Remember when we told you about the “Fix the Debt” committee made up of a bunch of CEOs who decided that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are the biggest threats to the nation’s economy and must, therefore, be obliterated reformed:
It’s like a broken record: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and tax “reform.” No mention of increasing the tax rates on the wealthiest, which are now paying less in taxes since the 1950s and not a peep about the bloated defense budget.
So what’s the early word on Fix the Debt and their proposals? The Institute for Policy Studies has labeled it a “Trojan horse for massive corporate tax breaks.”
Well, since “Fix the Debt” failed to have any of its recommendations enacted or even addressed during the fiscal cliff, we now have a new committee called The Business Roundtable. Many of the members of the Roundtable simply trit-trotted from Fix the Debt over to the Roundtable, including Mark Bertolini of Aetna, John Chambers of Cisco, David Cote of Honeywell, Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric and Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, and they are here to tell you one thing:
You will work until you die.
In their royal proclamation from on high “Social Security and Medicare Modernization Proposals,” they make the following recommendations:
On Social Security: “The Social Security retirement age should be raised from age 67 to age 70. The unique needs of individuals in physically demanding occupations should be accommodated and the Social Security Disability Insurance Program should be modernized.”
Their Social Security plan also includes “updating the cost of living adjustment (COLA)” Oh, and they also demand that all us poor, lazy schlubs learn to save more on our measly salaries that have been stagnant for years at best, or drastically reduced due to their economic meltdown malfeasance at worst.
On Medicare: “Strengthening and modernizing U.S. entitlement programs, including Medicare, is essential to maintaining a dependable social safety net for future generations and addressing America’s long-term fiscal imbalance. Changes must be made that adopt the innovations in the private sector, protect the federal budget, and offer a safety net to protect the poor and disabled. This can be done by converting Medicare into a more efficient model of health care delivery for all Americans, whether through public or private plans that improve the quality of health care services.”
Oh, and one more thing (it’s a humdinger!)…
“Medicare’s age of eligibility should be moved to age 70. However, this will not affect those age 55 or older today.”
BAM!
Basically, their proposals for the social safety net are merely a shift to the private sector, something these jerks have been salivating over for decades, because they’re the last few programs that they haven’t been able to get their filthy, greedy mitts on.
So, make no mistake, their proposals are nothing more than attempt to siphon off more money for themselves, because having more money than God is simply not enough. And the balls it takes for these a-holes to try to dictate to the rest of us is truly stunning, especially since these changes will never come knocking on their doors or affect them in any way.
In a handy-dandy chart from the AFLCIO, they document a few facts about CEO pay vs. working schmuck pay:
- From 2009-2010, pay for people like these pontificating CEOs rose 11.6%, while the pay for everybody else increased by 0.2% – not even a full percentage point.
- CEOs now make 380 times the average salary of workers, which used to be only 49 times more in 1980.
- Since 2000, the median household income has dropped from $53,000 to around $45,000, while CEOs have made off like bandits.
So, excuse me when I say that these CEOs can take their plans for the social safety net and shove them straight up their million-dollar backsides.
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