Thursday, March 14, 2019

TRUMP OUTLINES STAGGERING CUTS IN SOCIAL SECURITY AND EDUCATION TO OFFSET TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH

Trump outlines a significant Social Security cut in his 2020 budget



 
Sean Williams
© Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour President Trump giving remarks at the Pentagon.
This past Monday, March 11, President Trump unveiled his fiscal 2020 budget proposal for the federal government. As a reminder, fiscal years for the federal government end on Sept. 30 and begin on Oct. 1. Unveiling a budget months in advance of the actual implementation is supposed to allow Congress to make tweaks, as needed, to get a yearlong budget passed.
Trump's 2020 budget featured a lot of talking points (as presidential budgets often do), a number of which came under harsh criticism by members of the Democratic Party.
In particular, political opponents of the president focused on a handful of proposed cuts to social programs, which go against Trump's campaign promises in 2016 not to touch so-called entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Contained within the president's budget were calls for about $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over the next 10 years, which would be achieved by moving payouts to block grants; an $845 billion reduction to Medicare spending over the next decade that targets a decrease in wasteful spending via lower prescription drug costs; and -- surprise -- a roughly $26 billion decrease in Social Security spending over the next 10 years. 

Big change to Social Security's disability program

While Trump's budget proposal aims to curtail a number of perceived inefficiencies with the Social Security program, the bulk of the savings ($10 billion total between 2020 and 2029) are expected to be realized from a single change to the Social Security Disability Insurance program.
As of January 2019, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA), 10.15 million people were receiving a Disability Insurance benefit payment each month, 8.52 million of whom were long-term disabled workers. Of course, proving a long-term disability to the SSA, assuming you have the required lifetime work credits to receive a disability benefit, isn't a flip-of-the-switch process. Rather, the average time from application to approval can take around five months.
However, not all disability recipients file their claims with the SSA right away. Should you choose to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance long after you've actually become disabled, you may be able to receive retroactive benefits. These retroactive disability benefits would cover the time period from when you actually became disabled through when you applied for Social Security Disability benefits, with a maximum collectible period of 12 months.
It should be noted that the SSA will subtract the five-month waiting period from your filing, meaning you must apply for benefits 17 months or longer after the onset of your disability if you're to receive the full 12 months of retroactive disability pay. 
Trump's budget proposal for fiscal 2020 aims to halve the amount of retroactive pay disabled persons can recover to six months from 12 months. Doing so would reduce program outlays by $3.61 billion between 2020 and 2024, and almost $10 billion on the dot, in aggregate, over the next decade. 
With Trump proposing $26 billion in cuts to Social Security between 2020 and 2029, you might be growing a bit concerned that bigger expenditure cuts might follow. But this is the point where I tell you that everything's going to be OK. In fact, the chance of this particular proposal being implemented is very slim, in my opinion.
To begin with, presidential budgets are often a rough draft from which Congress begins pushing and pulling to fit certain fiscal and political agendas. Or, in plain English, it's a starting point from which discussion begins, not a final draft. By the time a federal spending bill has been signed into law, it often looks nothing like the annual budget or 10-year projections presented months earlier by the president.
Secondly, a divided Congress practically ensures that next to nothing is going to get donewhen it comes to major social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Democrats in the House are certain to oppose any reduction to Social Security benefits, including halving the period whereby retroactive disability benefits can be collected. Without support from the Democratic majority in the House, I don't see how this provision has any chance of being included in a final spending bill for fiscal 2020.
Third and finally, Trump is unlikely to take a hard-line stance on keeping this provision in his budget, especially with his own election now less than 20 months away. Back in 2013, while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump had this to say:
"As Republicans, if you think you are going to change very substantially for the worse Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in any substantial way, and at the same time you think you are going to win elections, it just really is not going to happen... What we have to do and the way to solve our problems is to build a great economy."
In other words, Trump understands that direct changes to Social Security means some group is going to lose out and be worse off than they were before. Therefore, making any direct changes to Social Security prior to an election is akin to political suicide.
Long story short, President Trump's budget is bound to hit on a number of talking points, but it's unlikely to incite any change to the existing structure of the Social Security program.


WHY EDUCATE AMERICANS WHEN THEIR ARE BOATLOADS OF EDUCATED FOREIGNERS HEADED FOR OUR JOBS RIGHT NOW???

As we have noted, the Trump budget will set in motion a repeat of the time-honed and cynical charade by Democrats who will claim to be shocked by these cuts. Quickly, they will drop the pretense and sign onto a terrible deepening of the social counterrevolution against youth, students and the entire working class.

