Social Security Solid. Ignore the Latest Scare Tactics

Social Security Solid. Ignore the Latest Scare Tactics
by Mike Hall
August 25, 2008

Once again, the cries that “the sky is falling on Social Security“—usually shouted by the same folks who want to privatize it (hello, John McCain)—are nothing more than scare tactics.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a new report Friday that shows the cornerstone of working families’ retirement security remains on darn solid footing after 73 years of never missing a payment—and will for decades to come.

The CBO report looks 75 years down the road, when benefits will be higher than they are today, and finds the Social Security surplus will be able to pay full benefits until 2049 and that incoming revenues will be able to pay 81 percent of benefits through 2082.

Monique Morrisey, from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), says there is not a monster under the bed or behind the shower curtain. In a new policy memo, she writes:

Because the earnings of most workers have stagnated while those at the top have skyrocketed, the share of untaxed earnings above the taxable earnings cap (currently set at $102,000) has grown from 10 percent in 1983, when the system was last in balance, to around 17 percent today. So a better way to address the modest shortfall than an across-the-board tax increase would be to raise or eliminate the cap on taxable earnings.

Please read the entire article at:

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/08/25/social-security-solid-ignore-the-latest-scare-tactics/

comes from those who pretend to want to save it.

The crisis is that the system will become pay as you go once again when Boomers retire and that Congress will no longer be able to rob it to pay for tax cuts to the rich and corporate.

The true cost of GOP tax cuts will become known, in other words, as Social Security once again acts as it was designed to do.

That's why right wingers are sounding the alarm. Once they can no longer rob workers of 40% of their OASDI premiums, the government will be forced to seek revenue elsewhere and that means tapping the wealthy again.