Social security
Call for Social Security, Medicare changes to figure in elections
WASHINGTON -- Republicans are taking a bold political gamble by pushing historic changes in Medicare and Social Security.The popular programs, designed primarily to provide health care coverage and income security for seniors, have been politically untouchable for decades.
Date: 05/10/2012 | Nation & World
Social Security starts providing online statements
WASHINGTON -- The Social Security Administration is now providing workers with online statements of the estimated benefits they will get when they retire, replacing the paper ones the agency used to mail out.
Date: 05/02/2012 | Business
Time to open ears to Social Security’s needs
There are two different stories in the latest Annual Report of the Social Security Trustees: what was said; and what was heard. What was said is the trustees' damage control report, which provides the cold facts and an assessment of what repairs are necessary.
Date: 04/27/2012 | Business
Aging workforce strains Social Security, Medicare
WASHINGTON -- Social Security is rushing even faster toward insolvency, driven by retiring baby boomers, a weak economy and politicians' reluctance to take painful action to fix the huge retirement and disability program.
Date: 04/23/2012 | Nation & World
Rick Santorum: Cut Social Security now
KEENE, N.H. — Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum called Friday for immediate cuts to Social Security benefits, risking the wrath of older voters and countless others who balk at changes to the entitlement program.
Date: 01/06/2012 | Nation & World
Tax cut survives: Congress votes holiday approval
WASHINGTON — Barely beating Santa's sleigh, Congress delivered a last-minute holiday tax-cut extension to 160 million American wage-earners on Friday, just when it looked like they and millions of unemployed workers were going to be left with coal in their stockings.
Date: 12/23/2011 | Nation & World
Senate cuts payroll tax, OKs $1 trillion spending bill
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Saturday to temporarily avert a Jan. 1 payroll tax increase and benefit cutoff for the long-time unemployed, forcing a reluctant President Barack Obama to make an election-year choice between unions and environmentalists over whether to build an oil pipeline...
Date: 12/18/2011 | Nation & World
House passes $1 trillion budget bill, avoids shutdown
WASHINGTON — The House has passed a $1 trillion-plus catchall budget bill paying for day-to-day budgets of 10 Cabinet departments and averting a government shutdown.
Date: 12/15/2011 | Nation & World
GOP co-chairman of supercommittee says debt talks a 'roller coaster ride'
The Republican co-chairman of a committee in charge of slashing the nation's deficit on Sunday called deliberations a "roller coaster ride" and gave no indication that a deal could be struck before the panel's Thanksgiving deadline.
Date: 11/13/2011 | Nation & World
U.S. wealth gap between young and old is widest ever
WASHINGTON -- The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt.
Date: 11/07/2011 | Nation & World
ID thieves cash in on dead children's information
Identity thieves are cashing in on dead children across the nation, stealing their Social Security numbers to collect fraudulent tax refunds from the Internal Revenue Service.
Date: 11/04/2011 | Nation & World
Medicare relief: premiums will not be as high as feared
WASHINGTON — Medicare's basic monthly premium will be much lower than expected next year, the government announced Thursday. That could pay political dividends for President Barack Obama and for Democrats struggling to win over seniors in a close election.
Date: 10/27/2011 | Nation & World
Social Security defenders speak up
Don't give up on Social Security, the state's labor leaders say.The program has enough money for many years and should be strengthened, not reduced, officials said during a program last week that filled the Jackson Center at Everett Community College.
Date: 10/24/2011 | Business
Seniors on COLA hike: 'It's better than nothing'
It's better than nothing.That's how a lunch crowd at the Carl Gipson Senior Center of Everett reacted to news that in 2012 they'll see a 3.6 percent increase in Social Security benefits.
Date: 10/21/2011 | Local News
Social Security quiet on leak of private data
WASHINGTON -- The Social Security Administration has failed to inform tens of thousands of Americans that it accidentally released their names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers in an electronic database widely used by U.S. business groups.
Date: 10/15/2011 | Business
Occupy Wall Street: What's the point?
Standing amid 100 tents crammed on a small lawn on the Los Angeles City Hall grounds, Clark Davis is asked a simple question about the 200 or so people who have set up camp around him.Are you the anti-tea party?
