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Subscribe to RSSBOCA RATON, Fla. -- Courting the over-65 set in retiree-rich southern Florida Friday, Vice President Joe Biden accused the GOP presidential ticket of planning to poach the Medicare and Social Security tax benefits of the middle class to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
"If Governor Romney’s plan goes into effect, it could mean that everyone, everyone of you, would be paying more taxes on your Social Security," Biden told hundreds of retirees at the Century Village community in Boca Raton. "The average senior would have to pay $460 a year more in taxes for their Social Security."
The Obama campaign traces that math to the claim that Romney's tax policy would necessarily require the elimination of some middle-class tax deductions. Using data from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, they determine that Romney would have to cut tax benefits for those earning under $200,000 by 58 percent. Spreading those cuts evenly across all benefits would work out to an average of $460 per year per senior.
But Team Romney counters that those numbers are based on a third party's assessment that's riddled with uncertainties and assumptions rather than Romney's actual plan, which the campaign promises on its website "will not raise [Social Security] taxes and will not affect today's seniors or those nearing retirement."
Republicans also point out that Biden himself voted for a 1993 measure that expanded the taxable portion of Social Security benefits for many low-income seniors.
In Florida Friday, Biden said Romney's tax plan was not "moral" because of what he claims would be unfair hikes on the middle class.
"How can you justify a middle class that has been clobbered by the policies that brought on this great recession, adding taxes to them and drastically cutting taxes for the very wealthy," he told a group made up mostly of seniors in Tamarac. "It's not right, I don't even think it's moral, and beyond that it will not help the economy, it will hurt the economy."
In slamming the GOP ticket, Biden also joked that he can't determine if Romney would actually roll back the Obama-backed health care plan after Romney's on-again off-again embrace of some of its core tenets.
"He said 'well, we’re going to maybe ... do that, but I’d like to keep a lot of the good stuff,' and then his campaign says, 'no no no, he didn’t mean that,' " Biden said.
The vice president, who also won laughs from the elderly crowds for jokes about his age and a Lawrence Welk shout-out that would have sailed over the heads of a younger audience, was warmly received at his campaign events. But he did face persistent questioning on the Obama administration's health care plan when he stopped at Nestor's, a Jewish deli in Boca Raton.
Steve Grossman, a 39-year-old who said he worked in the financial services industry, approached Biden as he sat down to order a tuna salad platter and began asking about health insurance costs. The vice president initially seemed reluctant to answer, cutting Grossman off to order his food and to chat with another patron's husband on the phone, but he ended up offering a description of state-based health care exchanges more fitting for a think tank roundtable than a deli specializing in "the mother of all Pastrami sandwiches."
"You can get more benefits for less money," he told Grossman in between slurps of chicken soup. "You get to choose among those insurance companies that are competing as part of the exchanges."
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Seniors: Open you new Medicare Booklet. You will see specifics. You won't like what you see.
Remember what George Carlin said....
The Republicans want live babies to grow up to be dead soldiers.......and now knowing how they feel about abortion and war...it could be true...!!!!!!
Did Biden end his speech by spewing some of his racist remarks and then start singing "On the Good Ship Lollipop"??? ....Crazy Joe....cracks me up!
is joe biden going to say if we dont vote for obama we are all going to be raped by a 250 pound man ?
...like he said in 2011 ?
Hey! You can't throw that word around lightly. Better check with Lyin Ryan first and make sure it fits his definition of "rape."
65 lies for Biden...go figure...
Romney has always been too rich to understand how 99% of retirees live and many scrape by barely, Ryan is a kid that must have watched Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (I think Murdoch must have started that for his early brainwashing efforts) and was a rich family kid too who even got social security benefits of his father when he died young but he wants to take it away for his racist white repbulicans that think only they deserve the good life.
Romney's campaign is tanking and it's not because of the media! It's not the pollsters! It's not even Romney! It's the Republican party! Voters have watched Republican candidates endorse forced ultrasound vaginal probes, "legitimate rape", hatred of union teachers, policemen,firemen and sanitation workers . Voters see an anti intellectual party that hates education, logic & facts and prefers teaching creationism and hatred of minorities and women. America has realized they don't want to support the crazy radical right wing agenda of today's Republican party.
