How will they "cut" Social Security??

[kentuck]

We have paid into the Social Security fund more than enough to pay all Social Security entitlements for the near future. Granted, there may be a short time where the government will have to make up the shortfall because of the Baby Boomers retiring.

However, they only look at what comes in this year, not what has come in that they have borrowed for decades. They do not want to borrow from the Chinese to pay back the American people what they borrowed from the Social Security fund. And there is not enough coming in now to pay present benefits.

Therefore, their plan is to write off that debt and pay for it by cutting future benefits. Clever, isn't it?

But, they want to keep borrowing from the Social Security fund. It is a sleight of hand to say the least. If we pay into the fund $1 trillion dollars, but the fund now costs $1 1/2 trillion dollars, where do they get that extra $1/2 trillion? Of course, they owe that to the American people but they are telling us that since we are not paying in enough this year, then that puts us into a deep hole. Only in Washington.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. It started with means testing some time ago

[sarcasmo]

2. Up the age you can get SS to 70. No more early withdraws.

[SoCalDem]

10. Step 2.. getting employers to keep people on the job until age 70

especially since the trend seems to be laying them off when they are 45-55..

and for the unfortunate ones who work out in the elements, or on dangerous jobs that require strength, endurance & agility, it's gonna be an impossibility for many.

[anneboleyn]

14. I agree. I actually think the retirement age should be sixty and no more stealing from SS

The SS funds have been pilfered for years so that other pet projects can be paid for -- this means the SS funds are low, and the politicans want to make workers suffer to make up for the money the politicans withdrew from the "lockbox."

I actually think we should lower the retirement age to sixty. This would help increase the number of jobs available to young workers, and this would help encourage employers to stop letting people in their fifties go (this has been happening in record numbers). And this would help lower the number of disability claims as men and women who work labor-intensive jobs or other jobs that cause physical harm would be able to retire at a reasonable age and not work until the age of seventy (!) -- which would have a much higher chance of injury on the job.

[sarcasmo]

15. How many elderly will be moving in with their adult children.

[SoCalDem]

18. Some will be taking their elderly CHILDREN with them when they get bounced

There are MANY MANY "elders" who have grown kids & grandkid living with them already..:(

[Sirveri]

3. Except that they do look at what was borrowed because all of that is tracked.

It's why the insolvency date is 2037. All surpluses created by OASDI are used to purchase T-bills. The interest on that debt load alone is capable, with current funding levels, of keeping the program solvent for several years after contributions decline under expenses, and last year they were about equal. 2037 is the estimated time it would take, with highly conservative growth rates, for Social Security to exceed its income AND wipe out the T-bill trust fund it is sitting on.

Fixing that is as simple as raising the caps. Which needs to be done anyways since those caps float with inflation yet the upper income brackets have been rising dramatically faster than the rate of inflation. Raising it to recapture 90% of funds like it was in the 1980's would solve all of social securities woes.

[DURHAM D]

4. Raise the early retirement age.

[damntexdem]

6. People age at different rates. Many minority people tend to age faster.

Raising the early retirement age would most hurt those who age faster, so need to retire earlier.

[DURHAM D]

16. Don't you think early retirement should stay just X number of years

behind the full retirement age? Why stretch the two further apart?

[SoCalDem]

19. Pensions work on years of service..not age..

Which is another reason why they had to "DIE".. It really irritates some people when they see a 45 yr old daring to draw a pension after 25 years of service.. :evilgrin:

SS could have been set up to "pay out" in stages:

30 yrs of paying in=X %
35 yrs of paying in=X%
40 yrs of paying in=X%
45 yrs of paying in=X%


People in dangerous jobs may opt for the early out, even though it would pay them less...and people in more leisurely jobs may opt to wait longer..

[DURHAM D]

22. From my experience the people who "take" early retirement are usually spouses who didn't really work

Example - my cousin retired at 65, his full retirement year. His wife, who rarely worked, began to draw her SS at 62. Her amount is automatically set at half of his amount. His amount was the max. I think it was about $2,200 -$2,400. Therefore his spouse gets $1,100 - $1,200. Her monthly disbursement is not based on her work history but entirely on his.

