What Social Security Benefits Changes Do You Want? Part One
What Social Security Benefits Changes Do You Want? These are some that have recently been proposed - YEA or NAY on these? If you don’t understand what these are - you need not vote.
There are so many of these that I am only going to post some of them at any one time so as not to overwhelm you. - Thus this is Part One.
I am not including any proposed offsets if they were mentioned - we can cover those later. For the ones for which there were no suggested offsets, I did include those and the estimated cost to the Trust Fund.
1. Should the Repeal of the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset be extended to the people of our territory Puerto Rico?
This would bring the total increase in liability to the Social Security Trust Fund, including what has already been passed for the repeal of the WEP and GPO to $200+ BILLION over (10) years.
2. Should the Social Security lump-sum death payment increase from $255 under current law to $2,900 and then indexed to the CPI following the year of initiation. This would cost the Social Security Trust Fund approximately $40 BILLION over (10) years.
3. Should we use the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) rather
than the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers
(CPI-W) to calculate the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), if there is an increase? It is assumed this change would increase the COLA by an average of 0.2 percentage point per year.
4. Provide an option to eliminate the 5-month Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) waiting period with the condition that those who make this election will receive a 6.1 percent reduction in their monthly benefit amount through the period of disability benefit receipt that follows. New or pending applicants for Social Security disabled worker benefits would have the choice of (a) having their benefit calculated as under current law and starting receipt after the current law 5-month waiting period; or (b) having a 6.1 percent benefit reduction applied to their monthly benefit amount and starting benefit entitlement without the 5-month SSDI waiting period. This change is estimated to cost the Trust Fund approximately $42 BILLION over (10) years.
Part Two of these Benefit Option proposals will continue after I see how Part One is received and what participation it brings.