Dems Slam Social Security Board Nominee Over History of Supporting Benefit Cuts
Andrew Biggs knows small incremental increases in SS withholding would resolve any shortfall. The plan presented by Dale Coberly is such and it was agreed up by the Social Security administration as workable. This has been a long running back and forth with Andrew Biggs whose only plan is cuts in Social Security and its demise.
Dale and Bruce held a back and forth with Andrew Biggs here: Notes on Social Security Reform: Responding to Angry Bear: “Where does the $17 trillion deficit come from?” andrewgbiggs.blogspot.com. Both Bruce and Dale are in the comments section replying to Andrew Biggs. Bruce Webb also gives a rundown here: “Soc Sec XXXVII: Backwards Transfers: Biggs Responds,” Angry Bear (angrybearblog.com). In another instance commenter Arne asks seven questions as presented by Bruce Webb here: “Soc Sec XI: Seven good questions by Reader Arne,” Angry Bear (angrybearblog.com. In return, Andrew Biggs answers Arne and Bruce here: “Response to Arne’s questions on Angry Bear,” andrewgbiggs.blogspot.com.
As intelligent as Mr. Biggs is, he has refused to acknowledge any solution other than a full or partial demise of Social Security. Even Senator Elizabth Warren is frustrated with Bigg’s antics. Senator Elizabeth Warren said she doesn’t “understand why we are being asked to confirm someone whose plan for strengthening Social Security is to gut its protection.”
Dems Slam Social Security Board Nominee Over History of Supporting Benefit Cuts, common dreams.org, Jake Johnson.
Democrats on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee raised alarm Wednesday over the nomination of American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Andrew Biggs to serve on the Social Security Advisory Board, pointing to his long record of supporting privatization efforts and benefit cuts.
President Joe Biden first nominated Biggs to the independent board in 2022 and renominated him early last year following the end of the 117th Congress. By nominating Biggs, a conservative, to the post, Biden adhered to the board’s tradition of bipartisanship.
But during the finance committee’s confirmation hearing for Biggs and other nominees, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said that she doesn’t “understand why we are being asked to confirm someone whose plan for strengthening Social Security is to gut its protection” to a spot on the Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB), which advises lawmakers, the president, the Social Security commissioner on how to bolster the New Deal program.
“In all fairness to Mr. Biggs, his views are not extreme outliers,” Warren added. “His plan is Republicans’ plan. Republican policymakers have spent years trying to undermine Social Security by pushing to reduce benefits, to raise the retirement age, and to cut payroll taxes that keep the program alive.”
Warren pressed Biggs on whether he supports raising taxes on the wealthy to ensure Social Security’s solvency over the long term, as Democratic lawmakers have proposed. In 2023, millionaires stopped paying into Social Security just two months into the year thanks to a cap on the amount of income subject to the program’s payroll tax.
Biggs said he would “prefer not to” lift the payroll tax cap.
“So you oppose it, OK,” Warren responded. “Raising the payroll tax income cap so that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share would extend Social Security’s solvency by 75 years. But if you take raising revenue from the wealthiest people off the table, then that leaves one option to extend Social Security’s solvency, and that is benefit cuts.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) pointed to Biggs’ tenure on a George W. Bush administration commission that suggested partially privatizing Social Security by allowing workers to move a portion of their payroll tax contributions into private accounts, a change that would have compromised the program’s primary funding source.
“I’m concerned about your record on Social Security, as you know,” Brown said Wednesday, adding that Biggs and his allies support letting “Wall Street gamble with people’s guaranteed retirement security.”
“You advocated privatizing Social Security,” said Brown. “You and your allies back off that sometimes, saying you’re not—but you have been.”
Biggs told Brown that he does not support privatizing Social Security, breaking with his previous view. Biggs also said that his proposed frameworks for Social Security reform have not included raising the retirement age—but acknowledged he has said in the past that it’s not an “unreasonable idea.”
During a Senate Finance Committee subcommittee hearing in 2013, Biggs said the “idea that we can’t have a higher retirement age I think it just flies in the face of the fact that people did, in fact, retire later in the past, and today’s jobs are less physically demanding than they were in the past.”
Wednesday’s hearing came two weeks after the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee voted largely along party lines to advance legislation to create a fiscal commission for the nation’s trust fund programs. Opponents of the bill say it’s a ploy to fast-track cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, warned Wednesday that “if confirmed to the SSAB, Andrew Biggs would influence policymakers to push for Social Security cuts.”
“This would devastate working class families, while creating another way for billionaires to avoid paying their fair share into the system,” the group wrote on social media.
Hypothetically situation: the USA has a national defense trust fund. There is a major conflict on the magnitude of WWII and the trust fund balance drops to zero. Does the USA stop funding the military? Or does congress authorize whatever funds are necessary to support the national defense similar to what congress did to combat WWII? How is this different from Social Security?
You print money and rely on the national assets of the country and the fact . . . $dollars are the safest exchange currency globally. Later, you grown the country through productivity to absorb the excess of money.