Date: 10/09/2011 | Nation & World
GOP presidential debate focuses on economy
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in his third debate in six weeks, remained vague Thursday about how, precisely, he would translate his state's job-creation recipe into a national economic policy.
Date: 09/22/2011 | Nation & World
Mill Creek couple plead guilty to bilking Social Security, assistance programs of $300,000
SEATTLE -- A Mill Creek couple has admitted to bilking nearly $300,000 from a government program designed to help people living with disabilities.
Date: 09/21/2011 | Local News
Obama to seek a new tax rate for the wealthy
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is expected to seek a new base tax rate for the wealthy to ensure that millionaires pay at least at the same percentage as middle income taxpayers.
Date: 09/17/2011 | Nation & World
Laughter relieves the stress of saving for retirement
During one of my recent online discussions, a lot of people had thoughts about retirement. One had me laughing out loud. "I think my wife and I have found the answer to having enough money at retirement," a reader wrote. I bet you're intrigued. I was.
Date: 08/21/2011 | Business
Deficit 'super committee' set for a bumpy start
WASHINGTON -- The congressional "super committee" on deficit reduction has extraordinary new power to chart the nation's budget and policy decisions for the next decade. What it doesn't have is a meeting room. Or a staff director. Or clear rules to govern the bipartisan panel that in three months...
Date: 08/20/2011 | Nation & World
Comic filmmaker Albert Brook’s novel ‘2030’ a sobering look at our financial future
Imagine a world where the U.S. government is nearly bankrupt because most of the revenue coming in is used to pay its debts.
Date: 08/07/2011 | Business
Family caregivers need some help and care
America is facing a crisis that will make the federal budget deficit look like a simple bank overdraft fee.
Date: 08/04/2011 | Business
Boomers worry about finances, health costs
WASHINGTON — The "golden years" may lose some luster for many baby boomers worried about the financial pressures that come with age
Date: 07/28/2011 | Nation & World
Obama, House Republicans in endgame in debt talks
WASHINGTON — In secretive endgame negotiations, President Barack Obama and House Republican leaders reached anew on Thursday for an elusive "grand bargain" deal to cut deficits by $4 trillion or more and prevent a government default, officials said.
Date: 07/22/2011 | Nation & World
Obama eases on stopgap debt measure
WASHINGTON -- Running out of time, President Barack Obama softened his stand and signaled Wednesday he would back a short-term deal to prevent a disastrous financial default on Aug. 2, but only if a larger and still elusive deficit-cutting agreement was essentially in place. He called lawmakers to...
Date: 07/21/2011 | Nation & World
'Enough is enough,' Obama says, calling for debt deal
WASHINGTON — Amid new warnings and fresh signs of strain, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders are entering a perilous debt-limit endgame. The president, declaring "enough is enough," is demanding that budget negotiators find common ground by week's end even as the Senate's top...
Date: 07/14/2011 | Nation & World
Nancy Pelosi insists on no cuts in Medicare, Social Security
WASHINGTON — Issuing an ultimatum to a president of her own party, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is betting that she can recapture the speakership in a high-stakes game of brinkmanship over raising the $14 trillion debt ceiling by Aug. 2.
Date: 07/13/2011 | Nation & World
Cases abound of Social Security checks cashed after rightful recipients die
NAPLES. Fla. In two grisly cases last year, two Florida women were accused of hiding their mothers' rotting corpses for years while cashing thousands of dollars of their Social Security checks.
Date: 07/12/2011 | Nation & World
President Obama not giving up on big debt deal
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is pressing congressional leaders to accept a $4 trillion debt reduction deal that Republicans have rejected for its tax increases and Democrats dislike for its cuts to programs for seniors and the poor, administration officials said hours before talks...
Date: 07/09/2011 | Nation & World
Maintaining benefits more important than cutting deficit, poll finds
LOS ANGELES — Nearly twice as many Americans say it is more important to maintain the benefits from entitlement programs than it is to cut the budget deficit, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released Thursday, the day President Barack Obama and top...
Date: 07/07/2011 | Nation & World
Even delaying retirement may not guarantee enough to live on
I've been looking forward to retirement since I worked for that first manager who got on my nerves decades ago.
Date: 07/07/2011 | Business
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