Retirement Security: Media Appearances and Press Releases

"Future of American Politics" Event on C-SPAN

Communications — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:20:00 -0500

New America in the News:

The first panel spoke on the changing political culture in the United States and how it will affect the next social contract. Panelists focused on the growing demand for post-partisanship, teamwork, and tolerance among younger voters. The second panel discussed political institutions and elections, including the past political era, which began in 1978, and the possible shape of the new political era that panelists believe is beginning. The third panel discussed possible policies in the next political era? Some topics were broadening asset ownership, modernizing the tax system, and workplace flexibility. The final panel spoke on political parties in the next political era. They discussed how each party is struggling to build a new majority coalition and the growing popularity of the Democratic Party, particularly among young people. Following each panel panelists answered questions from members of the audience. For the video, visit the C-SPAN Event Page.

Steven Hill's NYT Letter to the Editor Regarding Krugman Column, Europe's Social Contract

adminn — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:22:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Paul Krugman calls Europe the "comeback continent" because of its resurging economy, yet repeats another stereotype -- Americans pay less in taxes than Europeans. The situation actually is more complex.

For their taxes, Europeans receive many benefits for which most Americans must pay additional fees and payments out of pocket. Many Americans, if they have health care at all, are paying for escalating premiums and deductibles. Other Americans are saving $100,000 for each of their children's college education, yet European children attend for free or nearly free.

Millions of Americans are scraping to save the amount they will need for retirement beyond Social Security, but the European retirement system is much more generous. Many Americans pay extra for child care, or self-finance their own sick leave or parental leave after a birth, but Europeans receive all of these (and more) from their taxes.

When all these differences are added up, it turns out that many Americans are paying out as much as Europeans -- we just receive a lot less for our money. The "overtaxed European" is another stereotype used to scare Americans away from the European model, so it's unfortunate that Mr. Krugman reinforced that stereotype.

Steven Hill
San Francisco

Maya MacGuineas in TIME Magazine on Productive Aging

Communications — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:35:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Making the most of our retirement-age population has become a hot issue in Washington, where for the past 75 years federal policy has been designed around easing folks who are past 50 out of the workforce rather than enticing them to stay in it. If you're reaching that age now, however, you're headed for a whole new reality.

Everyone knows the fiscal pickle we're in: baby boomers are about to retire and tap Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. To make good on the promises of these programs, the government may have to go much deeper into debt or increase the tax burden up to twofold on those still working. The math is suffocating. Something has to give.

Inside the Beltway, one answer is increasingly heard: let's get a continuing economic contribution from folks after their primary career has ended and before they start draining the system's pension and health-care assets. That's bad news if you're looking forward to a kick-up-your-heels early retirement; the financial and cultural support for a purely leisure-filled later life is drying up. But if you crave opportunities for a flexible job that you will enjoy or volunteer work that makes use of your skills and speaks to your heart, then what's good for the federal budget may be good for you too.

The whole idea of productive aging--getting an economic return on the accumulated knowledge and skills of what might be called the young old--has political steam and will probably surface on the presidential trail next year. "There are candidates on both sides giving this a lot of thought," says Maya MacGuineas, fiscal-policy director at the New America Foundation, a think tank that promotes new ideas...

For the complete article, please visit the TIME Magazine website.

Maya MacGuineas on Spending for Kids, Seniors in USA Today

Communications — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 22:13:00 -0400

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON — The spiraling cost of benefits for seniors is limiting the federal government's ability to invest in kids.

Despite Democrats' plans to boost spending on education and children's health insurance, the projected $2.9 trillion federal budget's tilt toward older Americans will only increase, a study out today from the Urban Institute says.

The report...shows that their share of domestic spending and tax breaks has dropped from 20% in 1960 to 15.4% today. Barring a change in policy, it would decline to 13% in 2017.As a share of the nation's economy, spending on kids would go from 2.6% to 2.1%.By contrast, spending for adults only in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — the major programs that benefit seniors — would rise from 7.6% to 9.5% of the economy.

"Despite frequent rhetoric from policymakers on the priority given to children, the federal budget makes fairly clear that children are less of a priority and more of an afterthought," the report says...

When state and local spending on education and other programs is added, children's share rises. But Maya MacGuiness, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said spending on seniors remains at least three times greater, rather than eight times greater at the federal level alone...

For the complete article, please visit the USA Today website.

NY Times Profiles New America's Ten Big Ideas Event with Sen. Clinton

Communications — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:43:00 -0500

New America in the News:

At a conference devoted to “big ideas” for the nation’s future, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said this morning that compromise need to be “a goal – not a dirty word” in politics and government, remarks that reflect her own pragmatic style but that are more moderate than the views of some of her rivals and hard-core elements of the Democratic primary electorate.

With some of her 2008 presidential opponents offering sharply partisan messages, and another of them, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, seeking to transcend partisanship, Mrs. Clinton staked her place in the middle of the political rhetoric as she tries to appeal to broad swaths of the American electorate – even at the risk of alienating some Democratic primary voters.

“I don’t think Americans are looking for some kind of group-hug bipartisanship – I think they’re looking for leaders who can get back to reality-based policy-making,” she said at the New America Foundation’s “Ten Big Ideas for a New America” conference in Washington, a few blocks from the Capitol.

“The answer is not that we’re going to get rid of partisanship — as long as there are human beings jousting for influence and position, they’re going to take all kinds of opposing, partisan stances,” she said. “But it does mean that we can be smarter about how to narrow the differences between partisan ideas, and try to eliminate the partisan gamesmanship.”

“We have to reinvigorate the public debate and make a compromise a goal – not a dirty word,” she added a few minutes later, “because that’s how we’ve made progress historically – by looking for that common ground that we can stake out together...”

