Mississippi Republican Senators turn out to be not too thrilled with the idea of “progressive” indexing of Social Security benefits. And how’s this for mumbo-jumbo? The president’s “aides say the benefit cuts proposed by Mr. Bush have to be judged against what will happen if nothing is done to shore up the system as the baby boom generation ages and life expectancy increases. Social Security’s trustees estimate that if no action is taken, the system can pay full benefits until 2041, and after that will take in only enough through payroll taxes to cover about 73 percent of promised benefits.”
Fair enough, sort of. If we change nothing until 2041, and the Social Security Administration’s estimates prove correct, then to achieve balance after 2041 wholly through benefit cuts, we would need to cut benefits by about 27 percent. Under the Bush plan, average workers would have their benefits cut by 28 percent by 2075, and 49 percent for higher-income workers. On top of that, the Bush plan doesn’t even achieve its ostensible goal of solvency! You would need unspecified further benefit cuts to make the numbers add up, cuts approximately equal in size to the ones Bush has already put on the table.
