not working for most Iowans

Right after the House changed the rule on money flowing back and forth between the Social Security main fund and the SS Disability Insurance Fund, I wrote my senators and representatives immediately. As I have said here before, I have never seen such a just plain nasty trick. No doubt Republicans did this to be able to use the cuts to SSDI recipients as a bargaining chip. In this case it may hasten the deaths of some of these recipients.

I received the strangest response from Chuck Grassley. It is replete with tea party talking points and quite short on solutions. Here it is verbatim:

Thank you for taking the time to contact me. As your Senator, it is important for me to hear from you. Please accept my apology for the delayed response.

I appreciate your thoughts regarding a reduction in Social Security Disability benefits. As you may know, the House of Representatives recently passed new rules for the 114th Congress. Within these rules, language was included that seeks to protect the Social Security Trust Fund. According to the Social Security Trustees report, without reforms the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) Trust Fund will not have enough money to pay current benefits by 2016. However, the Old Age and Survivors Fund, which pays retirement benefits, projected to be able to pay full benefits through 2034. Transferring funds intended to pay retirement benefits to the SSDI fund would move up the insolvency date of the Old Age Fund an entire year, to 2033, while doing nothing to address the long-term financing shortfall facing both funds. Therefore, the new rules encourage Congress to include reforms to put the SSDI on sound fiscal footing and not simply raid funds from the Old and Age and Survivors fund.

It is crucial that we take the necessary steps to put the Social Security programs on sound footing. Combating fraud can play a role in protecting the future of the programs. I am committed to continuing my work to cut waste, fraud and abuse from the Social Security programs. I look forward to working with my colleagues to protect Social Security for our children and grandchildren, and I urge you to keep me apprised of your thoughts as we proceed.

Again, thank you for contacting me. I urge you to keep in touch.

Note that his first order of business is to set one group against another: those folks on DB are taking money from other retirees.

Then he states that that the Old Age fund will become insolvent (not true at all) earlier if the DB fund continues to get help from the trust fund. This is the old Republican trick of putting recipients and potential recipients into competing silos that will work against each other.

Then Grassley claims this action will ‘encourage’ congress to get SSDI on sound footing.

The next statement suggests that waste and fraud are the only problems with both funds. This is Grassley’s go to statement on nearly everything. Every government safety net program is rife with waste and fraud according to Grassley. To me it is his way of ducking every issue. There is no suggestion of raising the cap beyond the current $110,000 or any other truly practical solution.

In short, Chuck Grassley continues the Republican war on Social Security that has been the focus of Republican destruction from the day it was signed through the days of The John Birch Society down to today’s Tea Party. Grassley is only a puppet being used by the corporatists controlling his party.

For a good, short analysis of the current Republican strategy read this article. Here is a brief excerpt:

In a scathing indictment published Wednesday, LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzick blasted the logic behind the GOP’s efforts.

“Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) not only displayed a shocking level of ignorance of Social Security and the disability program, but offered no solutions whatsoever to the looming crisis—which he repeatedly mischaracterized,” Hiltzick wrote. “Enzi also trotted out one of the hoariest lies about Social Security in the conservatives’ playbook: the claim that there’s no money in either the old-age or disability trust fund.”

He continued:

[T]his assertion is nothing but an attempt to cheat working Americans of the benefits they’ve paid for. The trust funds hold trillions of dollars of U.S. Treasury bonds bought and paid for by payroll taxes collected from American workers since 1983; these transfers have been certified, in writing, every year by U.S. treasury secretaries and other cabinet members, Republican and Democrat, and accepted by Congress. If the money’s gone, they should all go to jail—but you won’t hear that said by Enzi or his cronies.

The only way the money can be judged “spent” is if Enzi and the rest of Congress vote to cut the benefits workers already have paid for. That’s what he seems to be plotting.

Iowans have a chance in 2016 to remove one of the worst and most out of touch senators in politics today. Our nation looks to us to do so.