Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Social Security roundup

Michael Tanner from CATO writes “Senator Reid has no Social Security plan”: “Harry Reid needs to tell the American people what he plans to do about the looming Social Security crisis. If Reid plans to raise taxes to prop up Social Security, or cut benefits, he should tell us so. If he has another idea, he should share it with us. But fearmongering is not a Social Security plan.”

David Brooks has “A Requiem for Reform”: “If Social Security reform fails - and obviously I hope this obit becomes obsolete - it will be many years before any sort of big entitlement reform will come up again. The parties will keep playing chicken, and we will soon find ourselves catastrophically buried under our own debt.”

Stephen Moore on “Raiding Retirement”: “It may be that the only way to stop this raid on our retirement dollars would be to deposit the money into privately owned worker accounts. If workers have the dollars in their personal accounts, there is no way Congress can get at the money to (mis)spend on other activities.”

and finally: “GOP chairman says Congress will pass Social Security bill, voters will penalize Democratic foes.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The problem is that nobody wants to give a little on the issue. Conservatives will never accept a tax increase as part of the plan. Liberals will never accept benefit cuts or the lack of some guaranteed benefit. Moderates will never accept more debt. The solution is to transition to private accounts while paying for it with tough choices that make everyone unhappy. Change the indexing of benefits. Raise the tax cap to 110,000 or so. Raise the retirement age a year or two.

I'm beginning to think we won't get a bill out of W-2 on this issue. I do think if the next president is a Republican, he may bring up a more moderate, less bold bill that will change the system without giving people as much choice as Bush wants and may actually pass Congress with some Democratic support as well. Part of this opposition is Democratic anger at Bush. If President McCain is next, we may get a different result.