Donald Trump warned Tuesday that if the Democrats don’t approve funding, there are dangers to the future of Social Security and Medicare.
Trump said at a press conference that when he asked Democrats for feedback on the funding bills, one said, “It means death.”
“There’s nothing about death,” Trump said. “Theirs is death because they’re going to lose Medicaid, they’re going to lose Social Security, they’re going to lose Medicare, all of those things are going to be gone because the whole country would be bankrupt, and you’re not going to have any kind of medical insurance.”
Why can’t we have a no confidence vote and get rid of the party in charge?
Did they really not build a mechanism for us to collectively vote no confidence? I feel like they’re abusing every trick in the book and nobody can find a way to stop it
The president added of Democrats, “We will not be extorted on this crazy part of this. They’ve never done this before. Nobody has. You always vote for an extension.”
JFC. Republicans do this every single time Democrats have control of Congress. And, every single time…Democrats give them what they want, in order to get a deal made. Now that Democrats are finally following the Republicans example, they fuckin’ lose their shit, and everything falls apart.
And idiots lap it up and moan about how the Schumer shutdown is going to impact their appointment at the doctor next month if all those crazy socialists, like Nancy Pelosi, don’t listen to reason.
Anyone else remembers the Cheeto proclaiming that in just two weeks he’d have a healthcare bill that would be better than Medicare?
Pepperidge farm remembers
Someday the money from the tariffs will trickle down to the common American. Just like the tax cuts for the rich from the 1980s.
I cannot wait for the “pepperidge farm” stupid fucking Family Guy meme to just die off.
You don’t need to constantly parrot 20 year old memes. No one is reading that and going “haha, oh man so funny, like from the Family Guy show?? Lmao”
Maybe you’re right but also fuck you
I’ll take it.
Well that’s exactly what a meme is, it passes on the meta info without having to explicitly say it all. Like Arthur’s first.
US entering the “third world country”-club. Congratulations.
Bro, the US has been a 3rd world country masquerading as a 1st world country a lot longer than Trump. The US propaganda machine is top tier, fooling American citizens that theyre greatest enemy is each other, as well as promoting individualism at the cost of the individual.
Richest nation on earth yet the majority are 1 health emergency away from bankruptcy, to people skipping doctor visits due to how expensive our Healthcare is while the rest of the world gets to enjoy free healthcare. Wake the fuck up, “entering” like thanks for the depressing ass chuckle this morning.
There are almost 800,000 homeless in the US, you could have an entire city of just homeless people. US is already a 3rd world country. Has been for a long time now. ICE won’t even round them up cause even ICE doesn’t want to deal with them incarcerated.
US has less homeless per capita than Sweden, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, the UK. And others. You understand the US has 340+ million people right?
It’s also the richest country in the world with the biggest economy yet it has almost 1,000,000 homeless. Enough to populate a good sized city. That’s some cope.
Oh that’s right, America bad, I almost forgot.
The richest country on earth with the largest military, both by a large margin, should be able to have solved problems other countries haven’t.
Then again those clowns voted in a failed gameshow host with incontinence and dementia TWICE to their country’s highest office. He demo’d their White House and commits crimes on a daily basis and yet - tens of millions love him. So yeah:
Not to be that guy, but the first, second, third world naming scheme stems from racism and isn’t based on any real statistics.
It’s actually from the Cold War.
1st world = USA, NATO, and their allies. 2nd world = USSR, the Eastern Bloc and their allies (the 2nd world doesn’t really exist anymore). 3rd world = anyone not in the 1st or 2nd categories.
You are right though it’s not about any real statistics. It’s about political alignment.
Yep, right, which kind of also inherently excludes most non-white countries from the top two tiers.
Whether it was intentional or not, it definitely didn’t help the image of non-white countries.
Social security has been withdrawn frim my paycheck for 40 years… shit better be there for me when its my turn.
Whats more dangerous than a starving, homeless man with nothing more to lose.
25 million staving homeless men with a purpose
Some cuts may be necessary in these trying times
There are YouTube videos on how to build one of these.
I’m pretty sure a few people could just figure one out from memory. Thats like early game minecraft type shit.
Ok, but hear me out. We didn’t have a ballroom in the white house for fancy parties.
Oh fuck. You’re right! Totally worth it. We’re so selfish.
Someone with actual power.
Who knows what the future holds, but anyway the people over the past 40 years receiving social security direct deposited into their bank accounts every month thank you for your obligatory contributions. They couldn’t be living large without you 😜
Many retirees ain’t ‘living large’ as you seem to think. Many need to continue to work to afford groceries, pay rent, and buy medications. So many medications. And medicare doesn’t cover everything you need when your old. You pay for the Part B medicare, a minimum of $150 per month and the cost goes up if you have more money. But you STILL nee to buy extra supplemental insurance to cover the things medicare doesn’t cover. So several $100’s more a month for insurance. And do this while on a fixed income…
If you weren’t living large before you retired, you ain’t living large after you retire.
