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:
It’s coming, no doubt about it.
Read the article
Newt Gingrich.
There, I said it! Before we engage in a rehearsal of his zipper problem and his other declensions from conservative orthodoxy, let me say what the psychiatrist said about his wife, compared to whom? No one, I repeat, no one can change the debate like Newt. Compared to the field, Newt Gingrich is light years ahead in candlepower and debating skills. No one can change the game like Newt.
Not necessarily and besides that, it's irrelevant. SS is a supplementary retirement fund "ostensibly" based on sound actuary tables, but excluding factors like health habits, where you live, genetic predispositions and so on.
All I'm saying is that Blacks will be fundamentally and stubbornly opposed to raising the payout age based on part on current, actuarily confirmed , life expectancies.
In fact, if men were organized by gender like women are (women live on avg 5-6 yrs longer), they also would be adamantly opposed to raising the payout age as well, given that its mostly old, white women who draw benefits, and do it for years and years , while many of them barely paricipated in the for-pay work force at all! Now that is unfair.
Too late for that. The time to do it was 30 years ago, but as of now, SS is already upside down with current outlays exceeding current revenue. They already are dipping into the 'reserves' which are nothing but IOUs from the Treasury and it will only get worse as the tidal wave of boomers start collecting benefits over the next decade.
Nice twist...Of course the corrupt government doing something, like indicated here, gang rapes tens of millions of people....lol
Don’t pick a number, because it will be wrong.
Float the retirement age annually to maintain annual solvency (though I’d prefer a phase-out).
Then, it wouldn’t be a pyramid scheme, it would be a columnar scheme.
Blacks have a GENETIC disposition to heart/circulatory problems, having nothing to do with lifestyle. However, lifestyle can make it worse.
Completely wrong.
There is no such thing as Social Security trust fund. All taxes we pay in (federal, state, coporate, sales, employee/employer, social security, medicare, etc.) are things we are mandated to pay with no direct payback.. you can’t take social security as the only thing we pay and try to make it unique. I pay a ton of money to the government that is not Social Security, and I never will get that money back either.
BEST POST OF THE THREAD
It's alway been a socialist ponzi scheme. We should just quit calling it something that it is not. I'm 45 and don't expect to ever get anythingwork from it, because the math just simply doesn't work. Demographics kill the entire system because our working population has not kept up with either the expansion of the program or the benefits being promised.
Yeah, sure, I'd like to be able to get some of my money back out, but like everything else that is stolen from me by the government, I figure it's just money pissed into a well.
Back when Clinton took office, one of the first things they did was eliminate documentation that used to be produced for budgeting purposes, that showed the expected future tax liabilities of succeeding generations by the budget as passed. You see, they were projecting 80%+ tax rates, so they just did away with that bit of projecting because it was just too obvious that we're doomed to slavery if we continue as we are.
I always find it funny to see the "conservatives" on this forum who freak out when any serious suggestion of getting rid of SS is raised, or even just reducing it to sustainable levels which requires at the minimum for retirement age to be raised to about 80-90 years. They refuse to accept the reality that if we keep going as we've been going for some time, we're all doomed. The boomers seem to want their cut and to hell with the rest of us, who are going to be slaving for them.
“Republicans need to clear out 90% of the Social Security “disability” payments. . . Also, the moochers undermine the program for those who really are disabled.”
Totally agree with your statement. I personally know three people who collect SSD (disability) due to being “depressed.”
A little deceptive just looking at the life expectancy of the entire population. You have to remember that childhood death rates were much higher back in the 1930s than today, skewing the 'average' life expectancy lower.
The fact is that if people made it past childhood back in the early years of SS, they had a very high probability of living into their 70s or 80s.
Medical technology has added only marginally to life expectancy at the back end of life since the 1930s, albeit it has made the quality of life for older people better. What it has done is allow far higher percent of the population to survive childhood and make it to old age by eliminating or finding treatments for many diseases that claimed mostly young people.
“They refuse to accept the reality that if we keep going as we’ve been going for some time, we’re all doomed. “
Actually, a few years back, queen pelosi said that if nothing was done, half of ss would still be funded, so that is what you can look forward to.
I understand that the only way to fix Social Security means that a LOT of people will feel at least a little bit of a pinch. Old, young, in-between. There is NOTHING wrong with Bohener saying people TWENTY years from retirement wait till they’re 70 to get Social Security.
Doing nothing is NOT an option. Too many people, even self-identified conservatives, just plug their ears and say “la-la-la-la-la” when SS reform is mentioned.
The trust issue is something else entirely, but what do you think we should do? Just not let them do anything since we don’t trust them at all?
Damn!
How I do agree.
Speaking strictly for myself, I think the retirement age should be increased. If that had been done from the start, with minute increases of the retirement age that corresponded with the increase in lifespan, then the thing would be on a sound actuarial basis today.
But to deny SS benefits to those who’ve saved and planned otherwise is not an acceptable solution.
What do you mean their cut?
LOL!
It's their freaking money that was taken by corrupt bloated government!
While at the same time government bureaucrats are retiring at 50-55 years old on tax paid, lottery style government retirmeent pensions.
You're going after the people government is screwing over?
LOL!
We're talking babyboomers here...you have a crystal ball as to THIS generations mortality? I don't either, but I do read the papers, including the death notice section(to see if I'm there)....it's amazing to see the percentage of them in their late 40's, 50's and early 60's.
The "I want everything, and I want it now!" generation, combined with the garbage they call "food" that they consumed for nourishment (for decades), will definitely take it's toll(it's already begun to).
Modern medicine vs. modern day lifestyle choices ....it's basically a push.
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