HHS Poverty Guidelines for 2025

 The current average Social Security check is $1,999.97, minus $185 for the Medicare premium, equals $1,814.97 monthly, times 12 equals $21,779.64 annually.

 

Speaking of the dearth of proportional thinking, today is April 15th, when the tax code obscures the fact that the cost of government is about 24%

It shouldn't be this hard, or this costly, to pay taxes.

My TurboTax bill this year came to $278, and my time came to about nine hours collecting the data and preparing the return. It saved me oodles of more time than that, as well as the fear and the frustration, but still, it's a giant pain in the butt, and an annual expense which just seems to get larger every year.

Average American Spends 13 Hours and $290 to File Taxes

Meanwhile the income tax code is not proportional, which is to say it is not fair.

If the tax code were proportional, everyone would pay the same rate.

Instead it is progressive, which means you pay at higher rates the more you make, and some people pay nothing at all.

The rich are not equal to the poor . . . by law. And in between the rich and the poor are all those people who are arguably the least equal of all, because they don't ever get the privilege of paying nothing at all. Something close to one third of filers pay nothing, and they are mostly rich and poor, even though everyone who works does pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, which incidentally almost everyone pays equally because they pay at the same rate.

Shouldn't that be the case with income taxes, too?

Consider that grand total federal outlays in 2022 were $6.27 trillion, which includes the Social Security and Medicare programs in addition to all other federal spending, on defense, interest on the debt, etc. 

That year gross national income came to $26.23 trillion.

The implied tax rate for almost everything is therefore 23.9%.

Collect that right off the top when you earn it or receive it and no one would need to go through the hassle of filing a return, and the budget would have balanced too. And individual income tax filers wouldn't have to spend $464 billion or whatever it is, using TurboTax or a CPA or some other tax preparer, or paper, pencil, and untold hours of time.

Instead we collected taxes in 2022 which were $1.37 trillion short of the $6.27 trillion in outlays, which we had to borrow and which got added to the national debt and increased the interest expense which we must cover out of current tax receipts.

Of course I would be upset if I had to pay 24% on all income as I earned it because I don't pay anywhere close to that. But that is the true cost of government, which is one reason why we don't pay that way. It's more prudent to hide the truth, and pit one group against another instead of treating people as we would wish to be treated. The rich are a small minority, which is why they can be bullied to pay more equally than others.

Another reason we don't pay the way I have described is because people would demand we spend a lot less if we did.

And we can't have that, now can we?

Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has given Elon Musk control of the payment systems which control everyone's Social Security and Medicare benefits

 

 Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the department, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations.  

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved access to the Treasury’s payments system for a team led by Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive working in concert with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the people said. 

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades and had been the acting secretary before Bessent’s confirmation, had refused to turn over access to Musk’s surrogates, people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post. Trump officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave, and then he announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues. 

Spokespeople for Treasury and DOGE declined to comment. 

The sensitive systems, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually. Tens of millions of people across the country rely on the systems. They are responsible for paying Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

More.

These guys are up against the debt ceiling and are obviously looking for other ways than the customary "extraordinary measures" to cut spending under the circumstances of a new administration trying to pass new tax and spending legislation. That's why Trump has offered buyouts to government workers so they quit, among other novel spending gambits like freezing program spending for 90-days.

The Treasury stopped paying into certain accounts from January 17th, before Trump and Musk took over, as part of the extraordinary measures undertaken by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to keep from hitting it.

She's been keeping the national debt at $36 trillion to $36.2 trillion ever since Thanksgiving.

It's all very troubling, as elected officials like to say.

Typically, only a small group of career employees control the payment systems, and former officials have said it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access them. 

You'd think a 71-year old guy like RFK Jr would know something about Medicare Parts A, B, C, and D, but you would be wrong

He is not qualified, on top of being a lunatic.

