As Planned Parenthood undergoes its public scrutiny – you might recall that last month, the organization was given the ACORN treatment by some very clever (not clever) video editors who wanted to frame Planned Parenthood in the GRAND SCHEME OF FETAL SALES THAT FUNDS THE UNDERGROUND PIPELINE OF LIBERAL INJUSTICE – Congressman with “guts” Alan Grayson, D-Orlando/Kissimmee/redistrictingmadness, is making it clear that he still stands with PP. Only three percent of Planned Parenthood’s revenues come from abortions, so let’s just quit it with this hateful rhetoric. Have you stood outside of a clinic before? There are many insane people there screaming many terrible things at women and men who are approaching the toughest decisions of their lives. Sorry, but it’s true. Try to have a conversation with one of them. We dare you.
Regardless, today Grayson was the subject of a weak protest (yawn) that centered around selling your baby’s innards, and, as Grayson is wont to do, he came out swinging with some reasonable rhetoric of the somewhat controversial sort.
Rep. Alan Grayson Statement on Anti-Planned Parenthood Protest at His District Office
Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL09) today made the following statement regarding the anti-Planned Parenthood protest at his district office
“I’m always glad to hear from constituents on key issues, even when I disagree with them. Today’s protest outside my office will not change my strong support for Planned Parenthood and a woman’s right to choose. Anti-choice groups are using highly-edited videos and out-of-context statements to promote an extremist agenda that will lead to more women getting sick and dying without the cancer and HIV testing that Planned Parenthood provides. Planned Parenthood provides extraordinarily valuable health services to women in Central Florida, and throughout the country. Roughly one out of five American women has relied on Planned Parenthood’s care. Such care is particularly important to poor women, like the 500,000 women in Florida excluded from Medicaid by the Republicans’ malicious refusal to extend Medicaid to them. If the attempt to destroy Planned Parenthood is successful, the inevitable result is that many women will suffer and die. Our mothers, sisters and daughters deserve high-quality, affordable medical care.”
This comes just one day after yesterday’s amazing Social Security salvo in the Tallahassee Democrat from our favorite tall man who is running for Senate this year. (Whatever, we’re allowed an opinion).
America owes its seniors more than we can ever repay. We owe them for marching in the streets to fight discrimination. We owe them for raising us and our parents and helping to raise our children. We owe them for fighting wars in defense of freedom, and making America the world’s greatest economic power.
We also owe more than $300 billion. That’s how much we’ve shortchanged our seniors through undersized and unfair cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs).
Since Social Security’s COLAs went into effect in 1975, we have been underpaying our seniors as much as $25 billion each year. This is because the federal government has been using the wrong index to determine what it actually costs seniors to live. Using the Consumer Price Index for Workers (CPI-W), instead of one for seniors, is now costing the average senior almost 3 percent of his or her benefits every year. The effect is cumulative, so the older you are, the more you are being cheated every year.
It is mind boggling that when the Social Security Administration determines how much to increase Social Security benefits in order to keep up with seniors’ cost of living, it doesn’t take into account what seniors actually spend. It’s like the IRS assessing your taxes based on Donald Trump’s income.
What our seniors need, and deserve, is for the SSA to use the CPI for the Elderly (CPI-E) to determine COLA. This index weighs more heavily the products, goods and services that seniors use more than younger Americans do, and thus produces a more accurate snapshot of their true cost of living. For example, seniors spend more than twice as much on health care as the young and middle-aged do. So the CPI-E weighs health care costs more heavily than CPI-W does.
According to reports, CPI-E has increased, on average, about 0.2 percentage points faster each year than the CPI-W since 1982. And that seemingly slim 0.2 percent a year has cheated our seniors out of over $300 billion. From tiny acorns, giant oaks grow.
Why should seniors today receive Social Security benefits worth three percent less than the benefits that seniors received in 1975? Our per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is 97 percent higher than it was then.
When President Franklin Roosevelt introduced Social Security, he was clear about its goals. “We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life,” he said in 1935. “But we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.”
In order to meet those goals, our seniors deserve a Social Security check that accurately reflects their spending, based on the CPI-E. They have done so much for us; we can’t neglect them.
Rep. Alan Grayson represents the 9th district of Florida in the US House of Representatives.
Thanks for looking out for the people, Mr. Grayson. Like, the actual people and not the wingnuts who own stock in poster board and misinformation.
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