Trump proposes slashing public education by $7 billion

Taking aim squarely and unapologetically at the children of the working class, the Trump administration released its proposed budget for fiscal year 2020, calling for cutting education spending by over $7 billion. At the same time, the administration is asking for $5 billion to fund “scholarship funds” for private and religious schools. The administration is also asking for an extra $133 million to pursue young people who have defaulted on their student loans.
The American education system is already in a shambles. In 42 states, the average teacher salary has been cut, relative to inflation, since 2010. Average class sizes have grown in 35 states. Massive teacher shortages grip every state and increasingly students are “taught” by uncertified substitutes. Lead-in-water is found in schools around the country while school infrastructure crumbles. Teacher strikes continue to escalate in the face of what has been an unrelenting bipartisan war against public education.
Trump and his Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are picking up from where Barack Obama and Arne Duncan left off, deepening the defunding of education and promoting privatization. Among the programs to suffer from Trump’s proposed budget are teacher training, federally subsidized student loans, after school programs for impoverished students, and summer programs in impoverished schools.
Teacher training is covered by Title II funding and received about $2 billion for fiscal year 2019. These funds are allocated for teachers’ professional development programs and were initially instituted to encourage a common standard of professionalism across the United States. The Trump budget would completely eliminate these funds.
Trump has proposed stripping away Title II funds in every budget he has proposed since taking office. These cuts do more than stymie the professional development of teachers—which is in and of itself an outrage—they also endanger schools’ abilities to meet the professional development benchmarks set by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). In addition, teachers who are not adequately supported in their professional development cannot be expected to meet the instructional needs of their students, which impacts students’ test scores. ESSA ties grant money to professional development benchmarks and student test scores, so ending Title II funds will directly translate into further cuts especially in impoverished areas.
Teacher training is not the only area facing erasure under Trump’s proposals. Also at stake are funds for Title IV, Part A, The Student Support and Academic Enrichment (SSAE) program. This program is designed to “provide all students with access to a well-rounded education; improve school conditions for student learning; and improve the use of technology t o improve the academic achievement and digital literacy of all students .”
The SSAE funds after-school care and summer learning programs in many districts where working parents do not have access to safe, affordable childcare when school is out. It also provides funding for classroom technology that assists in instruction and helps children stay abreast of important technological developments. In some schools, SSAE funding provides for mental health counseling and school safety equipment. Funding for SSAE is currently inadequate at just over $1 billion. Trump would eliminate all of that funding, endangering the programs that depend upon it.
Another source of funding for after-school care, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, would, like the SSAE programs, be completely eliminated under Trump’s proposals. Schools in rural and urban districts rely upon these funds, sparse as they are, to create safe places for working-class children.
The administration has stressed that its budget does not touch current Title I or Special Education funding. However, neither does the administration add any funding to these important programs. Title I funds go to schools that are predominantly attended by children from low-income families. Those funds are supposed to go towards helping children in these schools succeed academically and perform well on tests. Title I funds would stagnate at just under $16 million.
Special Education would not receive any extra funding in fiscal year 2020, either, and would stagnate at $132 million. Special Education funds programs as diverse as reading remediation, occupational therapy for autistic students, and enrichment for gifted and talented students.
Neither Title I nor the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) have ever been fully funded, and both were slashed under the Obama administration. While the administration proudly boasts that these programs will not be cut, their funding up to this point has been little more than an insult to the nation’s educators, parents, and students. In many school districts, there is simply not enough personnel to ensure that an Individualized Education Program (IEP) is created for every student who needs one.
That the administration should suggest that Special Education funds stagnate while the president attacks funding such as teacher training and SSAE programs—which would benefit Special Education students, in particular—reveals the deep disdain the Trump administration harbors for working class students.
A recent hearing by the House Education and Labor Committee revealed that US schools have been so defunded over decades that $145 billion is needed every year to modernize and maintain public schools.
Funding for Indian Education programs remains despicably low, yet to add insult to injury, the administration proposes reducing the Indian Education budget from $180 million to $176 million. The education of indigenous children is mandated to the Federal Government by treaty, yet schools that serve Native Americans are chronically underfunded, understaffed, and inadequately maintained. The dropout rate for Native American high school students is twice the national average.
There are areas where the Trump administration is willing to spend education dollars. One such area is charter school grants, which he increased last year by nearly $150 million. This year, he would increase spending on charter schools from $440 million to an even $500 million. This does not include Betsy DeVos’ support for legislation that would earmark $5 billion for “tax credit scholarships,” in which individuals could donate 10 percent of their income (getting a dollar for dollar deduction in the process) to private school scholarship funds for students in impoverished school districts.
DeVos has requested $1.8 billion for her Next Generation Financial Services Environment (NextGen), an endeavor to attack financial aid for working class college students and to bring student loan holders to heel. A $133 million spending increase on pursuing the repayment of student loans is included with this amount. In the meantime, DeVos and Trump would put an end to student loan forgiveness for public-sector workers; they would also cut college work-study programs by more than half.
The Education Department’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development, Jim Blew, told reporters last week that Trump’s proposed education budget “is based on a desire to have some fiscal discipline and to address some higher-priority needs for the administration around the federal government.”
Those “higher priority needs” are not the children of America’s workers, but the gargantuan build-up of the US military and drive for war. In his budget proposal, Trump has asked for an exorbitant and record-breaking $750 billion for the Pentagon, an increase nearly double that sought by the military establishment. Additional billions are slated to flow into domestic repression with the administration requesting an increase to the Department of Homeland Security’s budget by 15 percent with $8.6 billion slated for the construction of his militarized border wall with Mexico.