 RFK Jr. stumbles over basics of Medicare, Medicaid during Senate confirmation hearings

When asked what Medicare Part A is for, Kennedy said it is “mainly for primary care or physicians.” Hassan clarified that it is coverage for seniors who receive inpatient care at hospitals. 

Kennedy, when asked what Medicare Part B is, said it is “for physicians and doctors.” Part B is coverage for a range of medical services such as doctor visits, outpatient care, home health, certain medical supplies and preventive services.

When asked what Medicare Part C is for, Kennedy called it “the full menu of all the services – A, B, C and D.” Hassan noted that Part C is also known as Medicare Advantage, which are privately run plans contracted by Medicare. Those plans serve as an alternative to traditional Medicare plans. 

Kennedy insisted that he “just explained the basics” of the program, but Hassan said she had to correct him on several things.

 

CNBC fact-checks Joe Biden, now that it doesn't matter

 But the article name-checks Donald Trump five times because he's an opponent of Fed decisions.

There's a whole movement out there that wants to End the Fed, composed of Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians, which CNBC is loathe to mention.

Many of them argue that the US 2-year Treasury Note should be the benchmark for the Federal Funds Effective Rate, not the whim of the Fed Chair and the Federal Open Market Committee, who are un-elected, well-connected, and VERY WELL PAID elites who watch out primarily for the interests of the banksters.

For example, despite the disastrous Zero Interest Rate Policy post-Great Recession, DGS2 resisted it and outran DFF throughout the period under Obama and Trump, and anticipated the recent inflationary outburst by starting to rise in the spring of 2021, a full year before the Fed moved to "combat inflation" by raising the funds rate in the spring of 2022. 

Similarly DGS2 also started to fall in November of 2023 despite no change to Fed policy, anticipating the recent decline of inflation rates by almost a year.

The role of the US Treasury Secretary, AS MUCH A CREATURE of the Executive as the Fed Chair, is also huge for interest rates because the Secretary decides how to divvy up the debt securities for auction by duration.

Biden's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been in the news for driving up the issuance in T-bills to 22% when 15% has been customary, which has contributed to longer rates falling and stocks rising, just in time for the election.

But the costs of this have been dramatic, financing deficit spending at the highest rates and driving interest payments on the debt to the third spot in the budget, behind only Social Security and Medicare.

ABC's Jon Karl pretends that Kamala Harris wasn't for ending private health insurance and that she's changed her position despite zero evidence of that

 

Four things she ran on which Kamala Harris says she no longer supports for some reason: Medicare for All, A Fracking Ban, Border Funding Reductions, Mandatory Firearm Buybacks

What could the reason be lol?

 

 

This Biden word salad last night ended with the death of Medicare

 "We’d be able to help make sure all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, make every single person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the, with the COVID. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. Look. We finally beat Medicare."

 

 

Trump has learned nothing, floats wacko bird pie-in-the-sky elimination of income tax

The federal government now needs about $6 trillion in revenue annually for the budget, social security, and medicare.

Imports of goods and services last year were valued at $3.83 trillion. You'd have to tariff all that at 160% or so to come up with $6 trillion. When pigs fly.

Trump promised big cuts to spending and to the size of the government workforce in 2016. Never happened.

This won't either.

 

The orchestrated lawfare against Donald Trump is designed to make you forget Biden's five tyrannical anti-democratic COVID-19 vaccination orders

Not to mention to make you forget all Biden's other failures, starting with the fall of Kabul in August 2021.

This is the same political strategy used by Hillary and the Democrats after Trump's election, with their phony baloney plastic banana Trump-Russia hoax to hamstring Trump's tenure in office.

 

The five mandates were discussed here in April 2022:

Federal contractor mandate September 9, 2021 on all employees with no opt-out for testing or masking

Federal employee mandate September 9, 2021 on all employees with no opt-out for testing or masking

OSHA mandate November 4, 2021 on all employers of 100 or more COUNTRYWIDE to be vaccinated or tested weekly

Medicare/Medicaid provider mandate November 4, 2021 on all provider employees with no opt-out for testing or masking

Head Start mandate November 30, 2021 requiring vaccination of 300,000 employees at child care facilities AND masking of the children.

