Really, how do you thank the President, the Treasury Secretary, the Chair of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, The House Majority Leader, and the President’s OMB Office for promising to continue pushing a proposal that is deeply unpopular with independent voters?
Of course, the Bamboozlement over the issue continues as many in the press seem to think that a program that affects every American is not a big issue to worry about and Illinois Republican candidates for Congress try like hell to avoid the issue.
But, if the press does it’s job, Roskam and McSweeney have made their positions clear in his responses to the National Taxpayer Union’s candidate questionaire.
Both answer yes to the following question:
SOCIAL SECURITY CHOICE. I recognize that Social Security will default on its obligations to future retirees unless fundamental reforms are made. Therefore, I will work and vote for a system of Social Security Choice that will allow younger workers to have the choice of investing much of their Social Security taxes in regulated individual retirement accounts. Current retirees and those nearing retirement would not have any change in their Social Security benefits. Social Security Choice will give younger workers the option of ownership of personal Social Security accounts, with higher rates of return and better benefits than are possible under the current system.
That is a perfect description of the CATO plan which is essentially the outlines of the President’s plan that wasn’t a plan.
Making matters even more interesting is Roskam’s response to AARP
Without a doubt, Social Security must be protected. At the same time, I believe Social Security must be strengthened so that it can pay retirement benefits for years and years to come. Although no current or near retiree is facing benefit cuts, the benefits for future generations are at risk simply because the number of retirees continues to grow relative to the number of available workers who pay into the system. Therefore, I believe we should look at ways to improve the overall retirement security for all of us. If I am fortunate to serve you in Washington, I will examine all the proposals that are on the table. My position is that we must find a way to strengthen and protect Social Security without raising payroll taxes, without reducing benefits, without raising the retirement age and without privatizing the system.
What’s great is this sentence:
Although no current or near retiree is facing benefit cuts, the benefits for future generations are at risk simply because the number of retirees continues to grow relative to the number of available workers who pay into the system
This has always been true since the inception of the system. It does create challenges, but it certainly doesn’t require this kind of reduction in benefits.
So how would you meet the challenges to put the Social Security system on a financially sustainable course of action. If you’re answer is to raise the cap on taxable wages, I’d be curious to know why you believe that cutting future benefits for upper income workers will undermine support for the program as the CBPP paper you link suggests while raising taxes on those same workers won’t have the same or worse effect (especially if upper income workers aren’t credited with higher benefits as a result of higher taxes as some plans propose).
It’s a rather bizarre defense to state that possible other solutions are horrible, when the solution the Concord Coalition has decided to jump off the cliff exacerbates the financial condition of Social Security in the first place.
Can you do basic math? If you divert money of current workers into different accounts what magical money tree is going to pay for current recipients? The imaginary kind?
Seriously, it takes a lot of guts to whine about someone pointing out how incredibly stupid your plan is and then insist that someone defend two other positions without actually addressing the point about the plan you support.
As someone who was a member of the Concord Coalition back in the early 1990s I’m most disappointed that instead of defending sane fiscal practices it is now defending Santa Claus policies.
What’s most ridiculous is your theoretical claim that reducing benefits by the degree your plan would is equal to far smaller individual impacts of raising the cap on earnings taxed in a given year or a small increase in taxes. Even dumber is the notion that any solution has to be a single change. Never before was that done when we have modified Social Security have we only chosen one course of action.
The problem is you don’t approach the issue as an empirical one, but an emotional one and in doing so have left the reality based community.
Even more disturbing is that like Bush and his idiot friends, the CC’s literature suggests the United States government is in danger of defaulting on it’s debt payments. All of a sudden, the United States Government isn’t going to meet its obligations? That’s a fascinating theory.
Other than being entirely fictitious scaremongering, it masks the time frame in which the problem can be dealt.