This was the plan:
10 days before construction on the nation’s transportation infrastructure was set to stop, the Senate came up with a plan. It was the result of Mitch McConnell and Barbara Boxer working together, but as bi-partisan as that might be, it had some opposition.
If the infrastructure bill does not pass, starting August 1 construction on roads, bridges and highways will take a hit with the Federal Highway Administration needing to shutter its doors and furlough employees. The Federal Highway Administration will need to stop helping states with highway projects, and a backlog of project applications will build up. States have already started pulling critical large-scale projects
But the McConnell/Boxer plan included cuts to Social Security because the money has to come from somewhere, and with all the tax breaks for the top 1% and corporations, it wasn’t going to be coming from them.
The Highway Trust Fund, which would be in effect for three years, would have scraped together about $45 billion from a variety of sources, the main one being the federal gasoline tax, which hasn’t been touched since the 1990s, and congress decided against increasing it.
Holding steady at 18.4 cents per gallon, the amount hasn’t risen with inflation, or taken into account cars’ increased fuel efficiency, and as a result its real value has eroded.
So the Senate has to look elsewhere for the needed funds, among them $2.3 billion, by requiring the federal government to use private debt collectors to help collect taxes owed to the government; retrieving $1.7 billion in unspent funds from a Treasury Department program that was supposed to help homeowners; and program offsets of $16.3 billion by reducing a Federal Reserve bank subsidy.
But, of the 16 proposed sources for funding, the one that targeted Social Security gave the senators pause. It would have eliminated retirement or disability benefits for certain recipients with outstanding felony warrants. The measure would have cut off benefits to people who are “subjects of a felony arrest warrant and for whom the state has given notice that they intend to pursue the warrant.”
But a warrant does not equal guilt.
“It’s critical that we pass a long-term highway bill, but we shouldn’t pay for it by raiding the Social Security trust fund or taking away resources for homeowners, community banks, and local communities in the aftermath of the housing crisis,” said Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
Kicking the can down the deteriorating road, the House passed its own highway bill last week, which would extend funding for five months, with another fix needed by December 18.
Representative Xavier Becerra of California objected to what was happening.
“How dare you take anything from Social Security from people who worked hard to get their retirement, their disability, or in case they die, survivor benefit for their families, simply because you’re not willing to come up with the right way to pay for our roads and bridges. I’ll be darned if I’m going to let someone take money that’s for Social Security.”
Representative Joe Crowley of New York called the Social Security offsets in the Senate bill “outrageous” and “unacceptable.”
Anti poverty groups objected to this because “Those most likely to lose benefits are generally those most in need.
• A significant number of people will become homeless when they lose their benefits.
• Some people have had benefits cut off while residing in nursing homes.
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• An unusually high percentage of those who lose benefits are African-Americans.
• Many will lose Medicare outpatient (Part B) coverage because of inability to pay the quarterly premium.
• Eliminating what may be their only source of income does not help resolve these issues.
• Many people never know that a warrant has been issued for them as warrants are often not served on the individual.
• These warrants are often not easily resolved since many of those who lose benefits live far from the issuing jurisdiction.
• SSA will have increased administrative costs for processing appeals and requests for waiver of recovery of overpayments”.
This is not just a baseless caution.
A similar provision proposed in 2005 eventually cut benefits to 200,000 disabled and retired people before lawsuits forced the Social Security Administration to repay $500 million to 80,000 people because those benefits had been wrongfully terminated.
Social Security Disability Insurance recipients are presently allowed to earn money during trial work periods, and only earnings above a certain level can jeopardize disability benefits, but the senate bill would have raised a few billion dollars by preventing this.
Imagine being disabled, and because you attempted to find a job that would help you make ends meet, you would lose your benefits. Better not to work. And don’t the Republicans, who are in the majority in the senate, claim that benefits keep people dependent by not incentivizing them to seek employment?
This raiding of Social Security would transfer $2.3 billion for a range of transportation expenses.
According to T.J. Sutcliffe, income and housing policy director for The Arc, a national disability rights organization there are two major reasons not to touch Social Security like it was a bank account, “One the Social Security Trust Fund should not be used for unrelated purposes, no matter how important. And the other is Congress is considering cutting off benefits to 200,000 people who rely on Social Security and SSI [disability] benefits, who, in the case of arrest warrants have never been convicted.”
And who would have been able to use the roads for profit, roads they do not pay for?
Corporations and the 1%.
But then the Democrats in the senate found their spherical appendages.
Senate Democrats defeated McConnell’s first effort to bring the bill to the floor for debate. Immediately after this the Social Security cut to people who were concurrently receiving disability benefits and unemployment insurance was removed as was the provision which would have ended benefits to anyone with an outstanding felony warrant.
Without these two provisions, McConnell got the votes of 14 Democrats.
In the meantime as the amended bill was being considered, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz threatened to block the bill unless they could get or block amendments on Planned Parenthood, the Export Import Bank, Obamacare, and Iran because these are clearly related to our crumbling infrastructure.