U.S. Lawmakers Discuss Social Security, Have No Plan to Prevent Insolvency

One day after federal trustees warned Congress that Social Security’s retirement trust fund will go insolvent by 2032, a U.S. House subcommittee met to question Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano about the program’s future.

The program’s insolvency will automatically trigger a benefit cut of 22% or more, impacting more than 60 million American retirees, 43% of whom rely on Social Security for the majority of their income.

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Commentary: Bill Gates’ Billions Shape U.S. Medical Research

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Bill Gates has long been one of the most admired people in the world, especially since he stepped down from his role running Microsoft to devote himself and much of his fortune to philanthropy. That reputation has been tarnished recently, however, by revelations of the billionaire’s close relation with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and exposés on his own fraught relationships with women.

On the eve of Gates’ private testimony with Congress scheduled for tomorrow, a trove of federal whistleblower documents provided to RealClearInvestigations is renewing questions about how Gates money has bought what critics complain is an untoward influence on government health policy. For almost a quarter of a century, his main vehicle of power, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), allowing Gates to shape the direction of the country’s health strategy in ways that have benefitted his own priorities and pet causes while polishing his image as a benevolent global do-gooder.

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