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The Hill
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
We need major changes to Social Security and Medicare before it's too late
I was recently on a flight from Philadelphia to Hilton Head. Behind me was a couple in their 60s, and I couldn't help but overhear their conversation with their seatmate. They were saying how much they loved retirement. They were talking about how the pension and healthcare benefits they were receiving from their former corporate jobs were allowing them to travel and see their grandkids whenever they wanted. And they were both excited to get to their vacation home — their third home! — which they boasted was being paid for entirely by their monthly Social Security checks. Good for them. They earned it, right? But come on — is this what Social Security is for? Is this what FDR intended when he established this program back in 1935? To fund a life of leisure and a vacation home for two upper-middle-class retirees? I am 60 years old and a small-business owner. According to the rules, I will soon be allowed to start collecting Social Security and receiving Medicare benefits. If I were to begin collecting Social Security at the age of 62, my monthly payment would be about $2,500. If I wait until the age of 70, my monthly payment will be $5,000. This doesn't include the payments my wife will receive. When we turn 65, both my wife and I will also be eligible for Medicare. That means that our hospital insurance will be free. And although we will pay a separate premium for doctor visits and prescription drugs, the premium will be significantly less — thousands less per year — than we are paying right now. That's lots of extra cash coming in just a few years. Should we buy a vacation home in Hilton Head too? That's one way to look at it. But there's also another way: It's people like us that are causing these entitlement programs to go broke. The 2024 Social Security Trustees Report projects the combined Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance trust funds 'will be depleted in 2035.' The 2024 Medicare Trustees Report projects its trust fund will run out in 2036. My wife and I are not the intended recipients of these funds. When Social Security was first established 90 years ago, FDR said its purpose was to provide economic security and protection for vulnerable Americans during times of hardship. 'We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age,' he said. When Medicare started as part of LBJ's 'Great Society,' its goal was different. It was not intended as charity. It was considered to be an entitlement. 'Nearly every older American will receive hospital care — not as an act of charity, but as the insured right of a senior citizen,' Lyndon Johnson said at the bill's signing. But does every senior citizen need this kind of entitlement? The answer is no. We don't — at least not this year. About 3.2 percent of current retirees — Americans aged 65 and older — have total retirement account assets exceeding $1 million, based on the 2022 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. I suspect that number has risen over the last few years. I don't think these people need the help either. Maybe some of us will in the future, and if that's the case then fine — we'll apply and get it. And this is how we fix this funding problem. People who don't need help from the government shouldn't be automatically getting it. Means testing should be required to qualify for Social Security and Medicare. Rather than just receiving checks once a certain age is reached, recipients should have to prove that they are in need of these funds. Like any other government aid program, we should be made to apply for the help and submit documentation — bank statements, tax returns, asset disclosures — that demonstrate our need. Otherwise we shouldn't get it. But wait — aren't we owed this money? Didn't I spend a lifetime paying into Social Security and Medicare through payroll taxes? Isn't it unfair that many others in my same financial position received this government aid, even though they didn't need it? Yeah, it's unfair. Life is unfair. Sometimes things turn out. Sometimes they don't. But the reality is that this system of entitlements can't be sustained much longer. In the most recent fiscal year, spending on Social Security and Medicare combined amounted to about 36 percent of all federal spending, or almost $2.5 trillion. There are so many others who need government aid that aren't getting it because programs are being shut down or cut in order to fund these entitlements. We have national defense issues. National debt issues. And meanwhile, these two retirees are using their government checks for a vacation home in Hilton Head. Can we refuse the money? Give it back? Good luck trying. Maybe I should take that money (and pay the taxes on it) and give it away to a charity. But how many people are going to do that? How many people are instead — like my fellow passengers on that flight — going to spend it on themselves? Too many. According to a recent study from Georgetown