Ignoring the Truth (once again) about Senior Workers & Social Security
Kudos to Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times for his spot-on coverage of yesterday’s Senate Finance hearing on the retirement crisis, particularly one incredible moment of testimony that just begged to be slapped down. And slap it down he did…
The conservative contempt for the working person shows through
By Michael Hiltzik
3:49 PM PST, December 18, 2013
At a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Finance Commmittee’s Subcommittee on Social Security, conservative scholar Andrew G. Biggs made the following remark in defense of the idea that retirement ages can safely be raised:
“Go back to 1950, when we had a highly industrialized economy. You had coal miners, and farmers, and factory workers. The average age of initial Social Security claiming then was 68. Today, when your biggest on the job risk is, you know, carpal tunnel syndrome from your mouse or something like that, it’s 63. …[T]he idea that we can’t have a higher retirement age, I think it just flies in the face of the fact that people did, in fact, retire later in the past, and today’s jobs are less physically demanding than they were in the past.”
A couple of things about this. First, carpal tunnel syndrome, which Biggs seems to think is a big joke and an excuse for malingering, is no laughing matter to people who have it and for whom it can be a crippling condition.
Second, the idea that older workers typically hold down office jobs or other comfy sinecures is fatuous and flatly untrue. The Center for Economic and Policy Research actually examined the numbers, mostly from the U.S. Census Bureau. (Unlike, apparently, Biggs.)
What it found in 2010 was that 6.5 million workers, or 35% of those 58 and older, were employed in physically demanding jobs. This was defined as work requiring “handling and moving objects, spending significant time standing, or having any physically demanding work.” Working conditions included “cramped workspace, labor outdoors, or exposure to abnormal temperatures, contaminants, hazardous equipment, or distracting or uncomfortable noise.”
These are conditions you’re not likely to encounter in a Senate committee room, unless you consider hot air to be an environmental menace.
Latino and black workers were overrepresented among older workers with these jobs.
To be fair to Biggs, his remark about older workers was an offhand crack, a punchline to a straight line fed him by his questioner, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) His prepared testimony for the committee was rather more measured.
Biggs is a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and a former deputy commissioner of Social Security, a post he was named to during the George W. Bush administration. He’s been a Social Security scholar at the conservative Cato Institute too.
Generally speaking he’s one of the more intelligent and serious critics of Social Security on the right, which is not at all the same as saying he’s a friend of the program as it exists today. He’s advocated privatizing Social Security and converting it to something resembling a means-tested welfare program; either step would destroy what has been the most successful government program in American history.
But it’s Biggs’ reasonable veneer that makes his crack about older workers so telling. It reflects conservatives’ failure not merely to empathize with older workers, but to learn anything about them before mouthing off. Instead of understanding, they offer contempt.
What the facts actually tell you is that raising the retirement age for Social Security — it’s already rising from 66 to 67 for people scheduled to retire from 2017 to 2022 — is no easy nostrum for improving the program’s finances. The CEPR’s study pointed out that the cost of raising the retirement age falls especially hard on lower-income workers and minorities.
Those in physically demanding jobs would have to work longer in conditions that become progressively more difficult. Many would be driven to file for disability, placing added strains on a portion of Social Security already under intense financial pressure (which Congress has shown no signs of addressing).
This is another sign of the essential shallowness of our debate over Social Security. If conservative critics can’t do better than to throw out airy misperceptions about the workforce conjured up in their Washington offices, why in heaven’s name should anyone waste time listening to them?
Permanent Doc Fix is Good News for Seniors in Medicare
Seniors’ Advocate Says Committee Passage of New Doctor Payment Formula is Long Overdue
“Each year, America’s seniors and their doctors wait and watch while a flawed formula passed by Congress more than a decade ago threatens double-digit cuts to Medicare physicians. This Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula is clearly inadequate and the House and Senate Committee votes to repeal it mark an important first step to improve Medicare payments to doctors while preserving seniors’ access to their trusted physicians. Replacing the current volume-based payment system with one that bases payments on the quality and efficiency of care is good news for seniors and for the Medicare program overall.
More work remains to be done as the House and Senate continue their efforts to find ways to pay for this legislation. Our top priority is to ensure those costs are not shifted to seniors in Medicare, half of whom live on incomes of less than $22,500 per year and already face high out-of-pocket health care costs.”…Max Richtman, NCPSSM President/CEO
The National Committee’s letter to the Senate Finance Committee is here.
