Saturday Report 7/25/26 — Is the Social Security Reckoning Finally Here?

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— Is this going to be Trump‘s and the GOP’s strategy this fall? New York Times columnist David French published a truly alarming op-ed yesterday, pointing out a strategy that Republicans are apparently considering as we approach this November’s election. In Article I, Section 5, the Constitution says that both the House and Senate will decide who they’ll seat as members: “Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.” In other words, if the House — which right now is in Republican hands — determines that they want a Republican who lost an election for the House or Senate to a Democrat this fall to be the person seated as a member of Congress rather than the duly elected Democrat, they can make that happen with a simple majority vote. They can literally overrule or simply ignore the results of any election for any House or Senate seat if they don’t like it. Of course, to give the process a patina of legitimacy they’d probably point back to some squealing Laura Loomer-type back home in the state to claim that there were “irregularities,” but they can do it and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. In fact, it’s been done over a dozen times in this country’s history, and the Supreme Court itself has, as French points out, in a 1972 case called Roudebush v. Hartke, ruled that, “Which candidate is entitled to be seated in the Senate is, to be sure, a nonjusticiable political question.” In other words, No court can rule on this; there is no possible appeal. They’d probably only try to pull this off it the election is close and control of either body is hanging in the balance; that’s the circumstance that’s provoked such an action in the distant past. This is one more solid reason — in addition to overcoming the GOP voter suppression efforts I wrote about yesterday — why the ultimate and arguably only solution we face this fall to preserve our democracy is to show up in such overwhelming numbers that nobody can deny the results.

— Bernie Sanders explains the appeal of democratic socialism to a Fox “News” reporter. I’ve told the story before about how, in 2016, when Louise and I lived on a boat in a marina in Washington, DC surrounded by lots of Navy and Coast Guard Republicans, most all of them were debating whether to vote in the primaries for Trump or Bernie, either being preferable to Clinton or any of the mainstream Republicans running. At least since 2000, I believe Americans have been looking for real change, a break with the neoliberalism that Reagan rolled out and Bill Clinton embraced, and both Bernie and Trump promised that change. But Trump has failed to deliver real change, so the question still hangs over our electoral processes. Which is why probably a lot of ears perked up when a Fox “News” reporter caught up with Bernie in the halls of the Capitol and asked if democratic socialism would hurt Democratic candidate chances this fall. Bernie was blunt: “The American people are disgusted with an economic system in which one guy on top, Elon Musk, owns more wealth than the bottom half of American society. They’re tired of a situation where 60% of our people live paycheck-to-paycheck... they are tired of a corrupt political system in which billionaires buy elections.” Amen! Hopefully a lot of those Fox-watching Republican-voting guys who lived in boats around us were watching…

— Affordability is tanking under Trump. When it rains, it pours. American families were still reeling from the price increases on imported goods caused by Trump’s early tariffs when he let Netanyahu talk him into stupidly — and illegally — attacking a country that had not attacked us. The war of aggression against Iran led to the closure of the Gulf of Hormuz which spiked oil and gasoline prices early on and again over the past week. And now, after the Supreme Court told Trump that the Constitution says only Congress can impose tariffs, he’s gone and done it again, this time using the excuse that Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and around 80 other countries are using forced or slave labor in their factories to hit them with 10% to 12.5% tariffs. One immediate result was a jump in bond yields, meaning that home and car loan rates will soon be rising; mortgage rates could easily hit 7 percent in the near term. And there’s even speculation that Kevin Warsh, the guy he put into the Fed to replace Jerome Powell, will oversee an increase in the Fed-determined interest rates in coming weeks. This is all bad news for Republican candidates, which probably explains why the Trump administration is threatening to jail election officials and strip FEMA funds from states that won’t go along with their latest voter suppression efforts.

— Republicans want legislation to force people to work in deadly heat if that’s what their employers demand. The Biden administration proposed OSHA rules that would prevent employers from forcing people to work under dangerous circumstances, including extreme heat events (the rule was dropped when Trump came into office). But leave it to Republicans, presumably responding to big lobbying money from the ag industry, to go an extra step to screw the workers. The Heat Workforce Standards Act, introduced by Indiana Republican Congressman Mark Messmer, passed the House Education and Workforce Committee in a straight party-line vote this week. The proposed new law would ban OSHA from putting into place any sort of national heat protections for working people. These guys don’t care who lives or dies, they just want to be sure they can cash the oligarchs’ checks.

— “Explosive Trumparreah” spreads across the US, along with measles, while Bob Kennedy says, “Everything’s under control.” An estimated 11,500 cases of Cryptosporidiosis have now shown up in 41 states, but ever since the CEO of Taylor Farms gave Trump a million dollars and visited him in the White House last week the CDC continues to play dumb. Bob Kennedy says the outbreak is “under control,” although this is the guy who got a brain worm from eating roadkill and has no medical background whatsoever. Meanwhile, because of the MAHA-spread skepticism of immunizations, America is now experiencing the largest number of deadly measles cases since the disease was declared eradicated from America two decades ago. These Republicans sure know how to run a public health service, eh?

— The Social Security reckoning will become a BFD as the trust fund runs low. Until Reagan’s “reform” of the Social Security system, it had always operated on a simply pay-as-you-go system; the money coming in from FICA taxes funded the money going out to retirees and people on disability. Seeing the baby boomer generation’s retirement coming down the road, Congress increase the FICA tax to essentially double-tax the boomers to build up a massive ~$2.5 trillion trust fund to deal with this “rabbit through the python” problem; the idea was that the boomers would have all retired by the time the fund was exhausted and Social Security could go back to pay-as-you-go. Reagan also put an income tax on Social Security earnings, slowed the cost-of-living-adjustments (COLAs), and raised the retirement age to 67. None of those things, however, have worked and now the trust fund will run out of money within the next six years, long before the last of the boomers are dead. The solution to the problem is simple: right now people only pay Social Security taxes on the first ~$180,000 of their income, so millionaires and billionaires pay a tiny fraction of their income into the fund compared to average work people. Lifting that cap so everybody pays the same percentage would make the program solvent for the next 70 years (the maximum the government can calculate) and even allow for a $2000/year increase in benefits across-the-board for everyone. But Republicans hate the idea of taxing the morbidly rich even a tiny bit, so they’re floating a bunch of other suggestions, including privatizing the system and giving it to the big New York banks, raising the retirement age to 70 or even 72, and cutting benefits by as much as 20%. Keep an eye on this one, as most younger people don’t really understand the system so the GOP’s hustle is still working. It’s going to take all of us to educate our friends and neighbors to the simple realities of the situation.

— Forever chemicals may be causing ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and colorectal cancer in young people. A new peer-reviewed study just published in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology looked at mother-child pairs from birth through age 11 and found a clear association between gut inflammation and PFAS exposure. These chemicals are popping up everywhere; they’re used in everything from paint and pesticides to processed foods and coffee cups. They’re most commonly used to make paper waterproof, so those carry-home food containers and the carry-out coffee cup are likely lined with them. It appears this is a good candidate for answering the questions about why so many young people are now coming down with these GI-related diseases, particularly cancers, that typically only used to hit older folks. Beware.

Comments on Friday’s Daily Take:

The Fourth Assault on American Democracy Has Already Begun. This Fall Decides Whether It Ends.

Violence must be a last resort. But there does not seem to be any doubt that the wealthy and powerful (which translates as capable of employing power through direct physical force) have already used violent tactics and coercive methods via the justice system and economic strategies and will not hesitate to direct their ‘muscle’ and security apparatus to quell any resistance as soon as it has a chance of challenging their great corporate power.
~ Robert B. Elliott

There is a cadence here. the oligarchs have carefully planned and are following. Timing now grows very short for any correction in course. Can we turn? Only if a plan is succinct, adopted and executed
~ Ari Luntz


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