For the complete article, please visit The New York Times website.

Maya MacGuineas on Social Security Reform in US News & World Report

Communications — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 01:40:00 -0400

New America in the News:

In a television interview last weekend, President Bush said Social Security reform was "still alive" and again declared that it would be one of his top goals when the next Congress convenes. Of course, that's what Bush said right after the 2004 election. And despite pushing the issue hard and personally campaigning for it around the country–60 cities in 60 days in early 2005–the idea's beta version never really took off with the American people, and no legislation was ever submitted. So, what are the chances of reform happening in a Congress that will almost certainly be less hospitable to Bush than the current one?...

Striking a deal isn't an absolute impossibility. To prove that a bipartisan agreement is possible if the will is there, Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget at the New American Foundation think tank, decided to run a little experiment last winter. MacGuineas, a former Social Security adviser to Sen. John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, brought together Jeffrey Liebman, a former aide to President Clinton, and Andrew Samwick, a former aide to President Bush, to see if they could hash out a reform plan. Some 50 hours later, spread over several months, they had one. The proposal includes beginning to raise the retirement age to 68 starting in 2011, raising the maximum taxable earnings limit to $172,000 by 2017 vs. $94,000 currently, diverting 3 percent of payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts, and reducing spousal benefits for those married to high earners. The plan, already vetted by the Social Security Administration, would return the program to long-term fiscal solvency and create a personal account sweetener to boot. "It's doable," MacGuineas says. "We know what tough choices have to be made. And I think the country is more aware now that something has to happen..."

For the complete article, please visit the US World & News Report website.

Jacob Hacker Interviewed on New Book by The Oregonian

Communications — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 19:40:00 -0400

New America in the News:

To hear Jacob Hacker talk, U.S. workers are increasingly being asked to become actuaries for their own economic doom.

Pension plans are evaporating. Health-insurance costs are climbing. More than ever, incomes rise and fall from year to year.

The American middle class feels more on the edge of financial ruin than any time since World War II.

Why? That's the subject of Hacker's new book, "The Great Risk Shift" (Oxford University Press, $26).

The Yale University political science professor and native Oregonian's theory is simple: Government, corporations and insurers once shouldered the costs of workers' retirement, health care and job security. No more, Hacker says. Increasingly, families carry those risks, and they're growing ever-more weary and financially incapable of doing so.

An example: The proportion of families earning between $20,000 and $40,000, without health insurance, has risen from 25 percent in 2000 to nearly 40 percent, he says. "We're seeing problems that were once really confined to the very bottom of our economic pyramid moving up to affect the middle class," he says...

Q: So, there's unrest among the public, but that's not being transferred into political debate?

A: It may be soon. The economy is actually featuring more prominently in this election than the many pundits would have expected. There's a lot of reasons why politicians have not talked about this.

The way we think about what's happened in the economy is always in terms of inequality, the growing gap between the rich and the poor. But what I show in the book is that insecurity or instability of income has risen faster than inequality in the United States.

Family incomes of college-educated people are now as unstable as the family incomes of high school dropouts were in the 1970s...

For the complete interview, please visit The Oregonian website.

Maya MacGuineas on Medicare Means-Testing in USA Today

Communications — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 07:22:00 -0400

New America in the News:
WASHINGTON -- Warning to the wealthy: The cash-strapped federal government is targeting you.

Having already gone after people with higher incomes through the federal tax code and the Social Security system, the government next year will begin charging wealthier seniors more for doctors' care under Medicare.

The Bush administration, members of Congress and outside experts are all looking at other ways to raise new revenue from the rich.

If taxes must be raised or benefits cut, "you have to ask the question, who should pay the price?" says Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a fiscal watchdog group.

The answer, according to many Democrats and Republicans, is those with greater ability to pay. Democrats generally are in favor of higher taxes, such as eliminating President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers. Republicans are more likely to favor raising the price for government benefits, such as Medicare and Social Security...

For the entire article, please visit the USA Today website.

Maya MacGuineas on Social Security Reform in BusinessWeek

Communications — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 06:00:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Remember last year's efforts to fix Social Security? In this era of instant news cycles, it is easy to forget. But even though the politicians bungled efforts to restructure the program last year, the issue has not disappeared. Roughly 77 million baby boomers are still preparing to retire. They still don't have enough kids and grandkids to pay the taxes needed to support them in the style to which they'd like to become accustomed. And, in the long run, Social Security is still promising 40% more in benefits than it has resources to pay.

That's why it was instructive to see what happened on a steamy Washington afternoon when a gang of policy heavyweights got together for the first time in a year to mull solutions to the Social Security problem. It was an opportunity to see how the logjam could be broken-and why it won't be any time soon.

Three top-notch experts rolled out a compromise, bipartisan reform plan on June 19 at a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think-tank. They were Democrat Jeff Liebman, a former economic aide to President Clinton; independent Maya MacGuineas, who advised Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) during his 2000 presidential run; and Republican Andrew Samwick, a top economic adviser to President George W. Bush....

For the complete article, please see the BusinessWeek web site.

CRFB Applauds White House Commitment to Social Security Solvency

Communications — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 14:14:00 -0400

WASHINGTON, DC -- Today the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget applauded statements by White House staff reiterating the President’s commitment to comprehensive Social Security reforms that addresses the financial challenges facing the system.

"President Bush deserves credit for calling attention to the financial challenges facing Social Security and acknowledging that there is no free lunch in Social Security reform"said Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

In recent weeks, serious discussions about restoring Social Security solvency have been replaced by a debate between political slogans of ‘repay the trust fund’ versus ‘stop the aid’. Though the question… more