Saturday, August 27, 2016

Here we go again

Trump's campaign ad lies
Here are the lies
about Social Security
in Donald Trump's
new nationwide ad
Here we go again:
Trump's campaign ad lies about
Social Security
for immigrants.
Michael Hiltzik Contact Reporter
The Trump Presidential campaign rolled out its first major television ad last week, aimed at voters in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
For Social Security experts and advocates, it wasn’t worth waiting for.
“In Hillary Clinton’s America, the system stays rigged against Americans,” the ad declares. “Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay, collecting Social Security benefits, skipping the line.”
Bluntly speaking, these statements about Social Security are untrue. Here are the facts:
 
1- Unauthorized workers are not permitted to collect Social Security benefits
 
2 - No one can collect Social Security benefits he or she didn’t earn from working in Social Security-covered employment.
3 - There’s no mechanism for anyone to
 “skip the line,”
whatever that means.
All Social Security benefits are based on one’s work history.
To be vested in the program requires 40 quarters,
or
10 years, of covered employment.
In 2016, in practice,
that means earning at least
$1,260 in a quarter for that three-month period to count.
No one who works has any more or less right to Social Security than anyone else,
so the idea that anyone is “skipping the line” is just false. 
Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay, collecting Social Security benefits, skipping the line.
A Social Security fantasy retailed in a Donald Trump campaign ad
Despite all that, the idea that unauthorized workers receive Social Security is one of those lies “that can be found circulating around the Internet but contains not one iota of truth,” says Social Security expert Nancy Altman. 
As it happens, illegal immigrants have been something of a boon to the Social Security system.
That’s because many of them secured work by showing faked, stolen, or otherwise misused Social Security numbers;
some could be workers who paid into the program while present on a work visa, but overstayed the visa and kept working.
The Social Security Administration
that in 2010, the program collected $13 billion from those workers and paid out about $1 billion in benefits to recipients in those categories, for a net profit of $12 billion. 
The myth of illegal immigrants receiving Social Security
is fueled by misconceptions
that have been harder to eradicate than cockroaches.
One involves persistent confusion between Social Security and Supplemental Security Income, or SSI.
That’s an anti-poverty program aimed at low-income people who are 65 or older, or blind or disabled.
It’s administered by the Social Security Administration,
 but it’s not part of the Social Security program
and it’s funded out of the general treasury, not
“through the payroll taxes of Americans,”
despite what this
said. 
Read about it here.
 
Saturday, August 27, 2016
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