Five Ways Congress can Strengthen Social Security Now without Cutting Benefits
Social Security faces a funding shortfall in 2033 which, if not addressed, could result in across the board benefit cuts of about 23%. While this shortfall does not pose an immediate crisis, there are reasonable changes that Congress should enact to keep Social Security solvent and strengthen it for current and future generations:
1) Eliminate the cap on Social Security payroll contributions. In 2014, only wages up to $117,000 will be subject to the Social Security payroll deduction. Lifting the cap will subject all wages to the payroll contribution which will help address the majority of Social Security’s projected funding shortfall.
2) Slowly increase the payroll contribution rate by 1/20th of one percent over 20 years. This gradual increase in the rate will significantly strengthen Social Security’s financial condition well into the future.
3) Treat all salary reduction plans like 401ks. All workers pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on their contributions to retirement accounts but no payroll taxes are collected from workers flexible spending accounts such as HSAs, transit and dependent care plans. This change will add money to the program.
4) Increase the basic benefit for all current and future retirees by 5% of the basic benefit (about $55 per month). This modest but meaningful benefit improvement is a long-overdue boost, especially for low-to-middle income beneficiaries who rely upon their Social Security benefit for the majority of their income.
5) Provide Social Security credits for caregivers. When computing the Social Security benefit, grant up to five family service years to workers who leave paid employment to provide care to children under the age of 6 or to elderly or disabled family members. This will provide greater parity for women’s benefits which are typically less than men’s due to interruptions to paid employment caused by family caregiving needs.
Meet the CEOs Who Want to Cut Your Social Security
We’ve written before about the billion dollar anti-Social Security lobby, led by Wall Streeter Pete Peterson and his myriad number of astroturf front groups, here, here and here. These CEO and Wall Street friendly groups are spending a lot of money to convince Congress that grandma and grandpa’s Social Security is to blame for our economic woes rather than talk about the real problem…$1 trillion in corporate loopholes and income inequality which is destroying the middle class.
Hats off to the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government for their new report detailing the truth behind America’s CEO-led campaign against Social Security. Thanks also to the Huffington Post for this terrific infographic highlighting the report’s key findings:
Ignoring the Truth (once again) about Senior Workers & Social Security
Kudos to Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times for his spot-on coverage of yesterday’s Senate Finance hearing on the retirement crisis, particularly one incredible moment of testimony that just begged to be slapped down. And slap it down he did…
The conservative contempt for the working person shows through
By Michael Hiltzik
3:49 PM PST, December 18, 2013
At a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Finance Commmittee’s Subcommittee on Social Security, conservative scholar Andrew G. Biggs made the following remark in defense of the idea that retirement ages can safely be raised:
“Go back to 1950, when we had a highly industrialized economy. You had coal miners, and farmers, and factory workers. The average age of initial Social Security claiming then was 68. Today, when your biggest on the job risk is, you know, carpal tunnel syndrome from your mouse or something like that, it’s 63. …[T]he idea that we can’t have a higher retirement age, I think it just flies in the face of the fact that people did, in fact, retire later in the past, and today’s jobs are less physically demanding than they were in the past.”
A couple of things about this. First, carpal tunnel syndrome, which Biggs seems to think is a big joke and an excuse for malingering, is no laughing matter to people who have it and for whom it can be a crippling condition.
Second, the idea that older workers typically hold down office jobs or other comfy sinecures is fatuous and flatly untrue. The Center for Economic and Policy Research actually examined the numbers, mostly from the U.S. Census Bureau. (Unlike, apparently, Biggs.)
What it found in 2010 was that 6.5 million workers, or 35% of those 58 and older, were employed in physically demanding jobs. This was defined as work requiring “handling and moving objects, spending significant time standing, or having any physically demanding work.” Working conditions included “cramped workspace, labor outdoors, or exposure to abnormal temperatures, contaminants, hazardous equipment, or distracting or uncomfortable noise.”
These are conditions you’re not likely to encounter in a Senate committee room, unless you consider hot air to be an environmental menace.
Latino and black workers were overrepresented among older workers with these jobs.
To be fair to Biggs, his remark about older workers was an offhand crack, a punchline to a straight line fed him by his questioner, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) His prepared testimony for the committee was rather more measured.
Biggs is a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and a former deputy commissioner of Social Security, a post he was named to during the George W. Bush administration. He’s been a Social Security scholar at the conservative Cato Institute too.