And let's not forget the vaccination mandates shoved down the throats of the US military and National Guard in August and November 2021. More than 8,000 service members who refused the jabs were forced out.

This is the real Joe Biden.

As much as I sympathize with this guy's tale of Obamacare woe, his timeline is pure fantasy

 The story is here:

My insurance was $185/month with a $1,000 deductible. That was for a family of 5. So I voted for Obama-Biden in 2008 based on Obamacare. ...  the cheapest insurance I could find to replace that one was $1,200 a month with a $6,000 deductible.

The guy had a great plan before Obama!

But Obamacare as he now thinks he knows it didn't even exist in 2008 for him to base his vote on it.

Obama was for something else, the public option, a government-funded health insurance plan designed to compete with private health insurance. That was also Nancy Pelosi's preference, and the preference of the US House Democrat left at the time.

The great fear was the public option would crowd out private insurance and defeat it because it would be more attractive to women and the chronically ill.

The House public option plan put forward in 2009 competed with the Senate plan, and the two proposals were at an impasse by the end of 2009. Eventually the Senate version prevailed in March of 2010.

The Senate plan was actually worse, what we now call Obamacare.

It dictated the much more expensive nature and new shape of all existing private insurance plans instead of providing a separate public option to compete with those already existing private insurance plans. It cost more to provide because it eliminated pre-existing condition exclusions, and treated men and women equally even though women's care is more costly.

It was fascism pure and simple, government dictating to the private sector what will be, and what will not be.

That's how you lost your old plan, your old doctor, and your money: Because Obama bowed to the Senate plan, instead of fighting for what he said he believed in.

If you were too poor, though, to qualify for Obamacare, you just got stuck with Medicaid, health insurance for the poor, and, failing that, with nothing at all.

The once heralded public option for everyone defaulted to Medicaid. Nearly 86 million are now stuck with that, and most are unaware of its clawback provisions.

Today only 21 million can afford Obamacare, and about 25 million non-elderly adults have bupkis, like the poor fella in the story had for ten years.

Meanwhile, 158 million have employer-provided health insurance, the cost of which climbs relentlessly. The average worker had to pay $549 a month in premiums for it in 2023.

Medicare provides coverage to about 66 million aged 65+, and costs nearly $175 a month in 2024.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

 

 

Compromise spending bill passes US House 286-134 bringing fiscal year 2024 federal discretionary spending to $1.659 trillion through September

 WASHINGTON — The House voted 286-134 on Friday to pass a sweeping $1.2 trillion government funding bill, sending it to the Senate just hours before the deadline to prevent a shutdown. ...

The bill, released early Thursday, funds the departments of Homeland Security, State, Labor, Defense, Health and Human Services and various other agencies. Together with the $459 billion bill passed earlier this month, it fully funds the federal government to the tune of $1.659 trillion through September, after months of stopgap bills and negotiations.

More here.

The Roll Call Vote is here, if you want to check how your representative voted. 

The argument is perennially NOT about deficit spending, but deficit spending on WHAT. 

The projected tax shortfall for all programs for fiscal 2024 is $1.582 trillion, more than half of which will be net interest expense of $0.870 trillion on the exploding national debt. Interest payments on what we have already borrowed now exceed defense outlays of $0.822 trillion.

CBO in early February estimated fiscal 2024 discretionary spending at $1.739 trillion, so today's bill "saves" a mere $80 billion off that.

Mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. is estimated at $3.908 trillion for fiscal 2024.

It's obvious that spending should be cut and taxes raised, but no one has the courage for either.

They should just agree to do both and let the chips fall where they may. Everyone out here will be pissed, vote accordingly, and it would be a wash politically.

Current national debt is $34.5612 trillion and rising.

