News

With President Obama pushing for an immigration bill "by the end of the summer," Congress is rapidly moving major immigration reform legislation. Under the bill passed in the Senate, an estimated 8-11 million unauthorized immigrants would receive work authorization, giving them access to Social Security numbers and with it entitlement to Social Security and Medicare benefits with ten years of earnings..Compare that to retiring early at age 6She'll lose ,437 in Social Security income. Her starting benefit will be permanently reduced by 25% to ,225, and even with receiving benefits over more years she'll receive only 3,228 over the course of her retirement. Her final benefit would be ,438..Since that conversation inflation for certain items has jumped. In fact consumer price data indicate that the COLA for next year may be the highest since 2019, if the trends continue. My estimates about the COLA are based on the most current available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for what it's worth..While the Social Security hold harmless provision provides important protection from Social Security reductions, more money is required to catch up to Medicare Part B levels in following years. If COLAs continue to remain low, premiums would adjusted again due to low COLAs. COLAs would have to be substantially higher in following years or the whole process would happen all over again..That doesn't mean that a budget agreement is completely out of the question or the much more unlikely scenario that Congress won't get paid. The No Budget No Pay Act holds Congressional paychecks in escrow, and, by law, will release the funds either when a budget agreement is reached, or on the last day of the 113th Congress, which ends on December 31, 2014..But in 2017, if your AGI remains ,000, you could deduct only allowable medical expenses over 10% of your AGI, or ,000. If you again had medical expenses of ,000, you would only be able to deduct ,000. In this example you you would pay taxes on an additional ,250..The most recent report is that the Trump administration expects to begin sending 0 prescription drug discount cards to seniors by Jan. 1..According to the most recent Social Security Trustees report, Social Security already pays out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes. In 2019, Social Security paid ,047.9 billion in benefits versus receiving 4.5 billion in payroll tax revenues. Taxation of the benefits of retirees provides another .5 billion in revenues, and .8 billion is money from "interest" earned by the assets of the Social Security Trust funds, special non-marketable bonds. Social Security trustees forecast that the program will be depleted by 2035..A push in the House to give legal status to illegal immigrants is reviving some movement toward immigration legislation this year. But the effort is running into outspoken opposition, including that from TSCL's grass roots senior members and supporters. At issue is whether undocumented immigrants, who have used fraudulent Social Security numbers to get jobs, would be allowed to claim Social Security payments based on earnings under those numbers.