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Lawmakers Debate Spending Bill, Immigration.How would the healthcare replacement legislation in Congress affect homecare and long-term care services covered by Medicaid? My 44-year old son was born with cerebral palsy and is homebound. He receives both Medicare and Medicaid. My mom, age 93, also lives with me. My husband and I still work. We are in our 60s..The president exercised special powers of the White House - instructions called "executive action" - that can have the binding force of law but do not require Congressional approval. While presidents in the past have exercised executive powers to make immigration changes, the sweeping scale of President Obama's actions far surpassed that of presidents before him. The actions come after Congress reached an impasse on passing immigration reform legislation last year..Even if Congress is not able to pass all the funding bills by the end of the fiscal year on September 30, we doubt there will be a government shutdown. It is most likely they will pass as many "continuing resolutions" as they need, as they have done in the past, to avoid a shutdown..Retirees and disabled Social Security beneficiaries generally have different spending patterns than younger workers. Retirees spend less on gasoline, and a greater portion of their incomes on healthcare costs and housing. The lack of a COLA means that if other costs like prescription drugs increase, retirees have to dig deeper into their Social Security or savings..With medical costs and prescription drug prices rising higher than ever before, seniors living on fixed incomes are struggling to keep up and can no longer afford to be short-changed by the Social Security COLA. At Wednesday's press conference, Congressman Garamendi said: "Today - March 1st - we declare that something can be done.".If your employer has less than 20 employers, beware. By law Medicare is the "first payer" of health insurance policies of small companies. This means you and your wife will need to enroll in Medicare in order for your healthcare claims to be covered. If you work for a company with less than 20 employees and try to file a claim, your insurer can deny it because Medicare is supposed to pay since you are Medicare-eligible. Because you and your wife are over 65, the government considers you Medicare-eligible, whether you have enrolled or not..TSCL enthusiastically supports H.R. 1030, H.R. 1795, and H.R. 1179, and we were pleased to see support grow for each one this week..Most of the money that Social Security pays out to current beneficiaries comes from payroll taxes. According to the Social Security Trustees, the program received 5.1 billion in payroll taxes in 201Social Security also received an estimated .9 billion from the taxation of Social Security benefits, and .9 billion in interest was earned on special issue non-marketable bonds held by the trust fund last year.