Democrats who rammed Obamacare down our throats 13-years ago say it's totally broken

 

Sen. Bernie Sanders renews push for Medicare for All to end ‘totally broken’ health-care system

Democrats in Michigan incessantly advertise on YouTube against Republican John Gibbs in MI-3, featuring scarry pictures of a big, very black man with troglodyte views on women, abortion, and Medicare

Your Democrat choice in the race is a very white female, a progressive extremist who served in the Obama Injustice Department and who was defeated last time around by Peter Meijer.

My extremely stupid progressive neighbor had a sign out for the Democrat early in September until he figured out a couple of weeks later that our street had been re-districted out of MI-3. 

The Democrat's campaign clothes her extremism in the glow of her Christian faith to make her more acceptable to the white, right of center, evangelical population around Grand Rapids.

On YouTube Gibbs seems to run one ad for every twenty the Democrats run.

 

Spiking interest payments on the national debt through 2Q2022 threaten to crowd out other current spending on Social Security, Medicare, and National Defense

 Wait until the second half is done. 

This is going to be ugly.

LOL Bill Clinton, you mean like DCCC ads flooding YouTube claiming Republicans will take away your Social Security and Medicare?

 

Clinton: Republicans "Always Find Some New Way To Scare The Living Daylights Out Of Swing Voters About Something"

Meanwhile The Grauniad can't decide whether record STDs constitute a crisis which is serious or waning

While neglected, the STI crisis presents a serious public health problem. ...

But Harvey warns that a coordinated effort by national health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is needed to combat the waning STI crisis.

Here.

You can always count on THE GRAUNIAD to be clear as mud.

The horror: Share paying no income taxes spikes from 44% in 2019 to 61% in 2020

 Stereotypical story here.

No one ever talks about how little Americans make.

In 2019, you'll be happy to know, 61% of individual wage earners in the US made less than $45,000. 

44% made less than $30k.

I'd like to see our legislators live on $30k, since so many of the people they claim to represent must. Maybe they'd be less inclined to rob us blind year in and year out with their trillion$ in spending.

Congressional salaries, incidentally, put the 435 members of the US House in the top 3.5% of individual wage earners.

IT'S WHY THEY RUN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's something horribly wrong with a Rube Goldberg tax code which allows:

the rich to avoid taking "ordinary income" and pay little or zero tax on their fabulous capital returns;

more than the bottom half also to pay little to nothing (don't forget that they do pay Social Security and Medicare taxes);

and the people in-between to get squeezed to death.

Given that deficits no longer matter, why do taxes continue to matter? Just end them. We borrow the money anyway.

smdh

"two-year suspension of the debt ceiling expired at the end of July"

Pure gobbledygook.

The limit, a facet of American politics for over a century, prevents the Treasury from issuing new bonds to fund government activities once a certain debt level is reached. That level reached $22 trillion in August 2019 and was suspended until Saturday. 

The new debt limit will include Washington’s additional borrowing since summer 2019. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in July that the new cap will likely come in just north of $28.5 trillion.

More gobbledygook.

The government's bookkeeping shenanigans here are always amazing, but especially now given the orgy of spending during the pandemic, and the reporting is nearly as bad.

The debt ceiling was "set" at $22 trillion in August 2019, but it wasn't "reached" until April 2021.

Add in the ever present "intragovernmental" borrowings and the total debt is now $28.46 trillion at the end of July. Intragovernmental holdings is code for raiding the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds. It's one of the weird things about how bureaucrats think that the extent to which they must raid those funds plus the "normal" public debt becomes the sum they'll use to set the new "public" portion, the debt ceiling, when Congress gets around to it.

They all should be in jail. Instead we are.

Spending in 2020 on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to hit $2.19 trillion

[S]pending on the “big three”—Social Security ($1.1 trillion), Medicare ($679 billion) and Medicaid ($418 billon)—will be approximately $2.19 trillion in 2020, nearly three times more than defense spending ($738 billion).

Story.