Candidates' Social Security plans lack details

Graphic shows Social Security cost of living adjustments for all retired workers from 1999-2009.

18 October 2008
By DAVID ESPO

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama wants to raise taxes on high-income workers to ease Social Security's looming cash crunch. John McCain favors voluntary private accounts for younger workers, saying they can't count on the same government benefits as today's retirees.

Beyond those generalities — and a shared opposition to an increase in the retirement age — the two presidential rivals are long on commitment and short on specifics when it comes to the government's huge retirement income program.

Obama is "committed to ensuring Social Security is solvent and viable for the American people, now and in the future," says his official Web site.

McCain reassured the audience at a recent debate that the program's financial challenges are less severe than those confronting Medicare, the giant health care program for older Americans.

"We know what the problems are, my friends, and we know what the fixes are. We've got to sit down together across the table. It's been done before," he said in support of his push for a bipartisan commission.

Three years after the collapse of President Bush's plan to overhaul the program, Social Security has played only a modest role in a fall campaign dominated by the economy and punctuated by a decline in the retirement savings of millions.

And with both men shying away from specifics, the exchanges are more rhetorical than substantive.

Obama aired a television ad saying McCain campaigned in favor of Bush's failed 2005 proposal, which it characterized as "cutting benefits in half, risking Social Security on the stock market."

In fact, the allegation about cutting benefits was from a study of Bush's plan showing that under one scenario, the benefits of higher-income retirees could be cut in half from what is promised — beginning in 2080 — meaning that most of those affected have not yet been born.

Nor has McCain proposed investing the government's payroll tax receipts in the stock market. But he has previously proposed giving workers the option of diverting some of their Social Security taxes into such private investments.

"I do not and will not privatize Social Security," McCain says. "It's not true when I'm accused of that."

Polling over the years has shown the word "privatization" evokes hostility among voters.

McCain's denials are hard to square with his previous comments. "Without privatization, I don't see how you can possibly over time make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits," he said in November 2004. He also supported Bush's 2005 plan, which envisioned smaller than-promised benefits for future retirees and the option for workers to privately invest a portion of their payroll taxes to provide a supplement to the government benefits.

No matter the politics, there is no dispute that the venerable retirement security program will need a fix. Currently, 34 million retirees and their dependents receive monthly benefit checks, as do 6 million survivors of deceased workers and 9 million disabled workers and their dependents.

Government experts project the Social Security trust funds will begin paying out more than they collect in payroll taxes in 2017, and be exhausted in 2041. At that point, benefits would fall to 78 percent of promised levels.

Over the next 75 years, the program's most recent annual report projected the trust funds "would require additional revenue equivalent to $4.3 trillion in today's dollars to pay all scheduled benefits."

"We face enormous challenges to shore up the system," wrote Michael J. Astrue, commissioner of Social Security.

So far, Obama's only specific suggested remedy is a payroll tax increase for those making more than $250,000. The proposal envisions an increase "in the range of 2 to 4 percent," divided between worker and employer. Neither Obama nor his aides have provided additional details.

Under the current tax, workers pay 6.2 percent on their wages up to $102,000 per year, an income level that rises annually with inflation. Employers pay the same amount.

McCain calls regularly for creation of a new commission to study Social Security, with all options on the table.

At the same time, under pressure from conservatives, he stresses opposition to higher taxes. "There is no imaginable circumstance where John McCain would raise payroll taxes," spokesman Tucker Bounds said this summer.

McCain says he favors giving younger workers an option of diverting a portion of their payroll taxes "and maybe put it in an account with their name on it."

He has yet to say what, if any, sort of reduction that would lead to in government benefits promised for the future, although he alluded to it earlier this month during a debate with Obama.

"We are not going to be able to provide the same benefit for present-day workers that we are going — that present-day retirees have today," he said without elaboration.

Three years ago, Bush proposed guaranteeing the benefits already promised to those 55 and older. For younger workers, his plan would have meant smaller benefits than they have been promised, with an option to set up voluntary private accounts to try to make up the difference.

Democrats united against the plan, and Republicans turned skittish. It failed without ever coming on a vote in either house of Congress.