Thomas Says Social Security Needs New Funding Options (pay women less)

This guy apparently wants to reduce benefits to women because they live longer.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a5nMTEf3CEas&refer=top_world_news

Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. should look beyond the payroll tax to fund Social Security and consider a value-added tax and altering benefit calculations based on gender and race, the head of the congressional tax-writing committee said.

``Why even bother looking at payroll tax?'' Representative Bill Thomas, a California Republican who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' today. ``That was a solution in the 1940s and 1950s.''

< snip >

Other possibilities to consider include adjusting benefits by gender, occupation or race, to avoid creating ``inequities on who you are and how long you live,'' he said.

``Women are living longer relative to men today than they were in 1940,'' Thomas said. ``If the age difference continues to separate and more women are in the workforce, and you have more of an equality of pay structure in the workforce, at some point, somebody might want to suggest that we need to take a look at the question of whether or not, actuarially, we ought to adjust who gets what, when and how.''

The Value added tax is a regressive tax. Instead, tax the rich to pay for SS.

THEN watch the rich whine.

paments over the past 20 years. Let those overprivileged, overstuffed enemies of the people pay it back by having it apply to all income until the trillions that have been looted from us are repaid.

Give them that flat tax they tell us they want, see how they really like it.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you something else you said at the National Journal Forum that raised some eyebrows: "Women are living longer relative to men today than they were in 1940. Yet, we never ever have debated gender-adjusting Social Security. ...But, at some point if the age difference continues to separate and more women are in the workforce and you have more of an equality of pay structure in the workforce, at some point somebody might want to suggest that we need to take a look at the question of whether or not actuarially we ought to adjust who gets what, when, and how."

A gender adjustment--what does that mean?

REP. THOMAS: Well, it was one of my ways of getting people to focus on the issue of age. To move from 65 to 68, which we did in 1983, was a benefit cut. But it also creates hardships based upon the occupation that you have, and it creates inequities on who you are and how long you live. You could just as easily have a discussion about occupations as to when would be a fair or an unfair time to require. We also need to examine, frankly, Tim, the question of race in terms of how many years of retirement do you get based upon your race? And you ought not to just leave gender off the table because that would be a factor.

Now, there are people who are saying, "Gee, this is great. We can get them into a box and maybe we can win some seats in the next election over this issue." This ought not to be about the next election. This is about how we have an opportunity given to us by the president, his willingness to work with us to solve some problems that are here and now, but will only get worse. If we're not in a crisis now, we're in a problem. Wait a few years. We will be in a crisis. We ought to examine all opportunities to solve the problem. Then we can dismiss them. But to not look at them denies us an opportunity to have yet another way to solve our problem.

MR. RUSSERT: So if someone is a woman and they live longer, they would get less per year?

REP. THOMAS: It's not that you would do it; it's something that you need to look at. Because if you extend the age beyond 78, if you go to 80 or 82, all of those concerns about race, occupation and gender are exacerbated. And you shouldn't just extend the age without understanding the additional complications and unfairness that you're bringing into the system. That's the point I'm trying to make. Don't look for a simple solution like shifting age without realizing you're creating additional problems for yourself down the road. Same thing with payroll tax. Same thing with individual accounts or other ways to bring additional revenue in the system. All of them should be examined. None of them should be labeled with the pejorative with an opportunity to try to gain seats in the next election. You are doing a disservice to the society if that's your intention in this debate. My goal is to get it as broad as possible, look for bipartisan support and give the president a bill on his desk that he can sign that addresses the real societal inequities that we have with seniors.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think Congress, Mr. Chairman, would accept any formula that said that people would be treated differently because of their gender or their race?

REP. THOMAS: If we discuss it and the will is not to do it, fine. At least we discussed it. To simply raise the age and find out that you've got gender, race and occupational problems later, I would not be doing the kind of service that I think I have to do. You and I have been around quite a while. We went through the '80s. We went into the '90s. And now we're in the 21st century. We saw the choices that were made in the past. We went to the well over and over again with the same old solutions which really aren't solutions. We've reached the point where we have to fundamentally examine it in my opinion. The president has given us that opportunity. We ought to take it.


