From The Hill:
Republicans are battling among themselves over whether to push reforms to reduce Social Security spending, with some conservatives rallying around the idea of raising the retirement age. ...
But others in the party warn that talking about delaying Social Security benefits in an election year is political malpractice and would give Democrats a golden opportunity to accuse GOP candidates of wanting to cut Social Security.
“Horrible idea. Totally opposed to this,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said of raising the retirement age, even for people who don’t plan to retire soon.
“What a terrible idea. If Republicans want to be in the minority party forever, then go ahead and endorse that,” he said. “Republicans are so stupid. If they want to go to working people and say, ‘Congratulations, you have paid into this your whole life — your payroll taxes — and now we’re going to take part of it away from you. We’re going to make you work even longer than we said beforehand,’ I just think that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
Republican calls to reform Social Security got fresh attention when the House Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 170 GOP lawmakers, released a budget plan this week calling for “modest adjustments to the retirement age for future retirees to account for increases in life expectancy.” ...
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who is running to become the next Senate GOP leader, said Thursday he’s sympathetic with conservatives who want to raise the retirement age, even though it could blow up in Republicans faces in this year’s election. ...
17 comments:
I think the dumbest thing to do is nothing. The SSA benefits will be cut across the board in 2033 by 23% if nothing is done by our lawmakers. To believe that the solvency of our trust fund will magically get better is fantasy material. Tough choices need to be done sooner than later.
Imagine being so ignorant and brainwashed that you believe your country is able to afford less and less the wealthier it gets. That’s what it’s like to be a GOP voter.
First time, I think, that I agree with Sen. Hawley.
I mean sure, you could raise the retirement age. Or you could raise the income ceiling for contributions to something proportionate to what it was when the program was conceived of. But I guess that nearly century-old idea would be too radical for this stone-age GOP. Definitely better to f**k over 90% of the nation’s population to spare the top 10% from a tiny increase in their tax burden.
I totally agree with 1:41. The depletion of the trust fund can't just be ignored away. Sen. Hawley is poorly informed. Maybe we can keep the retirement age the same to make folks feel better, but we can boost FICA in the present, thinking it will be preferable? Not saying it has to happen that way, but solutions need to aired and debated.
Oh yeah, pointing fingers at evil Republicans... now, that's been going on for 20+ years and it has done nothing to advance any kind of fix for the trust fund.
@240PM SSA at one time had over 10 workers for every beneficiary. Now it's less than 3 for each beneficiary. People need to have more babies.
Maybe if it's such a great idea to increase the retirement age, we ought to apply to all including current retirees. Obviously I understand the argument that current or near term folks don't have time to adjust their retirement plans, but this has been coming for a long time. Those folks now receiving or soon to receive surely didn't want to do anything to hurt themselves. Now we think it's a good idea to harm the next generation who are unfortunately not well prepared for retirement? Sounds fair. Sorry, but this should have already been fixed.
Or employers need to stop pushing workers out from salaried workers with benefits, into the gig economy. Uber, Lift, DoorDash, apps that have replaced careers, don't pay into SSA.
8:38... it's not employers doing the pushing. It's govt regulations. As of today, California has $20 an hour for fast food workers. Pizza places laying off delivery drivers to cut costs. Those delivery drivers move to working for Doordash.
Why do you generalize? Most older people, especially the last cohort of boomers, do not endorse these Republican ideas. Raising the cap is the only answer, logistically and morally.
There’s tons of ideas for keeping the trust fund solvent that don’t require cutting benefits. These extremely unpopular proposals for benefit cuts appear from time to time mostly because of some rich Republicans who have devoted a lot of lobbying money to cutting or eliminating Social Security. We do have hard choices to make about Social Security, namely which politicians to vote out of office for accepting that money and proposing benefit cuts.
"Tons of ideas"? Like what? Cut benefits, raise retirement, increase FICA or institute tax increase for the rich. Maybe, roll force all the state employees to roll over to FICA (not sure if that can be done). Those are the big hitters, and no one approach will be the magic bullet. It will need more than one.
All the other ideas are playing at the fringe and not going to pull the trust fund out of the nosedive its in.
The OASDI tax rate was raised 20 times between 1950 and 1990 (and average of once every two years), but has not been raised in the 34 years since 1990. Raising it modestly and gradually will fix the problem. Raising the retirement age is just cutting benefits, and if it only applies to future recipients, it will improve the trust funds much more gradually than a payroll tax increase.
Eliminate the taxable minimum, increase the taxable maximum, that gets you more than 75% to 75 year solvency. Then increase the payroll tax by 1% and you are building a surplus. Start letting in more young immigrants with marketable skills that we need. All benefit cuts are extremely unpopular with the public. Any politician dumb enough to push for cuts is out of touch and deserves to lose their job.
10:14: Nice try. Bit it’s the employer’s choice to move to using gig-labor instead of raising their prices and lowering bloated high-level leaders’ salaries to comply with the wage laws.
The problem with solvency results from decades of increased inequality as wealth has become ever more concentrated in the hands of relatively few, combined with reliance on a regressive tax to fund the program. We don’t need “more babies” or fewer independent contractors to fix either problem. We just need better elected representatives in Washington.
@141. Independent contractors do pay into SSA. Underpopulation is the biggest threat to civilization in the Western world and Japan. Inverted population pyramids are not successful for long.
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