As the World Socialist Web Site has noted, the Trump budget will set in motion a repeat of the time-honed and cynical charade by Democrats who will claim to be shocked by these cuts. Quickly, they will drop the pretense and sign onto a terrible deepening of the social counterrevolution against youth, students and the entire working class.

California’s public education system, once the envy of the world, now ranks 49th in the nation.  ROBERT J. CRISTANO

CALIFORNIA IN MELTDOWN:
WORST LOWER EDUCATION SCHOOLS IN THE NATION
"The public schools indoctrinate their young charges to hate this country and the rule of law. Illegal aliens continue overwhelming the state, draining California’s already depleted public services while endangering our lives, the rule of law, and public safety for all citizens."
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Least-Educated State: California No. 1 in Percentage of Residents 25 and Older Who Never Finished 9th Grade; No. 50 in High School Graduates TERENCE P. JEFFREY

California’s public education system, once the envy of the world, now ranks 49th in the nation.  ROBERT J. CRISTANO

Pollak: Educating Illegal Aliens and Their Children Costs L.A. Schools 

Hundreds of Millions Per Year. Steven A. Camarota, director of research, at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News on Friday that “between one-fifth and one-fourth of the students in LAUSD are the children of illegal immigrants — though most of those were born in the U.S.” He said that a smaller percentage of the students (“in the single digits”) are illegal immigrants themselves. Robyn Beck 



LOS ANGELES, MEXICO’S SECOND LARGEST CITY and MEXICAN MURDER CAPITAL OF AMERICA







"It was instead, downtown Los Angeles, Calif., although the scene was recreated in numerous other cities around the country with substantial Mexican populations. Hordes of Mexican expatriates, many here illegally, were protesting the very U.S. immigration laws they were violating with impunity. They found it offensive and a violation of their rights that the U.S. dared to have immigration laws to begin with."
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Jose Pescador Osuna, Mexican Consul General We are practicing "La Reconquista" in California."
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Aztlan's goal, known as La reconquista, is to cede and take over the entirety of the southern and western states by any means necessary and impose a Communist militant dictatorship. President Bush's blanket amnesty program goes a long way to helping the extremists achieve their aim.

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ICE ‘Raging Bull’ Operation Leads to Arrest of 267 MS-13 Gang Members in Los Angeles

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The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
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JUDICIAL WATCH

Illegal Immigration Costs U.S. Taxpayers a Stunning $134.9 Billion a Year

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In 1960, according to a USC demographic study, fewer than 10% of the people in the Los Angeles County area were Latino. By 2008, according to federal census estimates, almost half were Latino. Roughly the same was true in the city of Los Angeles.
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"It extends to each issue the Democrats embrace. Every city that has come under Democrat control is proof positive that instead of raising the standard of living for the occupants, the city falls to crime, gangs, and drugs.  In fact, "America is awash with troubled, dysfunctional cities that have been electing Democrat Party mayors for decades." EILEEN F TOPLANSKY