I worked for more than 20 years paying in to SS, now I work a job where I will receive a PERS pension...my SS will NOT be going to me now at all. Good thing as I am a woman who plans on living a long time, so I would have of course unfairly drawn too much from it... /sarcasm off

if they have to actually pay out on all those social security treasury notes?

Of course we have to cut benefits. Especially to women, healthy people of either sex, heck, to anyone who lives past 67. The rich are in need! Not a moment to spare! CRISIS!

between men's and women's lifespans was even greater back then, because a much smaller percentage of women worked, and the stresses on men were even greater. Men commonly keeled over in their fifties and sixties, instead of waiting into their seventies like today.

I know that in my family, the men mostly died off and the women lived into their eighties or better. When my g-grandmother died in '78 she was days short of 102. G-grandfather died 15 years earlier (that's the long lived branch of the family).

But even so, he's saying that women are gaining more equality so we need to write inequality into the law?

At least it's Bill Thomas, not Clarence Thomas. We (those of us who live there) can vote the bastard out.

... collect Social Security. Now that smarmy fascist fuck Thomas wants to screw over their survivors? Bastard! That's three people who worked their entire lives who never benefited from Social Security - and two surviving wives who both worked (at unfairly low wages) and raised families. If Thomas had his way, that'd be six people who paid but collected an average of almost nothing.

Tobacco did.

Women didn't smoke in public until the 20s, and didn't smoke in huge numbers until World War II.

The difference in life expectancy has narrowed because women are now dying of smoking related illnesses at nearly the same rates as men, developing them 10 years later, but being more resistant to the treatment that keeps men alive.

Life expectancy at age 65:

1940 males: 12.7 years
1940 females: 14.7 years
difference = 2.0 years

2000 males: 16.5 years
2000 females: 19.4 years
difference = 2.9 years

http://www.bc.edu/centers/crr/issues/ib_21.pdf

Life expectancy at birth may be different, especially with the changing trend in death in childbirth and male death by violence or other misadventure in early adulthood. But, for pension purposes this life left at age 65 (this assumes the person has already lived that long) seems like the more relevant measure.

fair since women earn, what, 70 cents on the dollar that men earn, that they whould only get 70% of the benefits, right?


/billthomas'scareer

Because it's an indication of when labor is being fairly or unfairly paid, that's why. The major reason Bushnomics is showing increased weaknesses in Social Security is because the wage base is being pillaged! Ten million fewer people working than merely average employment growth would have accomplished since the late 90's ... and working for less, especially those at the lower compensation levels. The Federal Minimum Wage is lower than it has been in real terms than it has been in FIFTY YEARS!

Bastards! :grr:

so now we're gonna get fucked in retirement too?

Thanks :eyes:

I get paid less then men in my office and now they are going to screw me on Social Security...what complete and utter assholes.

They just want to be consistent.

so let's do everything we can to make sure they spend their "golden years" in poverty! :eyes: :mad:

Someone should tell this genius that women also make less money while working, so the only fair solution is ... men get more money during their working years, women get more money during their senior years. Eventually, it all evens out.

If he doesn't like that, he can always suggest that women get the same pay that men do .... then they would be paying more into the system, which would compensate for their longer life spans.

We are NOT about to assign a lump sum value for retirement - and then change the monthly benefit based on an underwriter's decision to put you in a better or lesser health class

I was making fun of the whole idea ... I guess that didn't really come across in my post. :-)

In fact, I feel like I'm going to stroke out right now. Four more years of this asshole and I'm going to be in the looney bin.

whites. So why not address the reason why and work for better health care for black men? These people are raving lunatics.

A madman. Another mad Republican.

Don't even consider taxing the rich, or how about all these filthy rich people giving up their social security...that's right...they don't need it, so put it back into the system for those who do...man, could you imagine what their reaction to that proposal would be...??? YIKES.

