During the last election cycle Al Sharpton famously said, "It's not about Obama, it's about your momma." He was making a compelling argument that the public needed to be concerned about Mitt Romney's draconian Social Security and Medicare proposals. Now that the Obama Administration has released its 2014 budget that includes cuts to both Social Security and Medicare, African Americans must now face the bitter reality that it's literally about Obama and our mommas.

On April 23, 2012, the Social Security Board of Trustees released its 2012 annual report on the financial health of the Social Security Trust Funds (formally the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and the Disability Insurance Trust Funds). Like previous annual reports, this one contains estimates of revenues and expenditures of the Trust Funds for the current year and projections of the same for 75 years into the future. Also like previous reports, its findings lead many to conclude that Social Security won’t be there for them when they need it. This doesn’t have to be the case.

President Obama and Congressional Democrats want to extend the payroll tax “holiday” for another year, which would allow workers at all income levels to continue to pay the 4.2 percent rate instead of the 6.2 percent payroll tax they paid before 2011.

In its deliberations to develop a plan to reduce the federal deficit by more than a trillion dollars over the next decade, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction considered a proposal to calculate cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) in all government programs using the Chained Consumer Price Index-Urban (C-CPI-U), rather than the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U).

The steep drop in stocks since passage of the ill-fated debt deal indicates that even markets understand the disastrous consequences of what has just occurred.

The high stakes debt ceiling negotiations have had Americans and the rest of the world on the edge of their seats. While most of the media elite has focused on whether our political leaders can achieve a bipartisan deal on the debt, the rest of the world has taken note of how dysfunctional our democratic institutions have become.

Congress is currently debating to make serious cuts in Social Security. Some analysts in Washington believe that the cuts are necessary to help the country out of its economic downturn.  However, any changes in the program will severely affect all recipients, particularly African-Americans.

At 84, billionaire Peter G. Peterson won’t be affected by any proposed changes to Social Security and, given his personal fortune (Forbes puts his net worth at $1.7 billion), it wouldn’t matter if he were. Nonetheless, Peterson is obsessed with fixing the entitlement program. He has spent the past 30 years warning that, unless we address the nation’s debt, deficits and entitlements programs, this country is headed for economic disaster.