State Legislatures Magazine Staff Snapshots Virginia J Drew Magazine2021This week, Senator Sherrod Brown introduced legislation that would repeal the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision two Social Security provisions that unfairly reduce the earned benefits of millions of state and local government employees each year. The Social Security Fairness Act was introduced with the bipartisan support of fourteen original cosponsors in the Senate..The Congressional Budget Office estimates the House GOP's American Health Care Act that passed in the House cuts federal spending on Medicaid by 4 billion over ten years, a funding cut of 25%. The Senate's health care bill would cut Medicaid even more deeply, by using a more slowly-growing inflation index to adjust reimbursements to states..The hold harmless provision kicks in when the dollar amount of an individual's Medicare Part B premium rises more than the dollar amount of an individual's COLA adjustment to prevent a reduction in Social Security benefits. The provision applies to individuals with incomes below ,000, and whose Medicare Part B premium is automatically deducted from their Social Security benefits. Johnson estimates that about 35.5 million Social Security recipients were held harmless in 2016 and 201"People who have been held harmless in both those years are paying premiums that are roughly 8 per month in 2017 on average, a difference of about from the current 4 premium. However, for many of those people, especially those with below - average Social Security benefits, the 2018 COLA won't be high enough to cover the full 4 Part B premium. … Continued
Research Editorial Legal And Committee Staff Active Supervision After Nc DentalRanking Member Senator Murray and several witnesses on Wednesday including Tennessee Health Commissioner Julie McPeak and Pennsylvania Secretary of Health and Human Services Theresa Miller agreed that CSR payments are critical to improving the marketplace and that vulnerable populations must continue to receive the same level of coverage through state waiver programs..If adopted, H.R. 860 would strengthen and reform the Social Security program by providing beneficiaries with a 2 percent benefit boost, basing cost-of-living adjustments on the CPI-E, creating a new minimum benefit set at 125 percent of the poverty line, and cutting taxes for beneficiaries. It would also apply the payroll tax to income over 0,000 and gradually increase the payroll tax rate to 7.4 percent..TSCL agrees with Congressman Garamendi, and we hope to see his CPI-E Act signed into law before the end of the 115th Congress. For more information on H.R. 1251, visit the Bill Tracking section of our website. To read The Senior Citizens League's Loss of Buying Power study, click HERE. … Continued