It is important that President Obama take SS off the table tonight.

His administration is clearly aware of all the recent conflict and uncertainty regarding his intentions, both in the press and across the country.

We are being told to feel reassured by a Washington Post story stating that he will not "endorse" changes to Social Security.

Not "endorsing" changes does NOT mean taking them off the table. He needs to make a strong, unequivocal statement that he will NOT allow SS benefits to be lowered or the retirement age raised, under any circumstances.

The administration is aware that the country is confused about his intentions, so if he does NOT make a strong statement taking it off the table tonight, it will be a very bad sign.

NGU.

it would at least be on the record.

It said that Obama administration officials have said that the president will push for resolution of the deficit while insuring the social security remains solvent.

NGU.

use the internets.

:rofl:

NGU.

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Not "endorsing" changes to Social Security gives him plenty of cover.:shrug: My question is on the "endorsing", parsing that so to speak. I would like to get the sense that he would be willing to "fight" tooth and nail for it. Saying and doing are two different things.

Al Gore will lend him the famous lock box.

the recent conflict and uncertainty regarding his intentions I think there are things that must be addressed. there are huge inefficiencies in the delivery of the services and procees and eliminating fraud that could save millions of dollars.

In addtion, the continued talking meme here at DU is that Obama must talk (and imho opinion, continue to talk) about ss to reassure the public of his intentions and projects for improvements.

Why?

but the oop implies that is the ony item on the table. Wrong.

publicly and unequivocally.

I know, because I wrote the OP, and I just reread the whole thing. :hi:

there will always be those who use their interpretation of what he said to create a crisis that's in their imagination only.

Sid

...there will always be those who use their interpretation of what other people say to create a crisis that's in their imaginations only.

NGU.

there will be still more people who use their imaginations to interpret the imaginings of the people having a crisis, thus creating an imagined crisis in the imaginations of people who imagine that their post makes sense.

Sid

:rofl:

NGU.

that they "bend the curve" on SS so that rich people receive a smaller payout because they don't need it.

That works for me!

what will the rich say when they're asked to pay for something they can't use? I fear a slippery slope here, that the rich will somehow get out of paying into the system, which will exacerbate the expected shortfall. They call this "means testing" and I suspect it's yet another assault on SS in reasonable-sounding disguise. Just my suspicion.

On the other hand, if there is a way to equitably scale payouts while ensuring everyone pays in (since anyone MIGHT need it), that's fine by me too. It's all about the details.

I have a spreadsheet based on numbers from the following sources. PM me if you want it. http://www.oecd.org/document/35/0,3343,en_2649_37427_46661795_1_1_1_37427,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
Data on number of Social Security beneficiaries from http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2008/supplement08.pdf


We are paying out about $30 billion a year in Social Security for retirees. 9% of recipients are getting $2000/month or more totaling about $4.6 billion, or 15%. $2000/month is $24,000/ year—not a lot of money. If $2000 were the upper limit, we would be paying out $4.3 billion for the top 9%- of the population—very little savings, about 0.9% over current policy $17.9 billion is spent on those getting from $1200-$2000/month, and $9 billion on those with incomes lower than average.

Suppose we limited the 560,011 people getting more than $1700/month to $1700/month. That would cost $11 billion instead of $13 billion, for a savings of only 5.3% over current policy.

Conclusion: cutting benefits for higher income Social Security benefits doesn’t save much money. Still, the very complicated initial benefits formula could be adjusted to benefit those now getting less than the mean monthly income—it just isn’t going to change the outgo by much.

The other end of the financial equation is raising FICA on higher income earners. At the current 7.65%, we collect about $598 billion a year (rough estimate—online data from 2005 gives $771.4 billion collected). Still, looking at comparative numbers should work. With no limit on FICA income, we’d get $997 billion (67% increase). With income taxed up to $250,000, we’d get $763 billion (28% increase). With income taxed up to $200,000, we’d get $716 billion (20% increase). With income taxed up to $150,000, we’d get $617 billion (3% increase).

Only the lowest level, $150,000, yields a negligible amount of extra money raised. The $250K and $200K levels yield substantial extra income.