University, as many as one-third of all people (employees and their families) associated with small businesses rely on Medicare, which is funding that small-business owners don't have to provide. Our older employees who choose to retire do so with the expectation that Social Security will help them pay their bills, otherwise who else will they turn to? Will the necessary funding of these programs result in higher taxes? Cutbacks in other programs that benefit our businesses? Or will the government merely print more money to meet these obligations and thereby put further inflationary pressure and higher borrowing rates on us? That seems most likely. And yet any business owner who knows their numbers will agree that fixing the underfunding of Social Security and Medicare is possible. Just go back to the original aims of these programs. Take the benefits away from people who don't need them and give them to the people who do. Unpopular? Perhaps. Common sense? Most definitely.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
LBJ wrestler Rendon finding home, success in sport
AUSTIN (KXAN) — When Michaela Rendon began as a wrestler, it wasn't the most encouraging start. 'My first match, I didn't know what to do,' Rendon said. 'So I kind of just screamed in the middle. I didn't win.'Seven months later, the sport seems like it has always been a part of her life. 'I like the sport because it's a one-man sport,' she said. 'You can't really rely on a team like in football. It's really just you and the other person. That's what it comes down to.' Despite being newer to the sport, Rendon has excelled. She qualified for the Junior National Championships in Fargo, North Dakota, this July. Texas Longhorns set to claim Directors' Cup for 4th time in 5 years The LBJ standout just finished her freshman year and is staying extremely focused. 'What makes Michaela special is the idea of an athlete being what I would call complete,' said Randy Bryant, principal of LBJ High School. 'She does what's necessary inside the classroom and she's doing what's necessary to be successful at athletics.' Bryant is also the owner of Heart and Pride Wrestling, where Michaela trains. The club is free for students from the Austin Independent School District. National championship-winning coach questions all the Arch Manning hype 'Some gyms you can tell when it's just about the money, but I feel like they really want to help out the kids and they're just genuine,' she said. Rendon is an athlete in every sense of the word. She's been successful in track and field and football, as well as boxing. She said that her boxing background has helped her in wrestling. Her goal in wrestling is simple. 'I want to win state,' she said. She has helped revitalize the wrestling program at LBJ. There should be around 20 athletes in the program for the upcoming season, a turnout much higher than it typically is. 'It feels good. I don't want to say I'm the start, but I'm one of the first ones that is going to start the club back up,' she said. 'It feels good.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Irish Times
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Trump's F-bomb: The US didn't faint when the president swore on live TV. How unexpectedly unprissy of it
There was a dog that didn't bark amid this week's news. On Tuesday President Trump became (we think) the first US president to say the word 'f**k' on live TV. This column was prepared to fulminate on how, 'with all that's going on in the world', the American media took to the fainting couch over a harmless nugget of 16th-century Germanic profanity. It says something about how Trump has rewired the American mind that the response was relatively muted. There is no lower form of speculative discourse than 'can you imagine if [X] had done that?' but, well, can you imagine if Barack Obama had said such a thing? The closest we can find is him using the word 'bullsh***er' – apparently of Mitt Romney – during a 2012 print interview in the White House. Rolling Stone magazine argued that the incident set off a 'brief firestorm'. Obama was in jocular form there. That is quite different from addressing a serious policy issue on the White House lawn. 'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f**k they're doing,' Trump said of Iran and Israel over the throb of helicopters. [ Is Donald Trump the greatest media performer of the 21st century? Opens in new window ] Everyone knows presidents have employed maritime vocabulary since the founding of the nation. 'People said my language was bad,' Richard Nixon once remarked. 'But, Jesus, you should have heard LBJ.' They have, however, almost always returned to 'fudge!' and 'fiddlesticks!' when in earshot of a microphone. READ MORE Different nations have different sensibilities. Publications within those jurisdictions work along a spectrum of sensitivity. You will have already noticed that The Irish Times still plays it safe by studding asterisks among the most common bar-room expletives. 