| Bow Tie Boy of the State Journal:
The most logical way to save the system is partial privatization, especially the plan laid out in the Ryan-Sununu Bill, which does a partial privatization that increases payouts, makes the fund solvent for the Baby Boom trough hogs and has minimal risk. It’s a great plan that won’t be implemented because Democrats in Congress will keep scare mongering the issue as an easy-to-exploit electoral issue.
I was very pleased to see this weekend that aspiring Charleston politician and liberal think tanker Ted Boettner call for a variation on the idea. Sure, he wants it to be on the state level and done in addition to Social Security, but his acceptance of the underlying idea means that we may find some common cause on the issue with the left. [Emphasis mine.]
Sure, and if you add enough qualifiers to a sentence you could find common cause with any thing. Here's Boettner's post. Notice too that it's Republicans claiming Social Security is "doomed," but it's Democrats who are the "scare mongers" in Bow Tie Boy's world view. Talk about projection!
I hope Republicans take Bow Tie Boy's advice and keep pushing for Social Security piratization because the public hates the idea.
Real economists -- and not would be pundits doing their most earnest George Will imitation -- know that Social Security being doomed is a myth already disproven by the latest Social Security Administration's trustee report:
Social Security could be brought into actuarial balance over the next 75 years in various ways, including an immediate increase of 16 percent in payroll tax revenues or an immediate reduction in benefits of 13 percent or some combination of the two.
Roughly, this would require increasing both the employee and employer share of the tax from 6.2% to 7.05% (there might be some employment/wage impacts of such a change so this is a rough take).
If Bow Tie Boy did more than just repeat rightwing talking points, it would be much easier to find common cause.
However, the American people like Social Security as it is and any "fixes" needed can wait until we have an administration that does not intend to help make Wall Street richer while leaving the rest of us holding the (empty money) bag.
I just hope Shelley Moore Capito and other Republicans find common cause with Stirewalt and continue to push for his piratization program which would cost the federal government more than $7 trillion to implement while sharply cutting benefits to recipients. That's been a great issue for Republicans to run on.
As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorites points out:
"The Ryan-Sununu plan ostensibly finances its massive transfers in large part by assuming that government spending can be reduced (relative to what it would be with no policy changes), but it provides no credible mechanism for achieving the necessary reductions. The plan should thus be viewed as predicated on a massive magic asterisk, in which trillions of dollars are simply assumed to be forthcoming from the rest of the budget."
Leave it to Bow Tie Boy to push a plan that requires "magic" to work. |