Ryan is a throwback to the Nazi era, and his own catholic bishops know this. The best thing about this election is that it will mean the END of Paul Ryan Eichmann Jr's political career.
Chased off some O canvassers. Don't trespass on private property. Got their loot of propaganda they dropped.
Didi your owner put you back in your pen after that?
was funny to see the overweight bitxx run. dropped her fake cane. know the idiot from the community. falsifies eveything anf loves the o handouts.
Paulie Ryan has been sitting on his bony arse in Congress for FOURTEEN YEARS. What has he accomplished? A final solution for seniors and the poor, vaginal probings and new definitions of rape for women - that's what. FOURTEEN YEARS on the taxpayer dime for THAT. I want my money back. As a matter of fact, I want my money back from all the stupidazz tea-thuglican time-wasting Congressional-tea-terrorists, including Crazy-eyes Bachmann.
How would Mr. Biden know? He gets the "Friends of Angelo-like" benefits.
Didn't we have competing insurance companies before? But now, we'll have insurance companies mandated to offer more benefits, charged billions in fees, and somehow pass all this on for less?
Has Mr. Biden been tutored by President Clinton in arithmetic?
Romney's plan for 12.5 million new jobs: 7 million to the army, 2 million to the marines, 2 million to the airforce,1 million to the navy, .5 milloin to the coast guard. Into Iran he will go. Presto.... no more unemployed poor.
Oh, mindless libbies, while msnbc props up your morally bankrupt idiots (Hussein, Joe, Nancy, Harry etc.) you continue to ramble on about their perceived greatness. Hussein has done nothing but drag the American economy and the country down. Biden is an idiot (admit it "y'all") and don't get me started on that braindead Pelosi, sheesh. Democrat controlled states continue to lag behind in this tepid recovery (Hussein has done everything he can to slow it down). Demcrat run cities make up the most dangerous, corrupt areas in this country. The modern democrat party has no shame, conscience or morality, or as Joe "racist bastard" Biden would say "we got yo free cell phones, y'all!!".
Yeah, because the economy was doing so great 3 1/2 years ago. We didn't own any money, there was a budget surplus, bills paid off, things were looking good...
Oh wait, wrong President, that would have been, hmmm, what was his name, something like a plant.....
Sheesh, did you people sleep through 2008? Or do you just hate Obama soooo much you simply can't see how pathetic you are?
"Hussein has done nothing but drag the American economy and the country down"
It’s so entertaining to listen to the right wing people whine, gripe and carry on about the reelection of President Obama. According to the, if that happens (and it will) the nation will be destroyed, we will be broke, our enemies will be at our doorstep, western civilizations we know it will no longer exist. Well right wingers --- you sang this tune before –back in 1996. You said the same things about Bill Clinton. What followed after the Clinton reelection was the largest economic expansion of all times combined with a decreasing crime rate, next to no inflation, an all time low unemployment rate and balanced federal budgets. Most of the economic gloom and doom the right predicted did happen --- 12 years later under George W. Bush.
These politicians are imagining, fantasizing and pretending through high dollar marketing, that Social Security and Medicare is their own little "Piggy Bank" to do anything with and what they can to not piss off other politicians! Fire them all with no severance or health packages; these unsrupulous lawer's in all parties and make them return to the real out-side world not filled with "Glamourous balls of the rich and lobbyist's who just want high dollar contracts.
Each and every one of us as, "Tax-Paying Americans" have paid into this fund since the first day of working. It is not theirs to determine what the rules are now as they made a forced contract to us [not with us] by I.R.S. and S.S law!
They have failed miserably with their financial management system for us in every respect and now all we want is what we were forced to pay in return. We want all monies returned so we can manage our future better than they obviously have! Always remember; The true American Government is not politicians, but the Constitition and Bill of Right's!
