Matt Blunt says he wants to help people on Social Security who make more than $132,000 a year by lowering their taxes. The problem is he is robbing from a very poor group on social security to give to a very rich group.
In 2005 when Matt Blunt made the cuts to Medicaid and people with disabilities, one of the groups affected most was people on SSDI(Social Security Disability Insurance). When we work, we all pay a premium in social security taxes so that in the event that we become disabled we have a safety net just like any other insurance like car insurance in the case of a car accident or house insurance in the case of your house burning down.
One of the major outcomes of the Medicaid cuts was that people who received money from SSDI just paid that money back to the states in the form of a spend down in order to keep their desperately needed medical coverage. This policy effectively took any award away from working in the past and even worse it made poor people even poorer.
For all practical purposes, a spend down is a tax on past labor. If Matt Blunt really wanted to help people on Social Security, he should start with letting the people on SSDI keep the money that they have earned.
Bob Pund
Columbia, MO
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