'Style is, for example, f**k,' the paper's stylebook helpfully explains. This is not just prudishness. Newspapers tend to avoid swearing in web headlines – even with asterisks – as this can cause search engines to downrank the story. For all the talk of unregulated filth, the internet still often behaves like the pinch-mouthed maiden aunt of unjustified stereotype. For the most part, however, the Irish have been more relaxed about cussing than the English, who, in turn, have been more relaxed about cussing than the Americans. That nation's media will still pixellate the raised middle finger when it is offered to the camera in digital insult. Is the finger standing in for the erect male member? When fully visible is it enacting the words 'f**k you!' to a frail readership? The most infuriatingly prissy manifestation of such puritanism is that dread construction 'F-bomb' – as infantilising as referring to your excreta as 'poop' and 'wee-wee'. Trump's greatest weapon is exhaustion. Almost nobody has the energy to get annoyed with him any more You saw a bit of that this week. 'It's still surprising to see the president drop an F-bomb on the White House grounds,' the late-night host Seth Meyers said. 'Nothing says 'Everyone remain calm' like dropping an F-bomb on live TV,' his rival Jimmy Fallon ventured. The word is, this usage suggests, so explosive that it can destroy careers and send broadcasters in fraught supplication before the Federal Communications Commission. CNN had great fun contrasting the way Fox News treated Trump's verbal detonation with the right-leaning network's unforgiving attitude to swearing Democrats. Emily Compagno, a host on Fox, noted the president had been 'using some salty language'. Just 20 minutes later Compagno was considerably more heated when addressing the use by Jasmine Crockett, a representative from Texas, of the word 'f***ing' in a statement on the bombing of Iran. The host declared herself 'particularly repulsed' by the comments and went on to say, 'It's a pretty foul mouth of her for someone that went to a tidy little all-girls Catholic school.' The CNN report from Abby Phillip continued with a montage of earlier Fox jibes at sweary Democrats that confirmed the starchy, priggish tone of so much American discourse on 'bad language'. The Fox regular Jeanine Pirro argued that Democrats 'are like a bunch of potty-mouth kids'. Another said Democrats were so 'confounded by the fact that they've got to cuss'. All of this could confuse anyone familiar with Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning films or Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer-winning raps. The hard-collar puritanism to which the authorities pretend sits uneasily with a wider nation that, when it lets itself go, can be more creative with profanity than any other in the Anglosphere. Which is not to suggest it is Trump's way with words that has got him off relatively lightly. CNN is on to something with the politics of it all, but, the odd quip from light-night hosts noted, there has been little substantial outrage from the president's opponents either. His greatest weapon is exhaustion. Almost nobody has the energy to get annoyed with Trump any more. This may not be a terrible thing when it comes to 'salty language' on the front lawn. It's everything else he does that matters.
New York Post
23-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Trump seals his ‘President Badass' cred — and makes US foes think twice
The word 'badass' was bandied about a lot after the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump last year. Famously, the bloodied Republican candidate raised his fist in defiance. In a different context, the same pungent word applies to his 2 a.m. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Advertisement Trump the TV star has a knack for the theatrical and grand gesture. That obviously matters in domestic politics, but in international affairs, too, where projecting strength and command are just as important. We don't know where the war heads from here, and need to learn more about the damage that was inflicted. Still, it was an operation with a distinct and very useful element of Trump badassery. Advertisement It's not that Trump always follows through on his threats: He doesn't, with his on-and-off 'liberation day' tariffs an ongoing example of backing off and recalibrating. But when he makes good on a threat, it leaves a mark. He's said how foreign adversaries in his first term didn't always believe his threats 100%; they might believe him some percentage less than that, but it'd still be enough to make them wonder. Advertisement After this, whatever that number is just went up another 30% or so. Trump's signature military operations haven't been particularly complex: smashing ISIS, killing Iraqi Gen. Qassem Soleimani, bombing Fordow and other Iranian nuclear facilities. They haven't required mustering big international coalitions or launching, say, amphibious landings. But they achieve an outsized effect, thanks to the stark terms in which they are promised (e.g., bombing 'the s–t' out of ISIS), or the sheer audacity of the operation. Advertisement Killing Soleimani was a very limited action, but one that was shocking all the same. Bombing Fordow and the other sites was also quite focused, but the operation came as a strategic thunderclap. One way to put it is that the 'shock and awe' bombing campaign before the second Iraq war was much less awesome than advertised, and a prelude to a grinding, drawn-out conflict. Trump's operations tend, in contrast, to be all shock and awe, and for real. He represents the opposite approach of Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War. Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Basically, the former business executive and LBJ defense secretary believed that talented managers could micromanage their way to success in government — complicated problems required complex analysis, shorn of a human element. The Trump method is to simplify everything and apply blunt-force solutions, undergirded by a very human psychology of dominance. Advertisement To wit, Iran can't have a nuclear bomb: Diplomacy would be ideal, but if it doesn't work, military force will be necessary. Tinker to Evers to Chance. QED. Trump proved immune to any subtle and counterintuitive theories about Iran, displaying the attitude toward the regime that you'd expect of any commonsensical American who's lived through the last 45 years. Advertisement Another way to look at Trump's strike is as the bookend of Desert One in 1980, Jimmy Carter's misbegotten hostage-rescue operation. The failure of that attempt represented a humiliation that was another blow to our national self-confidence and was a symbol of the reduced state of the post-Vietnam US military. It also spoke to the staying power of the Iranian regime at its inception. This is the opposite. The strike showcased the remarkable reach and proficiency of the US military, and a president willing to wield it as necessary. Advertisement The operation may eventually — although this is less certain — be seen as a prelude to the end of a decrepit regime. Again, who knows how this all plays out, and it may be that there are unanticipated downsides and mission creep. Trump posted the other day about regime change. The Iranians might believe that's merely bluster — but they need to take it more seriously than only a couple of days ago. Advertisement Such is the effect of Trump's badass move, and we should hope it is being felt not just in Tehran but in every capital of a country that wishes us harm. Twitter: @RichLowry
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How geography helped shape Jefferson Parish's growth
JEFFERSON PARISH, La. (WGNO) — On Saturday, June 14, Jefferson Parish will celebrate its bicentennial with a swanky ball at Lakeside Mall. Moving New Orleans Forward anchor LBJ took a look at how geography shaped the parish's growth. 'Orleans Parish was very big and it encompassed the City of New Orleans and then all of these outlying areas. Those outlying areas that would soon become Jefferson Parish, were of two geographies. There was the higher natural levees and the ridges, which were fully developed as agricultural and enslaved plantations. And then there were the back swamps that were empty,' said Geography Professor at Tulane's School of Architecture and Built Environment, Richard Campenella. As what normally happens is landowners and residents wanted more political control of their destiny. 'They didn't want all of the power to be the state legislature and so forth to be coming out of urban New Orleans. So, as part of that process to give themselves more representation, they got the state legislature in 1825 to carve out of Orleans Parish a separate parish. Now, they had their own police, jury, now they had their own representation,' said Campenella. While Jefferson's size today might suggest a population swell from the 1800s, that is not what happened. 'If you look at the populations of Jefferson Parish in the early years starting with the 1830s census, they do some strange things between 1830 up to 1880. The area is growing but what is happening is that Orleans, that is the City of New Orleans, is the big boy on the block and it is annexing in the most populous cities within Jefferson Parish,' said Campenella, Those areas would have included many parts of uptown New Orleans. Fast forward 100 years between 1930 and 1980, favorable conditions equal the growth of the parish we had known now. 'There's a 50-year time where I think the parish population increases 11-fold. It's the age of automobiles, it's the age of reclamation and drainage, there's the oil boom and most importantly there's access. There's ingress and egress. There's the Pontchartrain Expressway, there's I-10, there's Airline Hwy, there's the Causeway. You could get there through there,' said Campenella.U.S. Attorney's Office indicts New Orleans man accused of enticing teen LSU fans favored to win College World Series Jello Shot Challenge New Balance shoes and gear are up to 40% off on Amazon right now Slidell man pleads guilty in child sexual abuse material possession case Beach Boys' Brian Wilson dies, family 'at a loss for words' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
