It’s well-known by now that Sen. Reid’s plan would increase the Medicare payroll tax to help offset the costs of the Senate health reform bill. These new taxes though would also be laundered through the Medicare trust fund, creating an entirely fictitious improvement in Medicare’s financial health.  more

Yesterday, the Trustees of the Social Security program released their annual report. The recession has taken a toll on the program’s finances: the system will run deficits beginning in 2016 rather than 2017 and the program’s trust fund will run out in 2037 rather than 2041. (I’d guestimated something close to this in an earlier   more

A new survey by Sun Life Financial found that 48 percent of American workers would opt out of Social Security, even if doing so meant the loss of future Social Security benefits. Given the decline in the stock market over the past year, as well as the defeat of personal account-based Social Security reforms in   more

It’s a growing meme among budget-oriented Democrats that “there is no entitlement crisis,” as the Brookings Institution’s Henry Aaron writes. Obama budget director Peter Orszag made a similar argument at yesterday’s fiscal responsibility summit, saying that “Health care reform is entitlement reform.” Aaron and others argue that future budget shortfalls are almost entirely due to   more

The New York Times and other outlets report on increasing pressure on the Obama administration from Congressional Democrats and liberal pressure groups not to make moves to reform Social Security. And it looks like that pressure may be taking effect. The New York Times puts it this way:
President Obama is eager to seek a bipartisan   more

Former White House Social Security guru and current Hudson Institute senior fellow Chuck Blahous has a new paper on the lessons that should be learned from the 1983 Social Security reforms, and some lessons that were learned that probably shouldn’t have been. Here’s the abstract:
The 1983 Social Security amendments are today often invoked as a   more

Dean Baker writes at TPM Café that
Word has it that President Obama intends to appoint a task force the week after next which will be charged with “reforming” Social Security. According to inside gossip, the task force will be led entirely by economists who were not able to see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the   more

With the stock market crash, many have pointed to the safety and security of Social Security relative to 401(k) plans and the idea of adding personal accounts to Social Security. There is certainly merit to these arguments, and having a diversified portfolio of safe and risky investments makes sense.
At the same time, it’s worth checking   more

There is one statement in Elliot Spitzer’s Slate.com article on Social Security personal accounts that I fully agree with: “‘We told you so’ is just about the most annoying sentence one can utter.” Sure is. Beyond that, though, Spitzer’s argument that stock market declines over the past year just prove the foolishness of individual investing   more

Remember back to late August when Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain’s running mate? Within days, newspapers revealed that Gov. Palin’s daughter was expecting a child, that Palin’s husband Todd had been arrested for driving under the influence some twenty years prior, that Palin has been a member of the secessionist Alaskan   more

It’s hard to remember, but much of 2005 was spent arguing about Social Security reform, an issue that’s been quiet since then. But with President Obama’s statements that he wants to take on Social Security, and his sponsoring of a “fiscal responsibility summit” in February, there are new stirrings on reform on Capitol Hill. For   more

One of the principal fiscal and policy challenges facing the nation is the aging of the population. Social Security faces significant funding shortfalls – and Medicare even larger – while traditional defined benefit pensions are disappearing and 401(k) plans face many challenges in taking their place. Through both the Clinton and Bush administrations policy responses   more