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This is a “Trojan Horse” stratagem designed to make SSI a welfare program. Conservatives have concocted a plan to fool people into believing means testing makes the rich pay more. This solution would produce small rewards that would give conservatives ammunition to condemn these programs as a tax and welfare program rather than a pension plan.
SSI and Medicare are not unearned entitlements, as conservatives would have you believe, they are retirement pension plans paid for by the retiree and their employer. You cannot take away the rights of a pensioner just because they have gained wealth and don’t need the money. All retirees must be treated equal regardless of their wealth; otherwise, these programs become a tax on the rich and welfare for the recipients. A pension plan paid by the employer and the recipient, like the General Motors plan, is not welfare it is a program guaranteed to the worker; I don’t think it would sit well for General Motors to means test their pension program.
This proposed means testing is a Trojan Horse designed to discredit SSI and Medicare as taxes and social welfare. Rather than a solution to save these plans, means testing is actually a strategy, conceived by conservative thinkers to destroy the most successful programs designed for the common good of all U.S citizens.
The way to save these programs is to make the funding mechanism payroll taxes more progressive. This program now only taxes up to approximately $130,000 of earned income; for this program to be progressive, taxes should be top down, only progressive taxes create equality.
Means testing is a bad idea.
Jim Keating
Lake Havasu City
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