Thursday, May 18, 2023

The GOP proposal to raise the debt ceiling would force Americans on Social Security and Medicare to wait longer to receive help and make college more expensive, the White House says

 

https://news.yahoo.com/gop-proposal-raise-debt-ceiling-135008475.html

 Ayelet Sheffey,Juliana Kaplan
Tue, May 16, 2023 at 9:50 AM EDT

 

    The Office of Management and Budget released a memo outlining the impacts of the GOP debt ceiling plan.

    Under various scenarios, the OMB estimated federal programs could be cut by up to 30%.

    That would include worse customer service times for Americans receiving Medicare and Social Security.

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The GOP's latest line on spending is that it wants to maintain the same funding levels as fiscal year 2022; that level of funding is reflected in their narrowly-passed House bill to raise the debt ceiling for just one year. The bill includes a long list of proposed spending cuts and changes to federal programs, including banning student-loan forgiveness and raising work requirements to access social welfare programs.

While Young noted that the GOP bill doesn't include a line-by-line breakdown of exactly how cuts would be implement, she lays out a few scenarios. If Republicans leave defense funding, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security untouched, everything else would have to be cut by 30%. That could mean people waiting for disability benefits through Social Security might face wait times of at least two months longer, and those seeking help through Social Security and Medicare offices could experience worse customer servicer. Additionally, the cuts would mean less funding for affordable housing vouchers, and the maximum Pell Grant award going down by nearly $1,400.

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Young notes that the calculations are likely optimistic, saying it's unlikely that Republicans can find cuts that deep in the bills they're currently looking over — meaning instead that everything else will suffer a deeper slash.

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