Romney/Ryan plan DOES affect 55 and older. Their plan:
Opens the doughnut hole
Eliminates the no-out-of-pocket-cost for preventative exams
Allows insurance companies to deny pre existing conditions
Allows insurance companies to cap lifetime coverage
Allows no cap on insurance companies profits
how can anyone tell me just what a Romney administration will do for us? So far, i have yet to hear one solid idea Mitt has to bring us around to where we need to be. All I've heard is mindless platitudes, attackes on the current admin., and spewing of endless bills#@t. Kind of hard to support a platform of misrepresentation and candidate bashing and nothing else
Reuters also says that vets are voting for President Obama by as much as a seven point margin over ol' Etch-A-Sketch. I guess that jobs bill for vets that the GOP shot down last week is coming back to haunt them.
My fellow citizens check the voting record of the GOP/RNC "House Of Horrors" in 2011. The GOP/Tea Beggers lead by "Richie Rich" Ryan voted to end Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as Gorvernment Programs. The GOP/RNC "Hoodlum's On The Hill" made thieir votes to kill the Jobs Bill of the President very clear. It is on the House Of Representatives voting record. LOOK IT UP! "Bonehead Boehner" made it clear that the word "Compromise" is a swear word. Now the biggest Tea Begger on the Hill is "Crazy Cantor." Is he still running around with rotten tea bags hanging off his ears?? Now "Richie Rich" Ryan is a loyal member of "Crazy Cantor's Cronies." It is very clear that "Richie Rich" Ryan is the "Golden Child" of the Koch Brothers, and is helping "Richie Rich" Ryan win in Wisconsin. Again! That is if he is NOT elected as the VP for the GOP/RNC "Speculator and Chief." Our military vets need to understand that the GOP/RNC "Romulian" is too "Alien" to their current situations. Has anyone heard about how the "Mickey Mouse Mitch McConnell" just recently shot down the latest bill to help our vets? Read how the GOP/RNC voted America! Does this sound like TREASON by the GOP/RNC? Again!
Reuters also says that vets are voting for President Obama by as much as a seven point margin over ol' Etch-A-Sketch. I guess that jobs bill for vets that the GOP shot down last week is coming back to haunt them.
I hear Democrats have adopted a No Whites Need Apply
policy for presidential primaries.
Or was that a No Women Need Apply policy in Democrat
presidential primaries?
Or was it just No White Women Need Apply in Democrat
presidential primaries?
Maybe that was just Michigan and Florida.
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Can Biden even count to 65?
I am an Independent and here's my prediction for this election:
Obama wins by 5 points....HOWEVER...AMERICAN people lose their way of life....and america becomes ruled by a despot....no more America the way I see it...EVERYONE loses....except those "axcepting" those welfare checks and 520 weeks of unemployment checks and America sinks deeper and deeper into debt....but it's ok OBAMACARE will take care of eveything...we will see our country become a third world nation within 2 years and were is the media going to be?....YUP....still blaming Bush....so sad that people will vote "CUZ" OBAMA GOTS ME A FREE PHONE!....
Anyone remember when Pres Obama called Splitt-Twitt-Dimwitt Robme, "Robin Hood in reverse?" In retrospect, how prophetic are his words? Or had he already seen what Robme/Ryan were cooking up for our seniors? At any rate; how could anybody be so cold as to rob our seniors and give the money to the already uberwealthy? They would stoop that low? WOW! May I say in brevity that I love America's seniors because if not for them there would be no us! In this modern age of electronics, micro-this and micro-that, miniature cell phones, lap tops, etc; you name it, we have it...one must reflect upon a time when dinner wasn't instant; it had to actually be prepared. Jumbo auto-washers and dryers were unheard of and cleaning the kids clothes was a herculean task that had to be performed by hand! These are the seniors who could be hurt by the GOP's proposals. Because our seniors persevered, a path was established for all that we now behold. I respect ALL seniors regardless of race. I am proud of our seniors and would humbly like to offer them my heartfelt thanks! THANK YOU!
NOW, lets protect THEM!!!
Right on...