Bill, what is your definition of “print money”? And you did not answer my question, why can’t Congress authorize the payments for SS even if the trust fund balance is depleted?
@Mark,
Payments for SS will continue after the Trust Fund is depleted. Current estimates I’ve seen put those payments at about 77 cents for every dollar that was paid before depletion.
Joel, why can’t Congress authorize any Social Security payment it wants to even if the trust fund balance is zero? Congress appropriates money all the time without any regard to “having the money”.
Mark:
As Joel implies Congress has to approve additional funding if nothing is done as Dale Coberly writes about and I imply with the printing of more dollars which the Fed can do.
Bill, the Fed is prohibited by law from funding government spending. Only the treasury can make payments authorized by Congress. I agree it is a matter of semantics as both the Fed and Treasury are creations of the government.
The Fed is independent of the government. It can print money or do nothing without following Congress.
The Fed was created by an act of Congress in 1913 and the board of governors are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. Again… a creation of the government.
I still don’t understand what you mean by “print money”. Technically, the Treasury department prints money. The bureau of engraving and printing is part or the Treasury; not the Fed.
Bill, please don’t take offense to me; I am only trying to educate people on the true workings of our monetary system.
MarkG:
The Fed does what it wants to do. My words may not be concise enough due to me being hurried much of the time. I pulled from another site (below) to give a more concise meaning to what my inaccurate dialogue was about.
What Is the U.S. Federal Reserve?
Your words and approach are fine. I just needed to go back and correct what I was saying from another level.
MarkG
the argument about printing money is pointless.
TheFed is charged with managing the monetary policy of the country. it does that by “printing money” [not the same as printing dollar bills] or withdrawing it from circulation. it has to take politics and “the market” into consideration, so it really is all a matter of managing expectations.
I agree that the Congress could “print money” by deficit spending or modern monetary theory, but there is no need to in the case of SS, and just as with the Fed, managing expectations, or controlling the “printing” politically, would present huge and unnecssary problems.
“money” is just a way of keeping track of how much work we do in exchange for how much we can “demand” of the work other people do. there are times when printing money (money lenders have done this for a thousand years) is called for and times when un-printing money is called for.
coberly
He had a valid point to my generalization.
Bill,
he may have had a valid point to your generalization, but his original point was that we can just print money to pay for Social Security.
we can’t. the whole point of money is to make sure that people get what they pay for and pay for what they get. that printed money does not just go away after the retirees buy their groceries. it works its way through the economy raising prices and people lose faith in the value of the dollars they are working for. paying for what you get, getting what you pay for has worked pretty well for a few thousad years, despite a fair about of fraud and abuse. fractional reserve banking also works well when managed carefully, also government deficit spending works well when managed carefully. the Fed exists to manage the money supply to avoid inflation and recession. it works by managing expectations [and the supply of money] “just” printing money destroys the whole system.
at the risk of sounding like an old time Republican, the idea that we can all have something for nothing will destroy us as a country and as individuals.
note that welfare and charity are not something for nothing. in each some person or persons give up a “something” they earned in order to provide for someone who cannot earn, this is fine and good. but its not the same as everone expecting, or demanding, something for nothing.
I despair
first of all, Warren is wrong. SS can and should be funded by a small increase in the payroll tax. This would keep SS worker owned and not turn it into welfare which the rich have always wanted to do because the know how to destroy welfare at their leisure.
But she is not wrong about Bigg’s bad intentions. He is a vey clever liar and you always have to watch out for the snake in the grass.
MarkG
I think you are right about your hypothetical defense budget, It’s how we won World War 2.
But it is entirely wrong and unecessary in the case of Social Security, which is and always has been…even during the War…paid for by the people who will get the benefits.
Raise the payroll tax 1.55% all at once this year, or raise in one tenth of one percent this year and next year until the workers are paying in (saving) enough to pay for their own future retirement at the same time as the money they pay in today is used to provide the cash needed by those who are already retired (and paid FOR their retirement while they were stilll working and had the income)
This last point seems to be hard for a lot of people to understand, but it is the fundamental principle behind ALL savings and investment.
what warren is wrong about:
“But if you take raising revenue from the wealthiest people off the table, then that leaves one option to extend Social Security’s solvency, and that is benefit cuts.”
This is wrong and wrong headed: SS was deliberately designed to be worker paid “so no damn politician can take it away from them.” Roosevelt did not reckon with the persistence of damn politicians, or the bad memories of the workers and the politicians who claim to be defending them.
SS can and must continue to be paid by the workers themselves. a raise in the payroll tax of about a dollar per week per year would do it, while their real incomes are going up an expected ten dollars per week per year.
can you all just beat that fact into your heads and stop chasing “make someone else pay” for my groceries fantasies. the cost is small, fair, and a normal part of living: paying for your own retirement and not turning us all into welfare clients of the rich.
I am angry with the Left because the only idea they have for everything is “make the rich pay.” that amounts to selling your soul to the devil.
and no, that does not make me a christian right nationalist superstitious imbecile. it’s just a figure of speech. except true. “amounts to.”