As the wingnuts on the right continue to howl for cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits in the US — even President Obama wants to cut benefits by using chained consumer price index (chained CPI) to calculate cost-of-living adjustments — there’s an emerging move to actually expand the entitlement programs.
Social Security was always intended to be a single piece of an individual’s retirement security, along with a pension and savings. But pensions have become obsolete as corporations externalized costs from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution 401(K) plans over the last 30 years or so. Individual savings and retirement plans dwindled to the point that Social Security now accounts for half of the income of two-thirds of the beneficiaries. Joshua Holland writing for BillMoyers.com cites the research of Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research:
“’75 percent of Americans nearing retirement age in 2010 had less than US$30,000 in their retirement accounts.’ Two-thirds of Americans over age 65 rely on Social Security for over half their income, and for over a third of all seniors, those checks make up more than 90 percent of their income. ‘The specter of downward mobility in retirement is a looming reality for both middle- and higher-income workers,’ says Ghilarducci, and ‘almost half of middle-class workers, 49 percent, will be poor or near poor in retirement, living on a food budget of about US$5 a day.'”
Because of this trend, US Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has proposed legislation — the Strengthening Social Security Act of 2013 — that would increase monthly Social Security payments by an average of US$70. At the beginning of 2012, the average Social Security benefit was US$1,230 per month. Harkin’s plan would eliminate the payroll tax earnings cap, making all earned income subject to payroll taxes. And instead of using the chained CPI to calculate cost-of-living adjustments, Harkin’s plan would capture real-world cost changes including healthcare costs.
Harkin’s proposal was cosponsored by US Senators Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
Recently US Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) joined Harkin’s effort insisting Democrats recognize this as a moral issue and reframe the discussion, thereby shifting the terms of the debate. Telling Greg Sargent writing for the Washington Post that Democrats “should not cooperate in allowing a ‘Serious’ center-right consensus that equates ‘fiscal responsibility’ with cutting entitlement benefits to reign unchallenged:”
“‘The Serious People — with a capital S and a capital P — all have really good pensions and good health care and good salaries,’ Brown said. ‘Raise the cap. There are ways we can bring a lot of money into Social Security. Some Democrats are a bit cowed by the Serious People.'”
According to polling commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and Democracy for America, expanding — rather than contracting — Social Security benefits is favored more than two to one in states as surprising as Kentucky and Texas.
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A move to expand Social Security was originally published by ARTS & FARCES internet on Thursday, 14 November 2013 at 7:33 AM CDT. Copyright © ARTS & FARCES LLC. All rights reserved. | ISSN: 1535-8119 | OCLC: 48219498 | Digital fingerprint: 974a89ee1284e6e92dd256bbfbef3751 (64.237.45.114)