This is a casual discussion forum, sorry you didn’t see I was exaggerating. Any amount of money put into one’s bank account with no effort is “living large” (slight exaggeration) in my opinion. Hey I’m struggling too. Life is not easy.
The idea behind social security is that the recipients already put in a career’s worth of effort. They paid social security taxes for however many years, and now they are ENTITLED to the payments they receive in their retirement. It’s their money.
I understand but when we had to wait 50 years to get back that money we put into the pot, it’s retirement time and we are literally relaxing, not working anymore. The money appears in our bank accounts while we spend our last few years on vacation.
I’m so sorry you feel like you need to explain the concept of social security to me.
Yes, but the money you get isnt enough to live on when retired. You need huge savings and possibly keep on working into yoyr 70s and 80s
I know. If I ever make it to age 72 my monthly SS will be $2k/month which will probably have the spending power of $50 by then, based on inflation. Even $2k/month now, wouldn’t be enough to survive on by itself.
“I have to help my Argentinian friend!” Trump blurted.
If it’s so important, Republicans should accept their very reasonable changes, Donald.
He’s planning on getting rid of those anyway, so he can continue to fuck right off.
But think of the trillions!
Of tax dollars his donors will save.
Gone to funding ballrooms and Argentinian farms
This is pitiful reporting by Newsweek. They’re happy to state what each side is saying about the situation, and they fail to do even the most basic research to fact check any of the statements.
The article cites Republicans as saying that Democrats “want to provide free health care to illegal aliens”. The heavy implication is that without the budget Reps are trying to push, we will be paying for that or that Dems wouldn’t approve a budget that didn’t - which is just patently untrue.
Ignoring that hospitals will, of course, provide emergency care to anyone (not for free, mind), and focusing on the idea of major U.S. benefits programs providing help to undocumented immigrants… they just don’t. They go to Americans and qualifying resident non-citizens, i.e. green-card holders, etc. who have been here 5+ years (Medicare) or have paid enough into the relevant taxes (Social Security). Medicaid is similar.
This is stuff I was previously familiar with and was able to verify in minutes using basic internet resources.
Republicans say or imply benefit money will go to undocumented immigrants unless this budget is passed, which is patently untrue and easy to check on. That Newsweek gives Republicans voice throughout the article to their claims, some false and some unfounded, but only gives one Democrat a quote - one that focuses on the shutdown itself more than the funding/benefit claims - is bullshit.
I’m not saying it’s wrong Newsweek didn’t give equal “time” to each side. I’m saying it’s wrong they spend so much of the article quoting misinformation from Republicans without any clear fact-checking.
There’s a quote, one with various forms and attributions, that posits to journalists:
If one person claims it’s raining and another says the sun is shining, the media’s job isn’t to quote both—it’s to look out the window and report the truth.
Our media is bought and paid for by wealthy interests who want all this.
It’s actually ironic that MAGA were right that a lot of mainstream media couldn’t be trusted… Just for the wrong fucking reasons and instead of being skeptical and thoughtful they just started listening to random asshats on the internet.
This is pitiful reporting by Newsweek
It ALWAYS is, my man, it always is…
(I recommend to substitute “Newsweek” with “Main Stream Media”, for best results ! )
But republicans control every facet of government right now. They can easily end the shutdown right now.
To be clear, the day SS is gone is the day I’m willing to pick up a gun and get this party started.
And I know I’m not alone.
This society doesn’t need to continue functioning the day SS stops functioning. So the treasonous Republican party can go ahead and do that and find out what happens next.
The sad thing is, most of us (Americans on Lemmy/Piefed) are probably not going to see why we need social security.
It’s basically a government ran pension plan if you can’t work. Most of us can work and are. So we don’t see why we invented it during the great depression to aid in a social safety net when shit goes south.
And Trump is most likely going to continue plummeting shit into an economy as bad as the Great Depression. Some already had the question of “Do I eat today or do I save up to pay for rent this month?” And Trump isn’t the person to solve it, only make it worse.
Most of us probably don’t claim the funds from it, and go “Oh this is just for the elderly, not for me. I’m 20 to 30 something and able bodied, this is for when I’m 60 something and walking with a cane.”
When Trump guts it and if we have any resemblance of the federal government when we need Social Security, this will probably have lasting effects when we need to claim our benefits.
