. We do
know which side this man, who
was becoming ever more “mili-
tant” in his willingness to chal-
lenge the country’s fierce dynamic
of exclusion, would be on today.
Of course, it’s not literally true
that the opposition to gay rights
has melted away. We can still
expect plenty of venomous rheto-
April 10, 2013
L AST C HANCE
Lee A. Daniels
ric and obstructionist legislative
tactics from right-wing clerics,
conservative officeholders (and
wannabes) and pundits, and the
conservative talk-show confedera-
cy.
But the signs are unmistakable
that the American public’s sup-
port-to-opposition ratio on the
same-sex marriage in the state.
The other involves the 1996 feder-
al Defense of Marriage Act, which
forbids federal recognition of
same-sex marriages performed in
the nine states and the District of
Columbia where it is legal.
Regardless of how the court
rules on these cases – expectations
are that the justices will issue nar-
row rulings effectively gutting
both laws – full civil rights for gay
and lesbian Americans will
become a reality much sooner
“A remarkable – and remarkably fast –
turnaround in American public
opinion” on the issue since 2010
multifaceted issues of gay rights
has shifted significantly. For
example, a Washington Post–ABC
News poll conducted last month
found that a record 58 percent of
Americans now support same-sex
marriage, a finding the paper
called “a remarkable – and
remarkably fast – turnaround in
American public opinion” on the
issue since 2010.
The poll’s findings were under-
scored by the two cases involving
same-sex marriage the Supreme
Court took up last month: One
concerns California’s 2008 voter-
enacted Proposition 8, which bars
rather than later.
The fact that this marked shift in
public opinion about same-sex
marriage became apparent at the
moment of another calendar-driv-
en commemoration of King’s
prophetic mission helps illuminate
the similarities between the Black
freedom struggle and the gay
rights movement.
It’s perfectly clear now that the
gay rights movement is this era’s
“gateway” tolerance issue – that it
is the movement whose successes
are most critical at this moment to
advancing tolerance and equal
opportunity in American society.
That isn’t to say gay rights has
pushed into the background the
struggle for full equality of Black
Americans – or of White women
and other people of color.
Rather, it’s to acknowledge what
hindsight has made apparent:
Because the issue of gay rights has
been the most contentious issue of
tolerance for the past two decades,
the advances gays and lesbians
have made in gaining their rights,
and the recognition of those rights
by their fellow Americans have
broadened the boundaries of toler-
ance for all.
That last point goes to the core
of the common bond between the
Black freedom struggle and the
gay rights movement. Both groups
were so stigmatized, so disregard-
ed, so exiled from the American
mainstream that they, separately
and in different eras, had to forge
an extraordinary, decades-long
movement to change the thinking
about them as a critical minority of
Americans.
That shift the respective move-
ments engineered led to the social
and political breakthroughs for
them and, importantly, for other
groups. Just as the gay rights
movement benefited from the
inspiration and the practical suc-
cesses of the Black freedom strug-
gle of the last 50 years, so now
Black Americans are benefiting
from the gay rights movement’s
expanding the “space” for greater
tolerance in American society.