to teachers, have signed an open letter to the prime minister urging him not to go ahead with the planned cut to universal credit. an extra £20 a week was added to the scheme at the start of the pandemic as a temporary measure and is due to be phased out from the end of this month. the government says its focus now is on creating more jobs. here s our social affairs correspondent michael buchanan. i don t know why they call it early morning work. it s the first day of school for douglas and the resumption of his daily trek. the eight year old and his mum, tasha, travel eight miles on two buses. ..as douglas didn t get a place at a nearby primary after they moved home last year. the family of six rely on universal credit to top up dad s wages as a builder. the bus journey costs £5.20 daily and is reimbursed by their council each term, but the family have to pay up front and the looming benefit cut will create tough choices. if we lose that money, he will only be able to go to school
but the depth of that commitment will be revealed this autumn when it | decides whether or not to go ahead | with the cut to the incomes of i the poorest people in our country. ministers say the extra £20 a week was always meant to be temporary and they ll bew now be focused to help people either find work or earn more. for award winning opera singer emilie parry williams, work is currently not an option. the pandemic forced her onto universal credit like millions of others after all her work was cancelled. the arts have still not recovered. she still has a few bookings, so she finds the benefits cut extraordinary. we don t want to be on universal credit. we want to get back to work. so, then to reduce that money any more when it s incredibly low anyway, it feels like a betrayal. for many, the benefit cut will coincide with steep energy price rises, but it will save the treasury billions of pounds. michael buchanan, bbc news.
to the scheme at the start of the pandemic as a temporary measure, and is due to be phased out from the end of this month. the government says its focus now is on creating more jobs. here s our social affairs correspondent michael buchanan. it is the first day of school for douglas and the resumption of his daily trek. the eight year old and his mum tasha travel eight miles on two buses. as douglas didn t get a place at the nearby primary after they moved home last year. the family of six rely on universal credit to top up dad s wages as a builder. the busjourney costs credit to top up dad s wages as a builder. the bus journey costs £5 20 daily and is reimbursed by the council each term, but the family have to pay up front and the looming benefit cut will create tough choices. tt benefit cut will create tough choices. ., , ., benefit cut will create tough choices. ., ., , choices. if we lose that money, he will only be choices. if we lose that money, he will only be able choices.
toilet, everyone should just move to new york city and see how far your tax dollars go. you get and in the streets and pot holes the size of rhode island, that s what your money gets even a place like new york. and i ll just point out, it would be lovely if the democrats knew some basic math. in terms of medicare for all, great slogan, great message. we found out last week, a couple of weeks ago, it costs $33 trillion in the first ten years and medicare to put that in perspective, you would have to double what the government collects in taxes from individuals and corporations in this country and it still would not be enough to cover it. you know it s going to happen in eight years? the medicare hospital trust fund goes bankrupt. it runs out of money and they re going to be able to pay that $0.90 on the dollar, there s going to be an immediate benefit cut to anybody on medicare and not one jerk in washington. kennedy: it s interesting because they were to think tanks that did the cost
all these reforms wouldn t affect current seniors, but would still burden a whole new generation. jeb s brother wanted to undercut the safety net as well. george w. bush tried to privatize the system and dump money into the stock market. diverting taxes into private accounts. would have drained money from current retirees. the proposed reform was a path to a disastrous benefit cut, raising the retirement age puts benefits on the chopping block again, raising the eligibility age would mean fewer benefits for lower income workers who typically die younger than those who make more. life expectancy has grown steadily for the rich. poor people in this country who typically work more physically demanding jobs get their benefits pushed farther away. joining me tonight is former reagan and george h. w. bush policy adviser bruce bartlett. good to have you with us tonight. happy to be here. it s a rather interesting