As the President made clear in his speech yesterday, “we are all connected…some things we can only do together.” Generations United applauds the President for recognizing that fiscal policy affects all generations and for advocating for a balanced deficit reduction plan focused on shared sacrifice. As the President stated, programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid not only protect aging seniors, poor children, and those with disabilities, but they provide each of us with “some basic measure of security…in hard times or bad luck, [in the event of] a crippling illness, or a layoff [which] may strike any one of us.”
Generations United supports the President’s pledge to invest in and protect our nation’s most vulnerable citizens by strengthening Social Security. Social Security provides vital support for children, in addition to older adults, covering 98 percent of all children in the event of the death or disability of a caregiver.
We also support the President’s effort to reform the tax code to promote balanced economic growth and provide adequate revenues to address the needs of our citizens and to preserve Medicare and Medicaid for future generations. Proposals which would change Medicaid to a block grant would leave states with inadequate funding and ultimately shift the burden of medical costs onto the backs of seniors and poor families.
Generations United strongly opposes proposals which deny low-income individuals, young and old, access to programs vital to their economic security while giving tax breaks to the wealthy, protecting corporate tax subsidies, and shifting the burden to the middle class.
We urge our members and supporters to reject extreme proposals which would weaken these critical federal protections, prolong our economic recession, and endanger the welfare of the young, old, and disabled.
No comments:
Post a Comment