And the even sadder part, all of his voting base will just nod along. “The gubberment took money from muh paycheck, says so here in muh paystub, fucking woke commie Democrats. Da woke took muh $100 a month, I had to spend that on Trump hats!”
Why wait?
Well if he waits maybe he’ll get a sale on a cool new gun.
The real answer is that DF expects it to be solved without their help.
I heard Epstein’s island is lovely this time of year.
Warns? Must be a rally. If it were to his donors, it’d be “promises”.
It’s a warning in the same sense as someone warns that your building might burn down if you don’t pay protection money.
Most of his mind might be gone, but the extortion part is still operative.
Hypothetically, let’s say the administration cancels social security. What happens to all of my money I’ve already paid into the system? I’m not at retirement age yet. Are they just going to steal my investment?
You think?..of course it’s stolen
That’s the great misconception and lie of Social Security. People think it’s like a government run 401k, that you’re "investing’ in some retirement account every paycheck. That’s not at all how it actually functions though. Social Security is two entirely independent things. First it’s a benefits program like SNAPP or Medicaid. In that regard Congress votes every year on how much budget they’re going to allocate towards paying people Social Security. Literally everyone receiving Social Security cheques in the following year are reliant on Congress deciding to allocate enough money to make sure those cheques don’t bounce. Secondly it’s an income tax. The two are not connected in any way. The amount of Social Security income tax that the federal government collects each year has absolutely no bearing on the amount of funding that Congress allocates for Social Security in the coming year.
Let that sink in.
Social Security is the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme. Always has been. That’s a huge part of why a lot of Republicans, particularly older ones (like ones around retirement age) are hand wringing about falling birth rates. Social Security always counted on the idea that there would be more people working and paying into Social Security than the number of people currently collecting Social Security. In a country with a positive population growth that would always be true. It ceases to be true the moment you have a negative population growth rate though.
Social Security is the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme. Always has been.
No, it’s a big insurance scheme, but its finances have been fucked with. The original intent was that the money went into a trust fund isolated from other government finances. It didn’t take long for some scumbag to realize that the trust fund could be used as collateral for loans, or “lent” directly from the trust fund to other government activities.
Also, even if it’s funded year-to-year, if the cap on contributions were lifted, the system could be self-funding, or nearly so. But the Republicans (and some conservative Democrats) have been trying to kill it since FDR started it, and the specious argument is always that it’s not affordable.
The US in 1935 could afford it. The only difference now is a matter of priorities and who’s in charge.
They cap it at 160k a year. So if you make 3m a year, you’ll only pay on what is due on the 160k.
Getting rid of that, along with taxing the rich, would fix that problem. If 8 people have more wealth than like 4 billion people, it’s really not a “we need more people to keep this ponzi scheme” problem, it’s more of a France in the 1790s problem.
2025 cap 176,100
2026 cap 183,600
Interestingly, this is the first year that the congressional salary doesn’t hit the cap
In that regard Congress votes every year on how much budget they’re going to allocate towards paying people Social Security. Literally everyone receiving Social Security cheques in the following year are reliant on Congress deciding to allocate enough money to make sure those cheques don’t bounce. Secondly it’s an income tax. The two are not connected in any way.
Social Security is not part of the normal budget. It and the social security tax are kept separate from everything else. Congress is not having to decide how much to find it with every year because it’s cordoned off, and directly funded by it’s relevant income tax. It has been pulling in a surplus, and has funds in reserve. The point where we begin drawing down that reserve is coming soon though, which is why it keeps making news.
cheques
I love when nonamericans storm in here acting like authorities on American things they very clearly aren’t.
Listen to this folks, he’s right. Even when the reserve runs out of money in about 10 years under the current structure, tax revenues will fund about 80% of benefits on an ongoing basis.
To everyone who says Social Security isn’t sustainable: it’s very sustainable. Just at around 80%.
To fund it at 100% long into the future they just need to raise the cap on taxable income.
Also! If it wages weren’t so dismal, for so long, social security would not be having this issue at all.
We could fix social security by increasing the minimum wage to something that want an absolute joke without ever touching the Social Security laws directly.
Although the cap should be raised, too. It is laughably low.
The solution is so simple and painless that every American should be furious that SS is EVER used as a political football. Fuck the rich, raise the cap, from the bottom to the top.
To fund it at 100% long into the future they just need to raise the cap on taxable income.
Yes. Or just remove the cap entirely.
Lol, I’m American, you just can’t spell. Cheque is the correct way to spell it, check is incorrect. You also don’t know how SS actually functions. Congress has treated it like a slush fund for decades and constantly steals money from it. And yes it is a budget item that gets voted on like anything else. You might think it’s an independent account, but that’s just the way it’s reported on the accounting forms, absolutely nothing is stopping Congress from taking those funds and spending them on whatever they want and in fact on many many occasions they’ve done exactly that.
