by Bruce Webb I have had occasion before to mention the “Leninist Strategy” for Social Security put forth in 1983 and followed by Social Security ‘reformers’ ever since. The strategy has three main pillars: One: reassure current retirees that their benefits won’t be cutTwo: convince younger workers that left unreformed Social Security just won’t be […]
by Bruce Webb This may be too wonkish for the Virtual Summit, so let me try it out here. A lot of crosstalk on Social Security ‘crisis’ is a result of three different definitions of ‘crisis’ which I would sum up as follows: Crisis one: Social Security promised benefits which may not be payable.Crisis two: […]
by Bruce Webb I mention from time to time that I talk with a number of D.C. policy types about Social Security, but mostly don’t use names because the conversations are officially off the record. Well a group of them, spearheaded by Roger Hickey’s folks at Campaign for America’s Future, have gone on the record […]
by Bruce Webb Reader BuffPilot has been asking Angry Bear for awhile now to post the following graphhttp://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/If you follow the link you will see that Heritage updated it with new CBO and OMB data this year. That is below the fold.http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/05/past-deficits-vs-obamas-deficits-in-pictures/ Which I will amplify with the actual CBO Tablehttp://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Chapter1.shtml I am not sure […]
by Bruce Webb Well this is a response to a question in the Rivlin thread. There are widespread misunderstandings about what if anything makes up the “IOUs” in the Trust Funds, with many people thinking they just have artificially low rates (and so obviously underperforming theoretical private accounts) or just are open-ended loosey-goosy commitments to […]
Nothing sinister. The Social Security and Medicare Annual Reports are released together each year because each interacts deeply with the other. The new Health Care Reform law significantly changes Medicare and so the Obama Administration decided to update its numbers to match the new reality. Which makes sense. But expect opponents to mount a hissy […]
On my way out the door hopefully to score an iPad today. Meaning it is time for the haters to step up. I think this is going to be the greatest advance in human history since the second biggest advance, which of course was baked bread. (The biggest advance obviously being the genius that let […]
The 2010 Social Security Report is due out any day now and I thought I could lay some groundwork for a number based discussion of its implications. Starting with changes to the 75 year projection over time. 1996-2.19%1997-2.23%1998-2.19%1999-2.07%2000-1.87%2001-1.86%2002-1.87%2003-1.92%2004-1.89%2005-1.92% 2006-2.02%2007-1.96%2008-1.70%2009-2.01%2010-??Each Report Year the Trustees give an estimate of how much payroll tax would have to go […]
by Bruce Webb And I could add honest definitions and honest framing to that. In Dec 2005 three former staffers to Bill Clinton, John McCain and GW Bush respectively released the Liebman-MacGuineas-Samwick Non-Partisan Social Security Reform Plan (9 pg PDF) or LMS. The authors proposed a package of changes to Social Security comprised of a […]
lifted from Bruce’s e-mail Hi Bruce, I really enjoyed your recent post to OpenLeft about the war on Social Security. I wrote a related piece deconstructing Obama’s latest picks to the Debt Commission: Alternet: Obama Packs Debt Commission with Social Security Looters? Any feedback about the article or thoughts on the matter would be greatly […]