Sam Johnson Wants to Cut Your Social Security Benefits By a Third

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For reasons that are a little unclear, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) has decided to introduce a shiny new plan to reform Social Security when Congress meets next year. Johnson’s idea of “reform” is to slash everyone’s benefits, so this idea seems slightly suicidal—not to mention pointless, since Donald Trump campaigned very loudly on a promise not to touch anyone’s Social Security.

But Johnson is a very conservative guy, and maybe he just wants to lay down a marker. So what would his plan do? It has 15 components, all of them crammed full of Social Security’s usual alphabet soup of acronyms—AWI, PIA, AIME, MAGI, bend points, etc.—but it turns out that only six of them are big enough to be meaningful. Here is the Social Security actuary’s estimate of how much money they’d save:

Basically, there are four big proposals that would cut benefits by 5.76 percent of payroll, and two proposals that would increase benefits by 1.37 percent of payroll. I assure you that this chart is far simpler to understand than the actual analysis, but it probably still leaves you a little baffled. Whose benefits would be cut? And by how much? I’m here to help:

Roughly speaking, people with extremely low average earnings over their working lives would see their benefits rise. That’s good! Unfortunately, everyone with an average lifetime income over $22,000 would see their benefits slashed—in some cases by a lot. An income of $60,000 is not exactly a king’s ransom, but nonetheless Johnson would cut benefits for these folks by a third.

As usual with these plans, a lot of its provisions are phased in gradually over time. But unlike most of these plans, some of them start to kick in right away. This means that even people who are already retired would suffer benefit cuts. For example, Johnson’s plan reduces the annual cost-of-living increase—and eliminates it entirely for anyone earning over $85,000—beginning in 2018.

Anyway, since I tortured myself by reading this plan, I figured I should torture all the rest of you by blogging about it. Happy Holidays!

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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