Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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The NYT profiled Indiana’s governor Mitch Daniels as a responsible deficit hawk. At one point it describes his agenda for saving money on Social Security and Medicare:
“Benefits should be cut for high-income and healthy people.”
It is worth noting that most of the proposals for changes in the Social Security benefit formula of the type described in the article would reduce benefits for people who have had average earnings as low as $40,000 a year. This is not an income level that would usually be described as “high income.” For tax purposes, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have used $200,000 as a cutoff.