I have been on social security disability for three years now and have not received an increase in 2 years. My monthly income from SS is $1469 a month. A result my wife who is a retired Federal employee, receives $2300 a month and ss $257 a month. Before I had to give up my business we were earning close to $85,000 a year. We had $20,000 in savings when I had to give up my business due to medical problems. We pay taxes just like everyone else does, plus they deduct medicare out from out checks and my wife luckily has a secondary medical insurance plan that cost us $close to $300.00 per month that is taken out of her check. Not to mention that we pay an average of about $420 every three months for medication. We also have a mortgage, utilities, car payment, car insurance, small life insurance payments, homeowner taxes of $3200 a year, $45 a month for homeowners association fees, about $420.00 a month for food and credit card payments that we had to use to purchase a new furnace and heat pump for $7000 this year and some people want to call ss a entitlement program. I hate to say this but you try to live on what we get and live from paycheck to paycheck each month and our saving have been depleted down to $160 and we are in a financial bind. I have worked most of my life til I was 61 and got ill. I paid into FICA, Federal, State and County taxes to stay in business and part of my pay check went to pay for what some call entitlement programs, well I paid into it all my life and hard work and now some political parties and younger people want to take this away from us. An example Michelle Bachman running for the Presidency, her husband a Psychologist was accepting medicare for years to make a nice living and now she wants to abolish it after she and her husband lived happily on it. Now since that became part of the news, her husband has stopped taking medicare patients, where are these poor people going to go now for help. Then to think how many of the younger generation of people in this country want to cut it out. I would like to know how many of their parents. grandparents lived of of social security. At the time when social security was introduced to the people the life expectancy then was somewhere around 68 to 70 years of age. Well now thanks to medicine and medical findings the life expectancy has risen. The middle class citizens are hurting and paying taxes and also the less unfortunate are too. I can not understand how some of the people in Washington, DC congressmen, senators etc. Want to take everything away from us. Cut there incomes and take away their benefit packages and their travel vouchers for food, etc. If they were at home they would be paying so what is the big difference. The Federal Government has purchased so much unessary things like excess of computers that are still in boxes, furniture still in storage rooms. When new elected officals come into office they all get new furnishing to their likings and pick out the best. They have extravigent luncheons at times that are paid for by tax payers, etc. The public does not see these things in print because they do not want you too. To see how much of our tax dollars are wasted by the law makers of this country and who runs it. Stop all the unnessary spending in the the Federal Government and see how much we will save and I am just not saying all of the Government but also the Military that spends money on things that they stock pile up on furnishings and equipment that are unessasary and a big waste. Each year Federal Government Employees get an apprasial rating to see if they are doing there jobs efficently and if so move a step up or a grade up that increases their incomes and on the news you hear there will be no more social security increases or Federal Increases, what they menat was on the retirees and not the workers. The Government has double standards and hire many people who are not qualified for there position because of needing to be an equal opportunity employer and the person who was qualified did not get the job. We are all Americans and I believe that those who qualify should get the job and another thing is not to lower the standards of those who are minorities, so they can get the job. The government came put everyone back to work in various postions that they are qualified for. Our tax dollars are also paying for the training of the unqualified worker. All these statements I have made are from people I have talked too are or who have worked for the Federal Government.

I happen to be one of the people who rely on SS for approximately 50% of my total retirement income and am incensed about two issues: (1) being taxed on any percentage of my SS earnings as that is taxing a tax. (2) The nerve of present politicians calling SS an entitlement. BS! I worked for 56 years and paid FICA as well as my employer for all 56 years. The money invested was never really invested and there was consequently no interest earned. Furthermore, the shortfall is not due to the present population of Baby Boomers but to the fact Congress and the White House stole the money by using it for purposes never intended to be part of the SS system. The president, claiming a “tax break” for Americans is actually taking steps to further undermine the program because the tax breaks are: (1) presently a reduction from 6.2% per employee to 4.2% contribution (2) a request to cut the employer and employee contribution to 3.1% each. All this at a time when we should be continuing the original 12.4% FICA and raising the limit on base salary payment to $125,000.

Well, I’m the one in the bottom 20% and have nothing but social security to live on..a grand total of $940 a month which I am so thankful to have..and it is not enough to owe income tax. I collect it on the basis of my ex-husband’s earnings (20 year marriage), because it is more than I would collect on my own($870) earnings which were never anywhere close to his earnings. After divorce , no one was offering me a high paying job as a reward for my 20 years of being a housewife,doing volunteer work, being a mother, and having a 20 year old college degree. What I’m getting is probably pretty typical of women my age(almost 70)who were housewives, mothers, volunteers, and late-blooming displaced homemakers. I cared for my father the last 5 years of his life, and my share of my father’s modest estate,split between his 4 children, was just enough for me to buy a small foreclosure home. If I had to pay rent,I don’t know how I would be able to live on my income. Thank you Daddy and FDR.

When I retired in 2009, I started receiving $543 SS, which was exactly the amount I had seen in my statements over the years. I’ve worked as a substitute teacher since 1996 because of health reasons. When I retired I started receiving a pension from the teaching job which is $490.00 month. $1,033. month left me with little to live on, so I continue to work as a sub when I can. In August, My SS ‘benefit’ was reduced to $266!!! Some kind of ‘Windfall’ Initiative was the reason. I am now NOT able to pay my rent, my bills or eat off of $758.!!! I don’t understand what that ‘Windfall’ was about after I worked all those years to earn what I thought I was retiring on!? Shouldn’t there at least be a base amount a person is receiving before this ‘Windfall’ is applied!!!???? Please help me with this and hopefully suggest some way I can get the money I earned without having to go on a Food Stamp Program and/or SSI????