Generally speaking he’s one of the more intelligent and serious critics of Social Security on the right, which is not at all the same as saying he’s a friend of the program as it exists today. He’s advocated privatizing Social Security and converting it to something resembling a means-tested welfare program; either step would destroy what has been the most successful government program in American history.
But it’s Biggs’ reasonable veneer that makes his crack about older workers so telling. It reflects conservatives’ failure not merely to empathize with older workers, but to learn anything about them before mouthing off. Instead of understanding, they offer contempt.
What the facts actually tell you is that raising the retirement age for Social Security — it’s already rising from 66 to 67 for people scheduled to retire from 2017 to 2022 — is no easy nostrum for improving the program’s finances. The CEPR’s study pointed out that the cost of raising the retirement age falls especially hard on lower-income workers and minorities.
Those in physically demanding jobs would have to work longer in conditions that become progressively more difficult. Many would be driven to file for disability, placing added strains on a portion of Social Security already under intense financial pressure (which Congress has shown no signs of addressing).
This is another sign of the essential shallowness of our debate over Social Security. If conservative critics can’t do better than to throw out airy misperceptions about the workforce conjured up in their Washington offices, why in heaven’s name should anyone waste time listening to them?
Permanent Doc Fix is Good News for Seniors in Medicare
Seniors’ Advocate Says Committee Passage of New Doctor Payment Formula is Long Overdue
“Each year, America’s seniors and their doctors wait and watch while a flawed formula passed by Congress more than a decade ago threatens double-digit cuts to Medicare physicians. This Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula is clearly inadequate and the House and Senate Committee votes to repeal it mark an important first step to improve Medicare payments to doctors while preserving seniors’ access to their trusted physicians. Replacing the current volume-based payment system with one that bases payments on the quality and efficiency of care is good news for seniors and for the Medicare program overall.
More work remains to be done as the House and Senate continue their efforts to find ways to pay for this legislation. Our top priority is to ensure those costs are not shifted to seniors in Medicare, half of whom live on incomes of less than $22,500 per year and already face high out-of-pocket health care costs.”…Max Richtman, NCPSSM President/CEO
The National Committee’s letter to the Senate Finance Committee is here.
Five Ways Congress can Strengthen Social Security Now without Cutting Benefits
Social Security faces a funding shortfall in 2033 which, if not addressed, could result in across the board benefit cuts of about 23%. While this shortfall does not pose an immediate crisis, there are reasonable changes that Congress should enact to keep Social Security solvent and strengthen it for current and future generations:
1) Eliminate the cap on Social Security payroll contributions. In 2014, only wages up to $117,000 will be subject to the Social Security payroll deduction. Lifting the cap will subject all wages to the payroll contribution which will help address the majority of Social Security’s projected funding shortfall.
2) Slowly increase the payroll contribution rate by 1/20th of one percent over 20 years. This gradual increase in the rate will significantly strengthen Social Security’s financial condition well into the future.
3) Treat all salary reduction plans like 401ks. All workers pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on their contributions to retirement accounts but no payroll taxes are collected from workers flexible spending accounts such as HSAs, transit and dependent care plans. This change will add money to the program.
4) Increase the basic benefit for all current and future retirees by 5% of the basic benefit (about $55 per month). This modest but meaningful benefit improvement is a long-overdue boost, especially for low-to-middle income beneficiaries who rely upon their Social Security benefit for the majority of their income.
5) Provide Social Security credits for caregivers. When computing the Social Security benefit, grant up to five family service years to workers who leave paid employment to provide care to children under the age of 6 or to elderly or disabled family members. This will provide greater parity for women’s benefits which are typically less than men’s due to interruptions to paid employment caused by family caregiving needs.
Meet the CEOs Who Want to Cut Your Social Security
We’ve written before about the billion dollar anti-Social Security lobby, led by Wall Streeter Pete Peterson and his myriad number of astroturf front groups, here, here and here. These CEO and Wall Street friendly groups are spending a lot of money to convince Congress that grandma and grandpa’s Social Security is to blame for our economic woes rather than talk about the real problem…$1 trillion in corporate loopholes and income inequality which is destroying the middle class.
Hats off to the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government for their new report detailing the truth behind America’s CEO-led campaign against Social Security. Thanks also to the Huffington Post for this terrific infographic highlighting the report’s key findings: