The CARES Act was intended to provide emergency payments as quickly as possible. Yet over a month after the bill became law, those emergency payments are not yet all out the door.

Even for those who’ve received them, $1200 emergency payments for eligible adults and $500 emergency payments for each eligible dependent child are inadequate. They will help, but this one round of payments is not enough to alleviate the lost income and increased costs caused by a once-in-a-lifetime worldwide pandemic.

Despite the urgency of these payments, the Trump administration has put up one roadblock after another to their automatic receipt by the lowest income Social Security beneficiaries. Adding insult to injury, Trump has just announced that he is against more payments. What does he want instead? To destroy Social Security.

Sound hyperbolic? It’s not. Let’s start with the roadblocks and end with the continuous, though stealthy, effort to undermine Social Security.

Full story: Forbes.com »