Mark Warner: We?re ?Going To Have To? Raise The Retirement Age To Keep Social Security Solvent
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on November 16th, 2010 5:37 am by HL
Mark Warner: We?re ?Going To Have To? Raise The Retirement Age To Keep Social Security Solvent
Last week, the co-chairs of President Obama’s debt reduction commission released a report outlining their recommendations to reduce the budget deficit. Since then, a raucous debate has erupted over the proper measues that should be taken to rein in the U.S. debt. Yesterday, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Mark Warner (D-VA) appeared on CNN’s State […]
Last week, the co-chairs of President Obama’s debt reduction commission released a report outlining their recommendations to reduce the budget deficit. Since then, a raucous debate has erupted over the proper measues that should be taken to rein in the U.S. debt.
Yesterday, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Mark Warner (D-VA) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union to discuss various political matters. At one point, the senators addressed the proposals made by the commission. Warner said he had to give the “commission a lot of credit for, you know putting out some hard choices. It’s kind of where the reality meets the campaign rhetoric about deficit reduction.” He then went on to say that because “folks at 25 or 30 years old today aren’t going to get Social Security at 65 or 67,” that we’re “going to have to raise the retirement age slowly, in a slow way that doesn’t affect folks 50, 55. He concluded that “this is just math. We’ve got to do some of these things”:
WARNER: I actually give the budget commission a lot of credit for, you know, putting out some hard choices. It’s kind of where the reality meets the campaign rhetoric about deficit reduction. And I think there’s a lot in the plan that I could be supportive of. Listen, some of this stuff is not Democrat or Republican. Some of it’s just math. For example, 50 years ago, eight retirees for every worker, now only two. Look, folks at 25 or 30 years old today aren’t going to get Social Security at 65 or 67. We’re going to have to raise the retirement age slowly, in a slow way that doesn’t affect folks 50, 55. But this is just math. We’ve got to do some of these things.
Watch it:
Social Security is currently projected to be fully solvent until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084 (once you account for inflation those basically consist of full benefits). It is far from in crisis. That does not mean that there aren’t positive and progressive changes that could possibly be made to the system.
Raising the retirement age, however, would be a particularly punitive way to solve future deficits in the program’s funding. While it is true that average life expectancy has increased over time, these gains are largely a result of life expectancy rising among upper income earners. Among moderate and low income workers, life expectancy has barely changed. And “nearly half of workers over the age of 58 work at jobs that are either physically demanding or involve difficult work conditions.” Raising the retirement age would create enormous burdens on those who work at these jobs.
A better, more progressive solution involves raising the payroll tax cap. Currently, only the first $106,800 of a person’s income is considered taxable for the purpose of funding Social Security. Raising this cap significantly or eliminating it would essentially leave the program fully funded for decades to come, and not create undue hardship on those working physically demanding jobs.
An Election Day poll by Survey USA found that 85 percent of voters are opposed to cutting Social Security, and that Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin back raising the tax cap over raising the retirement age.
Rand Paul Again Comes To BP?s Defense: Obama?s Tough Stance ?Sends The Wrong Signal?
Late last month, President Obama’s commission investigating this summer’s devastating Gulf oil spill found that BP and its contractor Haliburton “knew weeks before the fatal explosion…that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable but still went ahead with the job.” “There is no indication that Halliburton […]
Late last month, President Obama’s commission investigating this summer’s devastating Gulf oil spill found that BP and its contractor Haliburton “knew weeks before the fatal explosion…that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable but still went ahead with the job.” “There is no indication that Halliburton highlighted to BP the significance of the foam stability data or that BP personnel raised any questions about it,” the panel’s lead investigator wrote. Despite this finding, when asked about the spill on CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday, Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) came to BP’s defense, saying the Obama administration’s strong language towards BP “sends the wrong signal”:
PAUL: But I don’t think an American president should be talking about putting the boot heel on the throat of a corporation because it sends the wrong signal that the government is the enemy somehow of business. And we need to always recognize that one in 10 businesses succeeds. We need to do everything we can to encourage business because that’s where the jobs are created.
Watch it:
As host Bob Schieffer noted, this is not the first time that Paul has stuck up for the oil giant. This summer, he called the administration’s pressure on BP — a foreign company — to clean up the spill “un-American.” (In the Face the Nation interview, Paul admitted this was a “poor choice of words.”) Paul’s comments exemplify tea party Republicans’ blind hatred for government regulation of dangerous businesses like mining and oil drilling. In August, Paul suggested that mine safety regulations were uncessary because the free market would take care of the problem — “no one will apply” for jobs at dangerous mines, he naively explained. Of course, those comments followed a disaster at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia — which had been cited with thousands of safety violations — where 29 workers were killed in April.