Massive cuts and layoffs loom in San Diego’s Sweetwater school district

Last week, the Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD) in San Diego, California announced it would hand out 87 pink slips to administrative support staff for the 2019-2020 school year. The district faces a more than $68 million deficit and plans to cut at least $22.5 million in the next academic year alone.
The notices will be issued March 30 and will affect administrative staff, program directors and assistant principals at various school sites across the district.
SUHSD is the largest secondary school district in California. Its more than 1,500 teachers work with some 42,000 students and over 32,000 adult learners in southwestern San Diego County, near the US-Mexico border.
The cuts to administrative staff are only the initial round of mass layoffs and cuts to occur over the next two academic years and will play a central role in upcoming contract negotiations. The current contract between the Sweetwater Education Association (SEA) teachers union and the district is set to expire on June 30.
The SEA and SUHSD met in a March 2 closed session to discuss the pink slips. Open hearings will be held over March 13 and 14, and a tentative agreement will be revealed at a March 25 board meeting.
Initially, the SUHSD budget deficit was revealed in October 2018 due to the findings of newly hired CFO Dr. Jenny Salkeld. But a recent investigation by the San Diego Union Tribune revealed that a recently retired auditor, Frances Martinez, had discovered financial “mismanagement” nine months prior in April 2018 after performing an internal audit of the district’s finances.
Among her findings, Martinez discovered that Sweetwater’s finance department was illegally conducting wire and phone transfers of millions of dollars from the district’s clearing account, a practice prohibited by state law.
Additionally, Martinez reported highly unusual accounting delays. In one instance, Sweetwater finance staff took up to seven months to deposit money from the district’s clearing account into the county treasury. The clearing account is intended as a temporary holding place for money awaiting deposit to the county treasury. Martinez uncovered that the finance department used clearing account funds to pay settlements, bond interest, a consultant and a technology lease, among other things. A wire transfer payment was not posted in the district’s general ledger until three months after it was made.
In December 2018, an external audit was made by the state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT). The audit revealed evidence indicating a cover-up of the district’s financial problems. In a board meeting held on December 17, FCMAT’s chief executive officer Michael Fine revealed that 302 entries in the district’s accounting system were manipulated to show that the district had more money than it actually did.
The audit also uncovered that the district had omitted four months of payroll from the books, overestimated enrollment and state funding for three years, and engaged in possible illegal borrowing practices. The district has been taking loans from a special tax fund, called Mello-Roos. Fine warned the loans may not be covered under the tax arrangement and are on track to exceed levels allowed under state law.
The district responded with an empty statement, with promises to cooperate with auditors and root out the problem. Alleging that the district officials had knowingly covered up the systematic manipulation of funds, Sweetwater superintendent Karen Janney refused to comment on the possibility of fraud.
FCMAT officials have declared that SUHSD is at risk of going bankrupt, which could result in a state takeover of the district. Due to the financial crisis, SUHSD is currently under review by a San Diego County Board of Education fiscal adviser who has the authority to “stay or rescind” any decision made at the district level.
Since revealing the budget deficit to employees and the public last October, the district, with the assistance of the Sweetwater Education Association (SEA) teachers union, has wasted no time in formulating ways in which cuts to schools will be implemented. The SEA fundamentally accepts the fraud and/or mismanagement and has assisted in establishing the framework for carrying through the over $68 million in cuts.
In response to demands by teachers and education staff to oust the board and implement financial transparency, the SEA told teachers that current superintendent Janney was preferable to the previous board leadership and that the removal of the board would only risk a state takeover, mass layoffs and school closures.
The SEA and SUHSD have already pushed through layoffs and closures in the Adult Schools within the district, an end to credit recovery for students and cuts to after-school programs such as tutoring. Additionally, career technical education and extra support teachers, known as curriculum intervention specialists have also been terminated.
The union and the school board worked together to develop and pass a Supplemental Early Retirement Plan (SERP) for older teachers just before the winter break. Arguing that the SERP would significantly offset the deficit, the board and the union created a plan for teachers to retire early, and in the middle of the current school year. Teachers were told they could receive up to 85 percent of their final salary if they retired at the end of the semester—by December 21, 2018—or 65 percent of their final salary if they retired in June 2019.
Approximately 300 teachers chose to take early retirement. Some 94 teachers retired in December and the rest will leave in June 2019. Also included in the SERP agreement were two unpaid furlough days for all teachers. The early retirement and furlough deal was sold to teachers by the SEA as a means of protecting everyone’s jobs, but more pink slips are on the horizon.
The SERP agreement also contained wording that “protects” new teachers from getting pink slips for the 2019-2020 academic year. However, according to a clause in the contract, this can be overruled in the case of a Reduction in Force (RIF), or renegotiation with the SEA.
These instances of “mismanagement,” i.e., corruption at the district level, are not isolated events but are symptomatic of the direct and intentional looting of public education by the state and a reorientation toward privatization.
California has faced decades of cuts to education resulting in the deterioration of conditions in public schools and working conditions for staff and teachers. At the federal level, efforts at privatization have been on the agenda since the 1980s, regardless of which party was in power. The role of the teachers unions has been central to the looting of public education. The unions have suffocated the anger of workers by suppressing strikes and repackaging the unending cuts to education as “victories.”
What is happening in Sweetwater is symptomatic of the larger attack on public education across the state of California, as well as on a national and international basis. The WSWS has closely covered the growing teachers revolt across the world, which has now spread across five continents.
With a budget deficit and upcoming contract negotiations in June 2019, SUHSD teachers and staff face similar attacks as teachers in Oakland and Los Angeles: increased class sizes, lack of on-site resources for students such as nurses and psychologists, cuts to school programs and the increased privatization of schools.
A warning must be issued to San Diego teachers: they must begin discussing the lessons of the Oakland and Los Angeles strikes, which resulted in sellout contracts imposed on the membership by the unions, which line up with the Democratic Party—the very party spearheading charterization and privatization in the state.
Students and teachers must reject the line of the district and the unions that they should be made to pay for the corruption and embezzlement of funds.
In order to wage a fight to defend public education teachers need to form rank-and-file committees, completely independent of the unions, and begin discussing and preparing a statewide strike, directed toward ending the budget cuts, charterization and school closures.

