Social Security | featured news

House Republicans are preparing for another showdown over the debt ceiling this summer. The House Ways and Means Committee passed a bill Wednesday to protect Social Security recipients and investors in Treasury bonds if the government hits the limit of its borrowing authority.

Wednesday morning, President Barack Obama became the first Democratic president ever to propose cutting Social Security. Democrats spend so much time defending the president, it is easy to forget that even the most beloved presidents make mistakes and missteps. His new budget, which proposes a new method of calculating inflation increases in Social Security payments, is a doozy.

President Barack Obama’s proposed budget will call for reductions in the growth of Social Security and other benefit programs by including a proposal to lower cost-of-living adjustments to government social safety net spending, a senior administration official says.

President Barack Obama demanded Monday that Congress raise the federal debt limit quickly, warning that "Social Security benefits and veterans' checks will be delayed if they don't," and cautioning Republicans not to insist on concessions in exchange.

Just before a self-imposed deadline at which Senate leaders were set to brief their respective caucuses about a prospective deal, negotiations toward a scaled-back agreement to avoid the onset of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts on Jan. 1 appeared on the verge of breakdown.

Some of the best Republican arguments against President Barack Obama's proposals to avoid a "fiscal cliff" come from the president himself, in comments he made months or years before his re-election. Stung by the GOP's midterm election gains in 2010, Obama took stands that differ from his current positions on raising tax rates, adjusting Social Security and other topics now dominating Washington as a Dec. 31 deadline nears.

President Barack Obama's re-election has stiffened Democrats' spine against cutting popular benefit programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Their new resolve could become as big a hurdle to a deal that would skirt crippling tax increases and spending cuts in January as Republicans' resistance to raising tax rates on the wealthy.

South Carolina Governer Nikki Haley announced Friday that, “This is not a good day for South Carolina.” The bad news was having to admit a massive security breach in the State’s Department of Revenue that resulted in the theft of 3.6 million social security numbers and 387,000 credit/debit card numbers (only 16,000 of which, it is believed, were unencrypted,) This incident affects more than three-quarters of South Carolina’s 4.6 million population.

Social Security retirement benefits for nearly 62 million Americans will go up 1.7 percent next year, the Social Security Administration said on Tuesday, a small increase that may not cover rising premiums for the Medicare elderly health insurance program.

Democrats are eagerly renewing their fight against privatizing Social Security now that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has picked Paul Ryan as his running mate. It was a fight that didn't go well for the GOP when President George W. Bush pushed the idea in 2005.