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The billion could be financed without taking money from the Social Security Trust Fund. One way is through reduction of pork barrel spending and government waste. In the fiscal year 2001 budget alone, pork "watch-dog" Senator John McCain estimated that the government would spend a record billion in pork-barrel projects..Call your drug plan to ask about the coverage of the new generic and the expected co-pay. Be forewarned: according to Consumer Reports magazine, some Medicare drug plans charge lower co-payments for the branded version than for its generic counterpart. That has to do with agreements between insurers and pharmaceutical companies that make it seem like the name brand is the better deal..Burwell Nomination Advances.The disparity between growth in the COLA and Medigap premiums is likely to be worse in 2020. "Inflation is lower this year, and we are estimating that the COLA is likely to be around 1.7 percent," Johnson says. "Nevertheless, we anticipate that Medigap premiums will continue to grow several times faster for a number of reasons," Johnson adds..The most recent data from the Social Security Administration indicate that, in recent years, the ESF grew at an unprecedented pace. Cumulative wages held in the ESF since 1990 now total more than ,022.5 trillion, unadjusted for inflation. A significant portion of these wages could later be claimed and re-instated to valid SSNs if immigrants working illegally gain work authorization and have kept copies of their W2s or other evidence of earnings. Because earnings are used to determine entitlement, this poses a substantial long-term liability to the Social Security Trust Fund and would worsen solvency..The last time the Medicare Part A Trust Fund was forecast to become insolvent was in 200At the time, the Part A Trust Fund was forecast to become insolvent by 201Lucky for us that never happened - in 2017 at least. Congress enacted the 2010 Affordable Care Act which changed Medicare taxes in two ways. It added a 0.9% surtax to the amount of Medicare payroll taxes paid by high earning individuals with wages over 0,000. This was on top of the 1.45% that workers currently pay on their wages. A second provision affecting the more affluent, imposed a 3.8% tax on a portion of net investment income. Estates and trusts can also be subject to this tax..If signed into law, the Social Security Fairness Act would amend title II of the Social Security Act to repeal the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision..The opinions expressed in "Congressional Corner" reflect the views of the writer and are not necessarily those of The Senior Citizens League..This week, Members of Congress continued working on a .1 trillion spending bill to fund the federal government past December 11th. Lawmakers in the Senate passed a five-day continuing resolution on Thursday afternoon to buy more time for the negotiations. At the time of writing this week's update, those in the House had not yet passed the stopgap funding bill, but they are expected to overwhelmingly vote in its favor before midnight on December 11th, and President Obama has already said he will sign the short-term fix into law.