To ever garner serious consideration.......

- medicare & social security should remain universal -

you need to make the asset limit higher. $1 million sounds like a lot in assets, but in some places a $1 million home is middle-class. In the San Francisco/San Jose area if you bought your home 30 years ago and finally got it paid off, it could easily be worth $1 million today. And now one of you needs to go into a nursing home at $10,000 a month.

Currently, the system is rigged so that the middle-class cannot possible pass anything to their children. 15 years ago my mother-in-law had about $250K in stocks she had inherited. She died in a nursing home with $2,000 in her estate. She had to spend down her estate before medicaid kicked in.

One my parents inherited, combined they are worth over a million she rents the house she doesn't live in for a pittance. Sf is rent control and the tenant is disabled. There is no way i can get away with raising the rent. But it supplements her income so I can afford to pay her caregivers. Between social security and my dads pension she survives. She is house rich and cash poor. I think 2-3 million would be a good means testing threshold.

like Medicaid, Section 8, and food stamps.

"Means testing" would destroy the programs.

You paid into them, you are entitled to them regardless of income or assets. Period.

+100

already millionaires

That would undermine public support and kill the New Deal and Great Society programs.

Means testing is a slippery slope toward privatization

The ones for highly profitable big oil and big coal should GO.

Grants and subsidies for keeping investment in renewables and clean energy going should stay. But I'd be okay with those being slashed at such time those companies become as profitable as Big Oil/Gas and Big Coal. That's only fair.

Or a massive ad blitz might do the trick: just enough to embarrass all the 6
and 7 figure moochers who are supposedly "governing" our nation, into doing
the right thing for the people and for the planet.

However.......i say we stop paying ANY social security to everyone making (or with assets)
over 1 million dollars.
Get rid of the wealthy FREELOADERS like McCain and the system would
be solvent for 100 years!

There really aren't that many rich people. Cutting SS to people at a certain income level would save virtually nothing. Last I had read, it would actually cost more to track and prove who was ineligible than it would save.

Paying taxes at the personal level if they're not incorporated?

you disincentivize the job creators, who get up in the morning and work tirelessly to create jobs for the undeserving.

until customers are literally walking out the door because they don't have enough help to wait on them.

the real job creators are the ones who can't be bothered to get out of bed for less than millions annually in salary, stock options, tax breaks and other perks. If you don't believe me just ask them or the stooge politicians who shill for them.

and other large-scale energy projects. Our region's most scenic areas are being destroyed, and it's happening across the America for projects that aren't even producing much power, and that could easily have been avoided by cleaner, safer alternatives such as rooftop solar.

Eliminating every subsidy across the board may be too drastic, though; what about subsidies to assure devleopment of "orphan" drugs by pharmaceutical companies for rare but curable conditions, or for research to cure Alzhemier's or cancer?

I am opposed to ANY cuts to these benefits to anyone. They are NOT a gift from the government, they are not welfare, and they barely keep up with inflation while GDP per capita continues to grow.

CUT THE PENTAGON!

That's better.

if this is going to be the law then there should be some kind of buyout, if a person paid into the system. If they had earned less than $110,000 and paid into them then they should receive some form of compensation. If you make too much to have paid into them then there is no problem. You don't get them anyway.
The problem that I see denying Social Security benefits to an individual, many are self-made. They may not have started their working lives making a great deal of money and they paid their share. They should get compensation.

even at the Bush tax rates. The solution is for people earning over $1 million to continue paying individual tax rates.

Shouldn't they be on the table as well?

I don't think anyone truly knows what the real outcome would be but there's a strong possibility that it would be bad for poor and middle class type people who like eating and drinking stuff. It might give small farmers a chance to compete but it might also double or triple the price of milk, butter, eggs, corn, beef, pork, etc. It is corporate welfare but, at the same time, it helps to stabilize an extremely important industry. just my humble opinion.