Congress doesn’t even need the revenue from any taxes to just spend whatever it wants. The US has been borrowing money to cover its budget for all but like 3 years of my life.
The few times they did explicitly borrow that money from the social security fund, they replaced it with Treasury bonds, which is a certified debt and accrue interest and not paying those back would remove Congress’ ability to borrow any more money for probably decades. So no, they’re not stealing that money - that has been a long time conspiracy theory that people who want to kill Soc Sec like to spread.
And no one in the US spells it like that, no.
The US doesn’t need to borrow money as long as the USD remains the world’s reserve currency.
Which is why we are completely fucking ourselves by burning all of the good will we’ve built up since WW2.
No, it DOES need to borrow money. Being the world reserve currency just let’s it do so to an exceptional degree. It does this by selling Treasury bonds.
Read about Modern Monterey Theory.
It’s all made up, and we print it. We can do whatever we want with it.
Or we could, before our own government started sabotaging our standing in the world.
Cheque and check are two different things you’re just uneducated. A check is the mark you make to select a box, while a cheque is the thing you write to transfer money from one bank account to another. They’re different and yes people all over the US know the difference between the two.
I’m aware of what those using British English would argue. But no official documents (laws, forms, government regulations) in the US use that spelling. It’s check here.
Claiming someone else is uneducated because they’re not being an uppity contrarian to how every single official source in the entire country spells something…is just stupid.
It’s been this way since Webster out out his 1806 dictionary. Go argue with him about it.
Pot, meet kettle.
Treated it like a slush fund? How? It’s time to stop taking what your racist uncle tells you at Thanksgiving as the truth.
And yet they can’t stand immigration. Well, anything other than waspy-white immigration.
It’s not a fucking ponzi scheme
This comment is so stupid I wouldn’t know where to start to unpack it. This is such a bad take on so many levels it makes Sovereign citizens sound like supreme court justices.
I mean when it was first introduced it ran at a surplus and did its job. Now it keeps being raided by the parasites/rich.
No money from the social security fund has been stolen. Any money that has been previously borrowed was replaced with Treasury bonds. Effectively an IOU that accrues interest.
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What happens to all of my money I’ve already paid into the system? I’m not at retirement age yet. Are they just going to steal my investment?
The Reupublicans stole that money a long time ago.
It’s not like it’s sitting there waiting for you to use. Every dollar you pay into SS just goes into the pocket of someone drawing SS. It’s a good system but not good if you plan to cut the program. Meaning millions will have paid in for nothing.
It will also destroy old people, since most need it to survive.
We didn’t “pay for nothing,” we contributed toward the well being of people in our communities that cannot work.
Jesus Christ people, it’s not always about you.
With the promise that we would be given the same benefit. We paid in Money most of us would need to invest in our own retirement had it not been going into that system.
People are allowed to feel cheated when they get cheated.
We did pay for nothing if the program gets cut. Sure we took care of old people, now what? I could have used that money for my own retirement. If the system is still in place then it wasn’t for nothing and you’ll be using the younger generations tax dollars for your retirement. So it’s not all about me, but if I don’t get the same benefit why pay in?
That’s the whole point of social security. Not social security for a certain generation tax
You paid for “social security”. It’s literally just right there in the name.
Yeah someone else’s. If the program gets cut then who is paying my social security? Oh yeah. No one. So it’s social security for a certain generation. I could have used that money for my own retirement, but if the programs cut it was social security for boomers and then alone lol.
It’s not “someone else’s,” it’s social security. It’s for the entire society.
Like you realize that the old lady down the road isn’t literally getting the exact same money that you put in, right? They are just numbers on paper. You pay into a fund that is used to benefit all of society. And it does.
Stop looking at it so selfishly and read about why FDR introduced it in the first place.
It will also destroy old people, since most need it to survive.
I wonder if this is partly why I see so much efforts whipping up one generation against the other. If you get zoomers all pissed off at some caricature of the boomers, they just might cheer at fucking over the old people (and their own future selves, too, but the anger will override the cognitive functions).
Every dollar you pay into SS just goes into the pocket of someone drawing SS.
Gee, that sounds like a Ponzi scheme. Which I guess works fine as long as the population keeps growing and is forced to pay in.
Edit: not sure why I’m getting downvoted. I wasn’t saying it IS a Ponzi scheme. Just that it sounds like one. We often talk about social security as something we pay into to then get back later, but that’s not what it is. And the government has been spending the social security money like other revenue for a few decades. It’s just another tax now, like any other. And because population growth is slowing, I probably won’t get to benefit from it.
Wait til people learn about fractional banking 🫣
It’s not your money.
