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The Social Security Disability Insurance trust fund is projected to become depleted next year, in 201What do you feel should be done to restore this program's solvency?.In the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy will take over the top post House Minority Leader for Republicans next year. Representative Steve Scalise will become the Minority Whip, and Representative Liz Cheney will hold the position of House Republican Conference Chairwoman. House Democrats, who will take over the majority in the House next year, will hold their leadership elections on November 28th, following the Thanksgiving recess..President Obama recently announced a series of Executive Actions to protect an estimated 4.9 million illegal immigrants from deportation. This month the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service is expected to start taking applications as hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants begin to apply for deportation relief, work authorization, and Social Security numbers..Most Look Forward to Boost; Low-Income Retirees Worry Benefits Could be Trimmed.Representative Elijah Cummings introduced H.R. 448 on January 10, 201It has since been referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and to the Committee on Ways and Means..They believe we should consider increasing future Social Security benefits..When there is no or a very low COLA, a special provision of law known as "hold harmless" protects beneficiaries when the dollar amount of their COLA is lower than the dollar amount of their Part B increase. The Part B premium is adjusted to prevent a reduction in Social Security benefits from one year to the next. "But when this provision occurs on a program-wide basis - as it did in 2016 and 2017, the entire increase in Medicare Part B for the year is shifted to the people who are not protected by hold harmless, Johnson notes. Instead of the Part B increase being spread over all Medicare beneficiaries, the total cost increase is borne by only 30 percent of Medicare beneficiaries who are not protected by the hold harmless provisions. They include:.Here's how it works. Undocumented immigrants use illegally obtained Social Security numbers to get jobs. Employers report earnings to the Social Security Administration as required by law. Those wages are used to calculate benefits when a worker files a claim. But when the Social Security Administration receives a name or SSN on a W-2 that does not match the agency's records, the wage report goes into an earnings suspense file while attempts are made to reconcile the discrepancy..If signed into law, H.R. 3513 would take a number of steps to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, including requiring the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate Part D drug prices, allowing the re-importation of drugs from Canada, closing the "doughnut hole" three years earlier than current law, and prohibiting "pay-for-delay" deals between drug manufacturers.