From Firedoglake:
Mike Stark caught up with Democratic Majority Whip James Clyburn and asked him where he stood with regard to the Deficit Commission and potential plans to cut Social Security benefits....CLYBURN To be fair — and I may get beaten up by some people on this, and that’s all right, I get beaten up a lot. But I think to be fair, you cannot possibly not modify a program that at the time of its enactment, we had 17 people working for every one person that was a retiree. Today, you have about three people working for every one person that is a retiree. Now that is unsustainable. ...
STARK: Is means testing the fairest way?
CLYBURN: I think that’s one way we ought to be…we ought to be discussing means testing. I think that those of us who operate at the income level that I operate at ought to be means tested.
5 comments:
Possibly. But congress should not punished those who worked responsibly. So,perhaps a person who receive retirement at mr clyburn salary should just have a high reduction in benefits. This may be the current policy,which i'm not familiar with.
The solution to the SS funding problem is simply to eliminate the cap above which FICA is no longer paid. That's been borne out by numerous independent studies. But of course, should this be seriously considered, the Rethugs will scream about tax raises, which of course will only affect their wealthy patrons.
There is already "means-testing"--it's called the Federal income tax. Higher earners are under an onslaught of additional taxes and assessments because of the "share the wealth" agenda of the Obama Euro-socialists. We are about to achieve the establishment of a permanently unemployed underclass, similar to Europe's chronic 10 percent unemployment rate. Clyburn doesn't care--it's part of the Democrat dogma.
Umm, the marginal tax rate for the highest earners has declined since the Reagan years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses. I hardly think that they're "overtaxed".
Here's a suggestion: for many years, Congress kept coming up with new types of SSA benefits for which no one had paid into the trust fund, but never once provided the means of paying for them. Now that future funding has become a serious issue, would there be any injustice in terminating these types of benefits.? I don't mean kicking people off the rolls; I mean refusing to take new applications.
Post a Comment