Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, slammed House Republicans for trying to force changes to a key part of Social Security, calling it “counterproductive.”
Van Hollen’s comments come as House Republicans try to spark a fight over Social Security in the next two years. They passed a rule last week to block the routine transfer of tax revenues between Social Security disability funds and the Social Security retirement program. It’s projected that the disability fund won’t be able to pay full benefits in the latter half of 2016, which could initiate a crisis that advocates have warned Republicans would use as leverage to make Democrats agree to changes in the program.
Van Hollen called this “counterproductive.” He said he’s willing to discuss changes to the program, but this isn’t the best way to start that discussion.
“I would sit down today to discuss the whole issue of Social Security and how the best way to deal with all the trust funds is, that’s what I’m saying,” Van Hollen said. “I think it’s counterproductive to launch that debate by effectively threatening to not address the disability in the short term as we have in the past.”
Van Hollen stressed that he did believe changes had to be made to the program.
“I do believe that we need to work together now to come together with a plan to address the long-term challenges of the overall Social Security system. And if you look at the system, the latest figures, as I recall, showed the trust fund being —the full trust fund being fully solvent until 2035 and after that the amounts in the trust fund would pay for about 75 percent of the benefits,” Van Hollen continued. “So clearly sometime between now and then, and in my view the sooner the better, we should address that longterm thing.”
The ranking Democrat noted this wasn’t the first time Congress has had to face the threat of a shortfall of the disability fund.
“Now in terms of the short-term disability fund, as you know, this is not the first time we’ve faced the shortfall of the disability fund and on twelve previous occasions without a lot of drama we have simply redirected some of the payroll tax funds to making sure some of the disability fund was kept whole,” Van Hollen said. “And I don’t think anybody should be threatening insolvency in the near term in the disability fund when there’s a clear path that Congress has taken in order to deal with it.”
As TPM reported on Thursday, the White House publicly said that it opposes blocking the routine transfer between the funds as the House rule does.
The problem needs to be addressed by looking at multiple parts of the Social Security program, Van Hollen said.
“Now, again, I’m happy to sit down and talk with people. As I said, you need to look at this in a way that addresses both the revenue side and look at ways that reform parts of the Social Security system and I’ve actually laid out some ideas in the past, I’m happy to go into more details,” Van Hollen said. “But this is one of those things that can only be done in a bipartisan manner and I think it’s unfortunate that Republicans decided to unilaterally change the rules on this particular piece. Just like they unilaterally changed the rules to impose dynamic scoring.”
Photo credit: Michael Bonfigli/The Christian Science Monitor
