I remember a point in my life – somewhere around the welfare reform debate of the 1990s – where I decided it was wrong to assume that Republicans were deliberately setting out to hurt the poor and the elderly with their policies. I differed with their policies, but Republicans like Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin convinced me that their motives were sincere, if nothing else.
That’s getting to be a harder notion to maintain. Fresh off passage of Rep. Paul Ryan’s ruinous and radical budget proposal that would cripple Medicare and Medicaid, Republicans – including so-called moderate Sen. Lindsey Graham, have introduced a proposal to cut $6.2 trillion worth of Social Security benefits over the next 20 years. Keep in mind that Social Security is actually in pretty good shape. Sure, there’s going to be a shortfall when the bulk of the baby boomers go through the system, but we’ve been preparing for that for decades by charging far higher Social Security taxes than necessary, thus building up a large surplus. Once the demographic bulge of the baby boomers is through, Social Security is on a completely sustainable path with only minor tweaks.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, eliminating the cap on income subject to Social Security (now set at around $106,000) would all but eliminate any long-term solvency issues for Social Security.
For Graham, though, such a proposal is a complete nonstarter. In fact, he blusters that doing so could “destroy the country.”
“It’s much better to give up benefits on the end side than pay taxes now,” he said. Better for who?
It’s important to understand what this move and other radical proposals to increase the Social Security retirement age or otherwise drastically lower benefits are actually about. They are not about “saving” Social Security. They are, in fact, about reneging on a debt and abandoning an obligation.
As I said, Social Security has been collecting far more in revenue than it needs for the last couple of decades. That was part of the Social Security reform of 1983, and it was intended to build up a large surplus for the baby boomers’ retirement. And it worked. But now that baby boomers are retiring, some politicians don’t want to the surplus to actually be spent on Social Security.
http://mykeystrokes.com/2011/04/19/republicans-want-to-pull-a-social-security-scam/