11/26/10 - Marshfield News Herald, WI: Social Security cuts would be wrong by Niel Ritchie
Social Security cuts would be wrong
By Niel RitchieCome December, just more than a dozen people could determine the future of generations of America's seniors.
In a plan recently presented by co-chairs of President Obama's bipartisan deficit-reduction commission to be voted on by Dec. 1, cuts to Social Security are among proposed measures to fix the nation's financial crisis.
But Social Security is supported by individual payroll taxes and cannot by law go into the red or contribute to the deficit. One rightfully should ask: Why is it even part of the mix?
Statements by co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles get at the reason. And it appears that politics, not good policy, is driving their decision.
For years, ideological groups bent on cutting social spending have claimed that Social Security is bankrupting the country and on the brink of collapse -- despite all evidence to the contrary.
According to the latest Social Security Trustees' Report, the program is operating with a surplus that will continue to grow until 2023, when it will reach $4.5 trillion. With no change whatsoever in benefit rate or retirement age, Social Security is secure through 2037. With minor adjustment, like raising or eliminating the income cap, it would be secure well into the next century.
In releasing their plan, Simpson and Bowles stressed that they were proposing changes to Social Security "for its own sake, not for deficit reduction." Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, wrote in August that Social Security is "a milk cow with 310 million tits." Democrat Bowles, who made his fortune on Wall Street, told bankers in February, "We're going to mess with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."
Under their plan, the early retirement age would rise to 64 and the full retirement age to 69. It also would use a less-generous measure to calculate cost-of-living increases. Both of these changes would disproportionately impact low- and moderate-wage earners and workers in physically demanding jobs.
The plan's related cuts in Medicare would impose even greater hardship on those of modest means, given it calls for increasing what elderly and disabled beneficiaries pay for health care services.
According to budget experts, raising the full retirement age to 69 would amount to a 13 percent benefit cut, a loss the average retiree would be hard-pressed to absorb. Social Security benefits already are modest at best -- ranking 25th out of 30 nations providing old-age pensions, and guaranteeing what researchers call a "no-frills, bare-bones" income.
The deficit panel will conclude its work after Thanksgiving with a vote on the Simpson-Bowles proposal. Reductions in Social Security should not make the cut. Social Security does not contribute to the nation's deficit and threatening the future of America's seniors is no solution. www.marshfieldnewsherald.com/article/20101126/MNH06/11260302/Column-Social-Security-cuts-would-be-wrong