Even before the latest surge, the Department of Homeland Security spent over $3 billion in 2018 sheltering and feeding illegals at the border, which is nearly double the cost from 2011.

Build the Wall to Save Taxpayers Billions

https://townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2019/03/14/build-the-wall-to-save-taxpayers-billions-n2543076

 

President Donald Trump launched another battle for border-wall funding on Monday, calling for $8.6 billion additional dollars in his proposed federal budget for next year. Top Democrats came out swinging, bashing a border wall as "expensive and ineffective."
The truth is, Dems are not leveling with the public about the billions we're already forced to spend on shelters, food, diapers, medical care and child care for migrants sneaking across the border and claiming asylum.
Not to mention the costs of public schooling and healthcare provided free to migrants once they are released into communities. The wall will pay for itself in less than two years. It's a bargain.
Look what it costs us when a Central American teen crosses the border illegally without an adult. Uncle Sam spends a staggering $775 per day for each child housed at a shelter near Florida's Homestead Air Reserve Base. There they have access to medical care, school and recreation. They stay, on average, 67 days at the Homestead shelter before being released to a sponsor. Do the math. That's almost $52,000 per child. American parents would appreciate the government spending that money on their kids. Imagine the government handing you a check for $52,000 for your teenager.
However, there are bigger costs ahead. The number of illegal border crossers just hit an 11-year high with a total of more than 76,000 during the month of February alone. U.S. and Mexican officials predict hundreds of thousands more in the coming months.
The migrants use the word "asylum" as their get-in-free card. When they say it to a border agent, they gain entry to the U.S. 80 percent of the time according to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. They are temporarily housed and eventually released with an immigration court date. But half never go on to file an asylum claim, disappearing into the U.S., said former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
They're turning asylum into a scam. The system is meant to protect victims of persecution, such as Cubans fleeing Castro's prisons. Now it's overwhelmed by Central Americans escaping poverty for a lifestyle upgrade.
Legal immigrants also want to better their circumstances, but they play by the rules. What a slap in the face to see migrants jump the line.
Unfortunately, a federal appeals court just made the asylum hoax even easier. Last week, the left-leaning 9th Circuit ruled that migrants who fail to convince border authorities they face danger in their home country still have a "right" to a day in court in the U.S. That bizarre ruling won't stand. Another circuit court ruled the opposite way in 2016, clarifying that a border agent's decision is final and entering the U.S. is a privilege, not a right. The Supreme Court let that earlier decision stand, so count on the Supremes to reverse the 9th Circuit.
In the meantime, though, taxpayers are getting fleeced by caravans of fake asylum-seekers.
Even before the latest surge, the Department of Homeland Security spent over $3 billion in 2018 sheltering and feeding illegals at the border, which is nearly double the cost from 2011.
Add to that the hundreds of millions being spent caring for unaccompanied teenagers in 130 shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.
President Trump has tried several strategies to protect taxpayers from these rip-offs. First, he barred illegal migrants from asking for asylum, requiring that asylum-seekers enter the country through official ports of entry. That would have reduced the numbers considerably. But in November, a federal district judge, also from the 9th Circuit, nixed the president's regulation.
Then, Trump devised a "Remain in Mexico" arrangement to make Mexico the waiting room for asylum-seekers. As long as they're south of the border, the U.S. doesn't have to house them, and they have no "right" to public schooling and emergency medical care on our tab. The program, if successful, will save U.S. taxpayers a bundle. It's one way Mexico is already helping to pay for the wall.
Dems claim it's a waste to spend billions on a wall. But the facts show we can't afford not to build it. As the cover of the president's new budget says, "Taxpayers First."

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