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Members of Congress may lose an election but unlike other Americans, they never lose their retirement and health benefits. A Member of the House or Senate who retires at age 60 after just 12 years in office will receive a Congressional pension of ,000 a year and lifetime benefits that could total more than 0,000. That doesn't even include 401 benefits or their Social Security benefits -..Ranking 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..Representative John Larson introduced H.R. 860 on January 30, 201It has since been referred to the Committee on Ways and Means..The Social Security Trustees now say that benefit costs are exceeding the cash revenues coming in. Do you think changes are needed, and if so, what?.This year, for the first time since the early 80's, the Social Security Trust Fund that pays retirement and survivors benefits fell into deficit and is paying out more than it receives in payroll taxes and taxes on Social Security benefits. In years in which there was an excess of Social Security taxes, the federal government used the surplus revenues for other purposes and then credited the Trust Fund with special non-marketable government bonds representing IOUs. But with the recession and prolonged economic recovery, the taxes that fund Social Security plunged. At the same time, enrollment is soaring as seniors who have lost their jobs turn to Social Security early. When the Trust Funds don't receive enough tax revenues, then the government must find the cash to redeem the IOUs to pay benefits. The only options Congress has is unsustainable levels of borrowing, tax increases, or cutting benefits..Congress has reallocated payroll taxes at least 9 times in the past to temporarily avert trust fund financing crises, according to the Congressional Research Service. "Doing so now would be much more difficult, because the retirement program is in cash deficit, and the government is borrowing money to cover retirement and survivor benefits," Cates points out. "Reallocation from the retirement trust fund would mean the government would have to borrow more, a recipe for more explosive debt limit show downs in coming months," he says. "The situation could put all Social Security benefits, including retirement and survivors benefits, at risk of cuts in debt limit negotiations," Cates explains..At the celebratory event, the President told his audience, "This got done because of you; because you called, you emailed, you tweeted your representatives and you demanded action. You made it clear that you wanted to see some common sense in Washington.".The plan would affect both current and future Medicare beneficiaries by carving Medicare into two systems. People who already receive Medicare would continue under the current system. People who turn 65 by 2021 would receive a voucher to purchase private insurance..In making the 1977 changes, Congress, wanting to avoid an abrupt change, allowed persons born from 1917 through 1921 to use a special transitional benefit formula or the new 1977 formula, whichever would yield the higher of the two benefits. The transition benefit formula never delivered the promised benefit protection, however, because it did not yield a higher benefit amount. Instead, the new benefit formula most often yielded the higher amount.