I know several other couples where the non-working spouse is drawing as much SS as I will draw after having worked my entire life. I resent this pay-out structure. This is as much a bias against non-married seniors as a pay-out for non-working spouses.

[SoCalDem]

23. I am not an "outside worker", having quit in 1996 after having worked since I was 11

and paying in all those years.. My reduced amount is MINE..not his./.

He collect the max because he waited until the max age to start. Social security's website advises the younger spouse to draw at 62, because if the older one passes away first, that spousal SS will be vanished..

If I had waited until age 66 it would have been higher and even more at 70, but I chose to start now.. no one knows what's ahead, and I want to collect now even though it's only $801.00 a month..I earned it..

[DURHAM D]

24. According to the SS - if you are married and take

early SS benefits the SS administrator makes the decision as to which amount you get - benefits based on your income or benefits based on his. The SS decides based on which is highest.

On another note, I have two female friends that got SS benefits at 60. In both cases their prior husbands, who were older, had retired and so they could draw even earlier than 62. For one of these friends, not only is she drawing her benefits based on her X-husband's income but two other women are also drawing on his SS. Apparently if you have been married to someone for 10 years or more you get benefits based on spousal income. I think it is wrong for more than one person to draw on x-spouse income. One man could easily have four Xs drawing on his contribution.

Again - all of this has a bias against retirees who have always been single.

[damntexdem]

5. And the current fault is not due to 'baby boomers retiring.'

The Trust Fund would have weathered that except that projections assumed that the distribution of incomes would not alter radically. In fact, RW politics have led to a skewing of the income distribution, with much more money going to those earning incomes that extend well beyond the FICA-tax cap -- a growing part of national income not being taxed for SS. Raising, or eliminating, the cap would take care of that.

[RegieRocker]

7. They are not cutting S.S. it has been stated unequivocally here on D.U.

[Ezlivin]

8. It'll be done like a circumcision

Except you don't get any anesthesia, you're full grown and they won't stop at the top.

[SoCalDem]

9. "...shortfall because of the Baby Boomers retiring...= fallacy

The shortfall is from government STEALING all the extra money we were charged , that was intended to be the PRE-PAYMENT for our retirement

[spanone]

11. they want to abolish it, not cut it.

[gratuitous]

12. In the holy name of deficit reduction

Translation: They already stole the money to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, now they don't want to pay it back. Suddenly, the ongoing obligations are more important than the huge debts they rang up for their overrich pals. They'll "cut" social security through a variety of nice-sounding "reforms" such as means testing (turning a social insurance program into an entitlement, which is much easier to cut because it's just being paid to a bunch of poor welfare queens), raising the retirement age (because employers are just itching to hire that over 67 crowd), cutting benefits for future retirees (they know better than to mess with current beneficiaries), and what the hell, another round of tax cuts for the robber baron class.

[steelmania75]

13. "cut" code word for "privatize"

[Fool Count]

17. They will just fail to extend the debt limit one of those

times and default on the US Government bonds which Social Security trust fund holds. But first they will make SS cuts a condition for
increasing the debt limit, so they would win either way.

[Generic Other]

20. We need to fight them tooth and nail

Neither party gets a pass from me on this issue.

[slipslidingaway]

21. SS Trust Funds are 2.6 Trillion, raised from working people when they doubled contributions...

under the the Greenspan committee to raise to SS taxes in the 1980's.

Most of the surplus was gained and used during the Clinton and Bush 2 years, SS does not have a problem, the general budget has a problem ... for wars and tax cuts.

Every time the Democrats voted for Bush's wars they were using the SS surplus, we hardly ever heard a word from most Dems when they cast their votes for supplemental war funding.

Medicare and HC costs in general are a real problem, but the Dems never allowed a real discussion of a national HC system during the HC debates.