The Times reported that the president had rejected Boehner’s proposal to raise the retirement age above 67, where it is now for all who were born after 1960. Instead, the Times reported: “Obama was willing to apply a new, less generous formula for calculating Social Security benefits, which would start in 2015.” In an interview in July 2011, ABC News’ Jake Tapper asked Obama twice if he would consider raising the retirement age, and the president responded the second time by saying, “I’m not going to get into specifics.”
So what about Romney? Would Julia’s benefits be 40 percent less under his proposals? Perhaps — if she turns out to be a high-income earner during her working years. And she might have to wait until after age 67, too.
Romney’s campaign website quotes him as saying “the retirement age for younger workers should be increased slowly to keep up with increases in longevity,” and that “[h]e proposed slowing the rate of growth in Social Security benefits for higher-income future retirees.”
The Social Security system’s chief actuary analyzed last year a Senate bill that would do both of those things, though not necessarily in the same way Romney might. That bill (sponsored by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul and Mike Lee) would gradually increase the age of normal retirement to 70, and also institute a form of “progressive indexing” to hold down the rate of benefit growth for higher-income retirees while leaving it unchanged for those at the bottom.
The actuary calculated that benefits for the top 5.4 percent of all earners (those making $106,800 or more in taxable wages in 2010) would indeed be cut by 36 percent compared with benefits scheduled (but not completely paid for) in current law. And the later retirement age — meaning fewer years of benefits — would mean a total reduction of 54.4 percent.
That’s for anyone who is born in 2015 and reaches age 65 in 2080. For younger workers, presumably including Julia, the reductions would be less, depending on the year they reach age 65. (See Table B2.)
And the benefit reductions would be much less for lower-income workers. There would be no reduction at all in monthly benefits for about 40 percent of the lowest-income workers (those making $19,388 or less for 2010), for example. For that group, the later retirement age would translate into as much as a 28.8 percent lower total benefit payment for the generation born in 2015, however.
The analysis also found that the current system falls $5.4 trillion short (over 75 years) of financing the scheduled benefit levels that Congress has promised. The bill would save a total of $6.6 trillion, and ensure that the reduced benefit levels are fully financed without a tax increase, the actuary found.
Read the rest of FactCheck's examination of the campaign's fictional 'Julia'.
Graphic from The Life of Julia Obama Campaign site
More Articles
- Medicare Advantage Increasingly Popular With Seniors — But Not Hospitals and Doctors
- Medical Billing and Collections Among Older Americans
- Kaiser Health News*: May 11th Era of ‘Free’ Covid Vaccines, Test Kits, and Treatments Is Ending. Who Will Pay the Tab Now?
- Congressional Budget Office: Federal Budget Deficit Totals $1.4 Trillion in 2023; Annual Deficits Average $2.0 Trillion Over the 2024–2033 Period
- Jo Freeman Writes: The Lost Promise, American Universities in the 1960s by Ellen Schrecker
- Jo Freeman Reviews MADAM SPEAKER, Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons Of Power: “An iron fist in a Gucci glove”
- Jo Freeman Reviews Kamala’s Way, an Overview of Harris’ Life in California Politics
- Jill Norgren Writes: My Choices of Good Reads For The Past Year
- Kaiser Health Foundation: Distributing a COVID-19 Vaccine Across the U.S. - A Look at Key Issues
- Where We Stand: Partial Draft of Democratic Party Platform Already Voted Upon By Delegates; Covid-19 Pandemic Is a Prime Focus