Posted on 06/29/2010 8:23:18 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Top Republican: Raise Social Security's retirement age to 70 By Michael O'Brien - 06/29/10 10:50 AM ET
A Republican-held Congress might look to raise the retirement age to 70, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) suggested Monday.
Boehner, the top Republican lawmaker in the House, said that raising the retirement age by five year, indexing benefits to the rate of inflation and means-testing benefits would make the massive entitlement program more solvent.
"We're all living a lot longer than anyone ever expected," Boehner said in a meeting with the editors of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "And I think that raising the retirement age -- going out 20 years, so you're not affecting anyone close to retirement -- and eventually getting the retirement age to 70 is a step that needs to be taken."
The GOP leader said that Social Security was the most important entitlement to reform, though he also pledged that Republicans would bring legislation to the floor to repeal and replace the healthcare reforms passed earlier this year if the GOP wins back control of the House this fall.
But Boehner also floated several other reforms to Social Security, paired with raising the retirement age, to make it more solvent. Boehner said that benefits should be tied to increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) instead of wage inflation, and he suggested reducing or eliminating benefits to Americans with a "substantial non-Social Security income" while retired.
"We just need to be honest with people," he said. "I'm not suggesting it's going to be easy, but I think if we did those three things, you'd pretty well solve the problem."
Republican have made cutting spending and reforming entitlement programs a key part of their 2010 campaign message.
Watch the entirety of Boehner's explanation below:
Yes.
That guy in 1938 put very little into the system and began getting SS when eligible for a couple years.....2010 people pay in for 40 years plus and now add another five years and they DEFiNITELY do not get near what they put into the system.
Exactly that? Is that the new criteria for deserving Social Security? Being average?
I hope this happens.
... and while they’re at it...no more public pensions until 70!
There will be a full-scale revolution if people are told that the money they and their employers have contributed to Social Security is going to be “means tested” and if they have too much money they won’t get it.
The absolute best solution is to allow people to opt out of Social Security with the provision that the same percentage of money is contributed by them and their employer into a retirement account that they can’t touch until a certain age.
Good. The retirement age should be somewhere around 80 now, so at least this is a start towards sanity. Too bad it’s too little, too late.
I hope this happens.
... and while they’re at it...no more public pensions until 70!
You can’t separate income taxes, social security taxes, and other things. This idea you have of a trust fund is just a joke. We all pay in tons of money.. social security on both the employee and employer side is just one part of the total contribution.. and you can add sales tax, state and local taxes, etc.
We all are mandated to pay for things we don’t get payback on directly. We just have to accept that social security and other entitlement programs can only be based on means-testing, and not linked to individual contributions we have or have not paid. It just doen’t work financially.
Of course, because doing nothing is SO much better.
/sarc
Bush took a very tiny step in that direction after a big 2nd term win and with a GOP Congress. They let him twist in the wind. I can't see any Congress allowing this to happen.
"Social security" has always been a welfare program.
Doesn't change the fact that the lock box is empty.
Now that it's empty, what do we do about it?
Yeah I know, cut the waste in government. Eliminate foreign aid and the Department of Energy, blah, blah, blah...and all those other bureaucratic departments that won't get off my lawn. But don't raise MY taxes, and don't cut MY benefits, right Jiminy?
All those cuts are good ideas, but won't cover a tenth of the upcoming SS/Medicare deficits.
” I’ve been working and paying into this siphon since 1964, cannot collect full benefits until I’m 67, now he wants to make it 70?.”
Well stated. Those of us who have worked all of our lives would have been better off with a simple savings account for these funds...
Now to delay it, doesn’t make sense.
Better grandfather us in or you will face consequences.....
Loose weight, avoid being a diabetic and live to the current average old age.
There will be an epidemic of deaths among young obese people..... it is reality.
Deny it at your peril
To the extent that benefits don't correspond in a linear fashion to the amount put into it, I agree. But always the expectation was there that if you put money in, you got money out if you lived long enough. With pure means testing, that goes away. It then becomes pure welfare.
Because their life "expectancy" is shorter?
Are you putting me on? Do you feel a teen monster who kills both his parents should get mercy from the courts because he's an orphan?
I really would like answers to both questions...
Well it would make an honest man out of the Social Security Adminsitration if it just became a full fledged transfer of wealth.
Now there's a perverse incentive... get your kids to act crazy - or damage them - to win state cash. Sick. I'd rather give money to parents who are raising emotionally healthy children... What you reward, you get more of...
I agree - however I support coupling it with a phased-in private accounts program. That way you DO get what you pay in.
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