Social Security

As President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is housed at the New America Foundation, and the Director of the Fiscal Policy Program, Maya MacGuineas oversees the Foundation's efforts to bring accountability to the budget process, address the challenges presented by the nation's underfunded entitlements programs, and… more

The announcement by IBM that it would freeze its traditional pension plan, shifting all workers into 401(k) plans by 2008, passed through the news cycle with nary a ripple. It was, after all, the latest in a string of increasingly desperate attempts by companies as diverse as GM, United and Verizon to get out from under mounting pension and healthcare burdens.

The terms of discussion are mind-numbingly complex, a thicket of acronyms and arcane benefits jargon. Yet the basic… more

The three of us -- former aides to President Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush -- did an experiment to see if we could develop a reform plan that we could all support. The Liebman-MacGuineas-Samwick (LMS) plan demonstrates the types of compromises that can help policy makers from across the political spectrum agree on a Social Security reform plan. The plan achieves sustainable solvency through progressive changes to taxes and benefits, introduces mandatory personal accounts, and specifies important details that… more

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… more

Being a budget watchdog generally involves a healthy degree of pessimism and the last few weeks have provided plenty of reminders why. It was encouraging to see the appropriations process moving forward within the tight spending limits set by the budget resolution. That is, until a political firestorm over veterans benefits erupted, leading to pressure for increased spending. While efforts to achieve the modest savings in mandatory spending programs are moving forward slowly, momentum is growing for further tax cuts… more

Maya MacGuineas, director of the New America Foundation's Fiscal Policy Program and president of the Center for Responsible Federal Budget, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee's Social Security panel on June 14.

A full text of her prepared testimony is available below in PDF format.

In a 1938 address on the third anniversary of the Social Security Act, Franklin Roosevelt declared, "There is still today a frontier that remains unconquered an America unclaimed. This is the great, the nationwide frontier of insecurity, of human want and fear. This is the frontier the America we have set ourselves to reclaim." And reclaim it FDR and his fellow thinkers did.

In the three decades after Roosevelt's words were spoken, the great "frontier of insecurity" shrank dramatically. A… more

The world today is very different than when Social Security was created. A number of issues should be considered when thinking about how to reform Social Security, including:

Should we update benefits to reflect changes in family status and economic well-being of the elderly?

Can our children really afford to finance our spending such a large portion of our life in retirement?

Should Social Security reform be used to help strengthen the economy through increased work and saving?

How should we think about Social… more

The debate about how to reform Social Security has been dominated by the fight over whether to create individual accounts and whether or not the system faces a "crisis." The central issue, what policy changes to make to address the system's long-term deficits, has been all but ignored. An esteemed group of experts will discuss many of the various options to fix Social Security, with no mention of accounts.

Could a reformed public pension system give citizens more control over their retirement savings, as conservatives want, without undermining security in old age, as liberals fear? Here is a proposal that does just that in the American context, although it could apply equally well to any public pension system struggling with long-term debts and an ageing population.

The idea is to allow all US workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal "early retirement accounts",… more