Remarks By Obama To The WSJ CEO Council...We Need To Cut SS & Medicare Benefits

[MH1]

41. I'm not against raising the income cap for those taxes. I'm not against

some sort of voluntary option for a person to continue working full time past the normal retirement age and defer drawing their SS check. I think the second one is sort of already in place but there's a point where the person really needs to retire or they lose benefits. If I understand correctly. So, there is a reform option there that would not hurt people who want to retire at the normal age, but for those who feel great and want to continue working, there wouldn't be such a loss of benefits. That kind of change could reduce the aggregate sum of benefits paid out to the beneficiary pool in any single period (by continually deferring a subset of payments), while not reducing benefits for a single person.

There are probably several possible ways to "reform entitlements" that don't actually force a benefit cut on beneficiaries. I am open-minded to consideration of those options.

From an environmental standpoint - also known as the future of the human race - we MUST figure out how to support a demographically aging population at an acceptable standard of living, as population growth ceases and ultimately reverses. An absolute no-brainer is to remove barriers and disincentives from healthy people working to a later age rather than retiring too early. At the same time we have to recognize that the traditional retirement age is still a reasonable age for retirement for people who are in physically demanding professions or have various medical conditions. We shouldn't be arbitrarily raising the retirement age across the board. But we are smart people and can figure out a way to achieve both goals. If we try.