Two Social Security Reforms That Seniors Strongly Support.Despite the proposed decrease in funding, many feel that the plan from Chairman Rogers is a positive sign. The cut is negligible when compared to last year's proposal for fiscal 2014, the House and Senate committees were more than billion apart in their Labor-HHS-Education funding plans. The minor cut for fiscal 2015 likely means that appropriators in the House are hoping to compromise with the Senate Appropriations Committee, which has not yet released a proposal for the contentious measure..Sixty-two percent of American households include at least one pet. Mine includes two –both a dog and an aging cat. New advances in veterinary medicines are making expensive treatments a reality, often putting owners into an emotional and fiscally painful bind. For example, I learned that my dog with paralysis in her hind quarters from a potentially fatal spinal disc rupture had the option of getting a ,000 surgery, followed by weeks of physical therapy in a swimming tank. My cat with hyperthyroidism is receiving oral medications costing up to 0 per year including blood tests. Even if your pet is perfectly healthy, vet bills for routine annual check-ups, tests, vaccines and treatments can run about 0 per year for dogs and 5 per year for cats..Representative Elijah Cummings introduced H.R. 448 on January 10, 201It has since been referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and to the Committee on Ways and Means..Only about 5% of the death certificates listed only Covid-19, and that was more frequently the case when the person died at home..At their convention in July, delegates of the Republican Party approved a platform focused on reducing the national debt. Their document begins by stating: "We reject the old maxim that Social Security is the 'Third Rail' of American politics, deadly for anyone who would change it. The Democratic Party still treats it that way, even though everyone knows that its current course will lead to a financial and social disaster." The focal point of their plan is cutting government waste, encouraging economic growth, and balancing the budget even if that means making significant changes to programs like Social Security..Calculating the COLA in this manner would remove more of the uncertainty in years of economic recession and high unemployment and it would reflect inflation two ways - the growth in average wages which determine the average benefit, as well as the growth in prices. The national average Social Security benefit tends to rise most years, because new people coming onto the rolls tend to have higher wages than people who retired ahead of them. Indexing using this method would still tend to ensure a small boost to benefits even in years when inflation is so low that no COLA is payable..Rushed or pressured to sign papers. Is the salesman or dealer herding you into an office and telling you to sign now or lose your deal? That's a sure sign it's a deal worth missing..This week, lawmakers continued working on an omnibus spending bill, and The Senior Citizens League endorsed new legislation that would give Social Security beneficiaries an emergency cost-of-living adjustment next year.
