Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has a “fantastic explanation of the Bush administration’s ‘solution’ to the Social Security ‘crisis’”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_01.php#005638. In short, both the ‘crisis’ (reduced benefits starting in 2041) and the ‘solution’ (reduced benefits starting in 2012) are the same.
The CBPP has kindly provided the “numbers to back that up”:http://www.cbpp.org/5-10-05socsec.htm, showing that the President’s plans don’t even solve the solvency problem they claim to solve. Instead, they create trillions of dollars in new debt for no reason at all.
There’s an interesting “video about this”:http://www.bushin30years.org/winner.html?id=5498-4250942-vRCErHSt6ycGaDs_1nT5rg&t=3 posted at MoveOn.
Anyone know more about the tax bracket cap on SS contributions (over 90,000 income still pays what 90,000 does). I’m no economist, but it seems reasonable to perhaps close this loophole…
I’m not sure how the caps work, but I think there are two: a cap on how much of one’s income is taxed, and a cap on how much of one’s income counts toward the determination of benefits.
(BTW, I updated the URL in Nicole’s comment to be a link.)