Social Security

Under the new administration, political conditions for health reform will be far less divisive than they were in the early 1990s, when President Bill Clinton's health plan failed, said Jacob Hacker, political science professor at UC Berkeley who advised the Obama campaign on health issues. "Americans have a very strong moral commitment to universal coverage," said Hacker, adding surveys consistently show Americans want everyone to have health coverage but are concerned about costs. "Once in place, as was the… more

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have spent ample time addressing the budget crisis, but haven't zeroed in on the growing concerns over Social Security.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, says it's not an accident that McCain and Obama have skirted the issue.

"I think both Obama and McCain ended up thinking talking about fixing [Social Security] was a political loser," MacGuineas said. "So they were just happy letting the issue disappear." LINK

McCain has ruled out any new Social Security taxes, while Obama has expressed interest in boosting the cap by 2 percentage points to 4 percentage points for workers earning more than $250,000. The current 12.4 percent payroll tax that goes into Social Security is split between employer and employee.

The usual Washington way of making such unpopular changes is to have a bipartisan commission make recommendations, a method used successfully in 1983. The result raised Social Security taxes and trimmed benefits, and the system's solvency was significantly strengthened.

Many analysts… more

On Monday, September 15th, six experts in fiscal policy and healthcare policy debated the nature of the nation’s pending fiscal crisis at the National Press Club. Moderated by TaxVox editor Howard Gleckman, the event featured Henry Aaron and Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, Julie Barnes and Maya MacGuineas of the New America Foundation, Robert Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, and Eugene Steuerle of the Peterson Foundation. Henry Aaron warned that long-term deficit projections would… more

On October 28th, 1997, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton held a secret meeting where they reached a groundbreaking deal to create a centrist political coalition to reform Social Security and Medicare. Although the Lewinsky scandal ultimately undermined their agreement, the efforts of these men, and others in Congress, might serve as a model for members of both parties interested in addressing the long-term shortfalls in the nation's entitlement programs. Steven Gillon will discuss the details of… more

...Raising the retirement age further, reducing benefits across the board, pegging increases in benefits to inflation rather than wage hikes, and allowing retirement at an earlier age in return for cuts in benefits were all floated in a December 2005 study, “Nonpartisan Social Security Reform Plan.” Its authors included Jeffrey Liebman, now Mr. Obama’s chief Social Security adviser, and Maya MacGuineas, who advised Mr. McCain on the subject in 2000... LINK

After a two-year hiatus, Social Security has made its way back onto the political stage. Both presidential candidates, recognizing that the program is insolvent over the long-run, are claiming that they will confront the system’s $4 trillion long-term shortfall. Senator Barack Obama has made a specific proposal to finance part of the shortfall through a tax on people making over $250,000 a year, while Senator McCain has pledged that he’ll "fight to save the future of Social Security” and “won't leave office without doing everything [he] can… more

...Maya MacGuineas, a budget expert at the New America Foundation who advised McCain on Social Security in 2000, said of his proposal: "In terms of details, there is so much to be filled in..." LINK

While congressional negotiators build a federal budget for 2009, a group of bipartisan budget experts are launching a campaign to wean the government off what they call a debt addiction. John Dimsdale reports.

RENITA JABLONSKI: In Washington today, House and Senate negotiators will try to sketch out a federal budget for 2009. At the same time, across town, a group of bipartisan budget experts will launch a campaign to wean the government from what they say is a debt addiction. John… more

Washington, DC – The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan group of some of the most highly respected budget experts in the United States that includes former directors of the Office of Management and Budget, Congressional Budget Office, and Government Accountability Office, as well as many former members of Congress, today launched US Budget Watch, a critically important new effort to force the 2008 presidential candidates to pay attention to the deteriorating federal budget situation.

US… more