Jack Welch paid in and danggit he should get thtat money back!
















sarc/off

But "Suggest changes or suggest substitutions" is not going to happen. The GOP can't get it past the House so they want a Senate vote first - and nothing that diverts payroll tax will fly in the Senate.

Add on payroll voluntary contributions with limited investment option accounts may be possible if structured like the Federal workers savings plan.

As to a "fix" that might pass, they GOP need cover because there is no problem - but the Lieberman types might get a few Dems to add cover tp an increase in the retirement age for full benefits moving from Reagan's 67 to 68, while the wage base cap moves from 05's 90,000 to 120,000.

I suspect the Dems will bend over and let the GOP get out from under this (and thus have GOP claimimg victory) via a bill that combines add-on accounts with a wage cap increase, but I still do not understand why they would do that.



>http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=bondsNews&storyID=7402500

Republicans are sick, selfish parasites.

Yeah, right. Change the way benefits are calculated. Women live longer. Uh-huh.

What brand do these guys smoke, anyway?

just sayin'.

and he was 6 years older than her. My mother at least managed to collect a little of her SS but not that very much of it. :mad:

There's going to be more homeless elderly, disabled, single women with children. What we have to look forward to!

This is the newest effort to rid the US of its unsightly Boomer bulge.

There's too many of us. We're aging, we're using up resources, and the government doesn't want to support us in our decline.

My generation is going to suffer in old age unlike any since the Depression.

have seen the coming Social Security mess heading our way for a couple of decades now, and we've done nothing to stop it. I'm 49, and I really don't expect to see a dime out of it. It wouldn't surprise me if the grandchildren of the boomers wanted to put bullets through our heads rather than tax themselves enough to pay for twenty years of retirement for each of us.

By the way, all of you out there who are outraged by a proposal to pay women lesser SS payments, does your outrage extend to the idea of charging men more for auto insurance?

Bullshit.

The 1983 (when the last boomers became adult-employed! - 1964+20=1984) revisions to Social Security have resulted in over 20 years (so far) of payroll taxation that pays up to 35% more than is required to pay the benefits of current retirees. In 2018 (when boomers are entering full retirement - 1946+67=2013), that rate of taxation will be sufficient to pay current retirees. At that point, the Trust Fund reserves will be used (by the same people who built them up!) to supplement boomer benefits.

By 2042/2052 (1946+80=2026, 1964+80=2044), virtually all (95%) the Boomers will be dead!! They won't be getting benefits!

The "Boomer" generation is the first (and last) generation to pay into a reserve for their own retirement benefits!

so much, for pointing out the truth.

Hand-up: I'm a baby-boomer, too!

But I'm sure you already know that.

So, I'm a widow, disabled as well. And, for several semesters of college at around the same age as you (it's hard when you're closing in on 50 and alone in this big bad world of ours these days), I wouldn't complain too much about that bullet thing... try getting yourself blown in half, and lingering 5 insufferable days till you die.

If my husband were alive, he'd have something not so nice to say to you, Mr. Laptop Repair Guy, but with the low postings you have, I'd say you're a Repuk in disguise.

P.S. He and I paid into that SSI since the age of 14. He counted on that to help me live the life of luxery if he went before me, like living on the very basics. And no, I don't think the world owes me a red dine because that's all we ever paid out from our meager paychecks.

Don't you get it? This is the mantra that they want you to repeat over and over again - that Social Security is in a crisis and it's the boomers fault. Bullshit!

Here's one boomer who will not take this sitting down.

who think I'm buying the Republican line, but I've believed that Social Security was going to come to a screeching halt ever since I figured out what the letters "FICA" were on my first paycheck. The problem comes from having so much come out of a tax on work.

Sure, I'm all for helping people in need, but why was the burden of survivors, the disabled, and others in desparate situations to be paid for only by a tax on workers? Why shouldn't those worthy causes have been supported also by profits, capital gains, rents, royalties, interest and dividends, and other forms of miscellaneous income? When I figured that out, and saw the fact that my generation was the boom that kept the thing going from about 1970 until just a few years from now, I figured that I'd be in the group holding the bag.

