September 24, 2010
The Washington Post ran another front page editorial calling for cuts to Social Security. The context was a discussion of the Republicans’ “Pledge to America.” The editorial complained that the plan did not include any concrete ways to deal with Social Security.
It then suggested that three ways that the Republicans should look to put the system into long-term balance: “raising the Social Security retirement age, changing the cost-of-living formula, offering personal or private accounts.” The first two measures are ones that are strongly supported by the Post editorial board (hence their appearance in this front page editorial), but strongly opposed by the vast majority of the public.
Insofar as it is necessary to address a funding gap (projections from the Congressional Budget Office show the program is fully solvent for the next 29 years with no changes whatsoever), polls show that the public overwhelmingly favors raising the cap on income subject to the payroll tax. Currently, high income workers only pay the Social Security tax on their first $106,000 in wages. Polls also show that the public much prefers even an increase in the tax rate itself to the cuts pushed by the Post editorial board.
It is also worth noting that offering private accounts is not a route toward improving the program’s finances. Private accounts worsen the finances of Social Security by pulling money out of the system. This would be like a family facing budget problems deciding to buy a new car to help the situation. Private accounts may be an effective way to get fee income to Wall Street banks, but they do not help the finances of Social Security.
The article also reports on the Republicans calls for a “full accounting” of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It would have been appropriate to point out that there is already a very full accounting of these programs. The trustees of both Social Security and Medicare issue lengthy accounts of the programs’ finances each year. (They do refuse to disclose the documents that provide the basis for these projections. However, the Republicans did not imply that they would make these public.) The Congressional Budget Office does regular analyses of all three programs. The Government Accountability Office also periodically evaluates specific issues connected with these programs on request from members of Congress as does the Congressional Research Service. In addition, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Research does extensive analysis of Medicare and Medicaid, along with other government health care programs.
In this context, the Republican call for a “full accounting” would appear to be a quest for a pointless government bureaucracy that would duplicate work already being done. A serious news article would have called attention to the Republicans’ push for needless bureaucracy.
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