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Originally Posted by Kernelingus
I suppose that in an alternate reality Al Gore was Reagan's Vice President????.....sure, why not?? And while we are at it...What Inflation?, Stagflation??, never heard of it. Afghanistan was a HUGE SUCCESS, Immigration, Border Crisis, Nah, That's not reality man!!! Energy Crisis, Layoff's, Worker shortages, Supply Chain issues.....come'on man!!! Hunter's Laptop, Ashley's Diary.... NEVER HAPPENED.....Fake News Man!!!! AND Gas Prices are actually getting lower, wink, wink!! and on, and on and on...
BUT....Corn Pop....Definitely Happenned....wink, wink...
LETS'S GO BRANDON
Next?
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Here you go big fella...
In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan, with congressional leaders, convened a bipartisan commission to study the issue. In 1983, that commission issued a report that formed the basis for amendments to the Social Security program. Among the recommendations in the report was that benefits be taxed as income for recipients who had income over a certain threshold.
Congress set that threshold a little higher than recommended, at $25,000 for single people and $32,000 for married couples. That would be equivalent to about $64,000 and $82,000 today, adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index calculator.
A Senate Finance Committee report issued in March 1983 said that the bill would assure that those with low incomes wouldn’t pay taxes, but those with “substantial taxable income from other sources” would be taxed on some of the benefits they receive.
The income thresholds weren’t indexed to inflation, though. So, as time went on, inflation would rise but the thresholds would remain the same, effectively lowering the bar that was intended to keep low-income beneficiaries from being taxed and adding more beneficiaries to the tax rolls.
It should also be noted that the thresholds weren’t a hard line above which everyone would be treated the same. Rather, the bill set out a formula with a gradual increase in the amount of benefits eligible to be taxed, which maxed out at half of a recipient’s benefits.
All of the taxes collected on those benefits would go back into the Social Security coffers.
The bill that included that change to the program passed in a bipartisan vote in 1983. Biden was one of 88 senators who voted for it. Only nine senators voted against it.
When Reagan signed the bill into law, he praised the bipartisan effort in his remarks and was joined by members of both parties. “This bill demonstrates for all time our nation’s ironclad commitment to Social Security,”