As I understand it, most of the "assets" of the Social Security Trust funds are promissory notes that can only be paid off through massive taxation, massive spending cuts, or massive inflation. I really don't see any US government, Democrat or Republican, willing to tolerate any one of the above three things, or being able to bring them about. I see a future where the baby boom generation is told, you can either have your tax-advantaged pension (or IRA), or Social Security, but you cannot have both.

Hopefully, I'm wrong, but at this point, I don't think so. I'm just glad that I have skills that I can use until I'm dead, because frankly, I expect to be working until about that time.

About making laws that discriminate based on sex, race or religious creed?
Hmm

Remember that chubby black guy who almost fell off the stool at the weecowboy's invite-only, scripted town meeting about social security? Weecowboy told the guy that he wouldn't live to see his benefits, so he may as well have a private account he can leave to his loved ones--the guy looked at weecowboy as if to say "Say WHUT, bitch???"

By this absurd logic, black males therefore should get LARGER payments, because they won't live long enough to get the full benefit.

You have slightly more women than men in America (and if Iraq keeps cooking, those ratios will continue to expand). Those women vote. Here's hoping they vote with their pocketbooks. Many who are married make MORE than their husbands, I rather think they won't be happy having their benefits reduced.

Is this guy on crack, or what??? Yet another example of silly GOP logic...

live on the diminished social security they usually get from being married. How about that, Mr. California Rep?

uh huh.

File this under "God, just when I think it can't get any worse..."

that problem, too?

poor, it won't bother us all that much. He's a smarty, that GW!

base it on religion, as well. Have they looked at life expectancy based on that? Or how about by how much money you make? Maybe we could base it on the number of times people engage in unsafe activities?

I wonder what they'd do with a black woman who was an atheist and liked to go sky diving 3 times a week?

of the Fourteenth Amendment, which has been held to have been reversely incorporated to the federal government in the Fifth. This proposal is facially unconstitutional.

I'm always at work, it's hard to get less than a 12 hour day. Many times it's 15 hours. I don't give a damn if I living longer than men. I'm a vegetarian so I'm less likely to have heart problems of those "male proud to be steak eaters", which many men are.

If they do give men more, I hope most women will be like me will go nuts on protesting.

Also, they need more reasons on why women live longer. As I look around my office at all the huge beer gut men and mostly thin women, I see a pattern. A lot has to do with choices on how people live. I work out everyday so should I get less? Life insurance companies dock 5 years off the life of smokers so should we give smokers more ss?

Lastly, men still make %70 more than women in the work force. They already have the money.

51% of this country's population is female. Way to piss them off, asshole.

And thanks for making it clear that the Republicans are not the party interested in protecting Social Security OR the party concerned about women.

Thanks for speaking up for me (baby-boomer female, here). :) for you!

It's demeaning to have to confess this in public, but I feel someone needs to hear it from someone that's not milking the world.

My husband died in a horrifically tragic accident some 6 years ago. He began work at the age of 11, as I did. We were not on the books till the age of 14. I still remembering rushing downtown to get my workman's card, and it remember the color of the card as green.

He worked 6-7 days a week, sometimes 14 hours a day; I lost track of the doubles he pulled, and how many times he walked to work over ice slicked walkways, and walked home in 27" of snow - it took him hours, but every phone-booth be passed he'd call me to tell me know he was on his way so I'd not worry. He didn't stop when the whistle blew either, working so hard on our handyman house, nights and days and did all the car repairs, grocery shopped with me and he was no wussy! A man's man, hard working blue collar, yet he didn't fit the profile as he loved nature, the environment; would stop to help anyone, anyone!

In case anyone's wondering, I didn't get 1 dime from "where" he died. Not a card, flower, nothing. And he didn't die right away, rather lingered 5 horrifically sad, heart-wrenching days. I went into shock. I won't go into all of the "things" that would become my aftermath, but I've survived all of this, alone. Parents didn't raise me - grandparents did and they're long gone. No children, no siblings and friends aren't around like they use to be as I'm in my late 40's. My husband and I did everything together, so much so we worried sick about what would happen to me in the event he outlived me. So, he paid monthly for extra benefits (which I lost 1 yr later), and for every our he worked more came out (I got nothing, trust me), if he knew what his fully vested pension was right now he'd be erupting out of the grave.

I live on less then double the poverty level. There, I said it. As I watched 9/11, alone, I felt everyone's pain, 'cause I've been there, but what's traumatized me even more now is the level of ego-man-ism, self-centered, lack of care of our sick, hungry, poor, elderly, disabled and ignorance running ramped while gala's are enjoyed by the very elite of our society, while children, women and men (including our troops) are being blown to bits, coming back blind for life, loss of legs, limbs and "Shock!" I know a thing or two about SHOCK and with it comes Agoraphobia, Nightmares that last for years, Panic and Anxiety Disorders; Society Fears (you feel like a stranger in you're own land)... the list goes on and on like Depression.

Nevertheless, I do not take any wonderful pleasure sitting here alone as I no longer watch TV - I can't take the insult of bias, attorneys arm-chairing for Neocon's like their reporters, anymore than how my so-called fellow American's have a ticket to ride over Democrats, those that choice not to live as they do, oh how might they've become. But the rhetoric of SSI, SSDI, Medicare, the War and the ruthlessly cruel, white (I'm white) supremacy of this group as me and everyone I know asking the same thing, over and over again... "Why isn't anyone up there doing something?"

Why? We just don't get it. Sorry gang. As a gal, it's tough enough. But I feel more terrorized by * and his working cronies "up there" then 9/11 ever did. I'd bet, knowing death up-close and personal as I do, that most of those that died that day would say "STOP!"

My apologies. When I hit the post button, everyone will know my dirty, filthy, burdensome issues that 1/2 my country has me feeling as if I have no reason to exist on the face of this earth - at least I take comfort knowing I'm not alone out here w/my thoughts.

My husband was a Viet nam Vet, too. Somehow he came out unscaved, having his number called right at the end, but he did the D.C. protesting for peace, end-the-war, the environment, you name it. He even went to Woodstock and always said "it wasn't all that," with a smile.

I'm not "taking it out" on you guys/gals. I hope I didn't sound as such. I'm just so saddened, I mean deeply hurt at how the others are acting. Trust me, I'd much rather be back to normal, and I am in college late in the game. Just rec'd a scholarship from my local Senator and 3 delegats for making the Dean's List again. The saddest part it, that after all of these decades, and years of heartbreaking tears fighting my way back up when I thought I'd never make it off my knees from dispair I suffered when he died, I might not even have the money to finish college.

I'm a full-time History Major and I really want to get my Bachelor's in Political Science because "someone" has to get up there and fight for the real people. But, I now believe we might not be around w/* war mongrel.

:hug:

I could write a book. When I seen women my age in D.C. last week, it helped me to see that I'm really not alone; next time I'll be there w/sign in hand and a few chants of my own.

Now live across the big pond. SO HAPPY to find you here on DU! :hug:

I doubt this will happen.

Cut 'em off, I say! Not one dime for aging repukes!!! </mild-sarcasm>

Had Thomas read even the slighest, most cursory bit on the problems facing women in retirement- had he looked at any of the various charts and graphs on point, he would realize what an idiot he sounds like.

The fact is that women fare worse under the current system- and the fact that they tend to live longer only exacerbates the situation.

Unfortunately, sounding like a moron seems to be not only accepted, but a prerequisite for gaining postitions of power in the Republican party.

Incredible that anyone can suggest lowering the amount of SS benefits for women while being totally against any raise whatsoever in the payroll tax as a means of solving long term problems of SS.

on the 'femmi-nazi'. These guys are seeing their jobs go south and east and they might get ugly if their attention isn't diverted to the latest scapegoat.

edit: typo

Lowering the pay for women because they live longer! Well, not all woman live that long...my Mom died in her sixties. How fair would that be!? Maybe they should adjust the rate for MORONS!