Paul: Social Security age may need to be raised

[TomCADem]

Source: MSNBC

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul said Sunday the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare may need to be raised for future recipients.

But Paul, speaking during the first televised debate of the general election season with Democratic opponent Jack Conway, said he doesn't want to change those benefits for older people already receiving them. The debate was aired on FOX News.

"But we do have to admit that we have the baby boom generation getting ready to retire, and we're going to double the amount of retirees," he said. "And to put our head in the sand and just say we're just going to keep borrowing more money is not going to work. There will have to be changes for the younger generation."

Major issues of the race thus far have revolved around spending and taxes.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39485087/ns/politics-decision_2010/

---

I guess the 2010 election will be a referendum on raising the Social Security age, at least in Kentucky.

[DJ13]

1. They will do anything to keep from raising the cap

[mbperrin]

3. Yes, they will, even when that simple fix is all that is needed. Ever.

Always interesting to see who the racketeers are paying off, though.

[Democrats_win]

2. Poor old people need to work so that rich John McCain can have 20 houses. nt.

[JDPriestly]

17. Poor old people can't get jobs and are lucky if the job they

used to have still exists.

Think about teachers who start teaching at the age of say 23. By the time they reach the age of 63, they have been teaching 40 years. That is a long time.

It is even tougher on non-professionals who start working in their late teens. If a person starts working 9-5 at the age of 19, that person has worked 50 years at the age of 69.

Raising the retirement age is not a realistic option.

[Jackpine Radical]

22. Oh, it's a very realistic option.

If your goal is to increase the attrition rate of elderly "useless eaters."

Just as cuts in welfare have accomplished that goal in certain other populations, such as the mentally and physically disabled.

[Enthusiast]

40. That is just about what

it amounts to.

[HereSince1628]

4. Always forgetting that the baby-boom started paying this forward under Raygun

The demographics of providing the baby-boom the benefits that they were promised and for which they worked has never been a secret.

[glitch]

21. Convenient ignorance which would not pass if we had a real media rather than corporate shills. nt

[Enthusiast]

41. And that is the essential problem.

Our point of view is almost completely absent from the discussion in the M$M.

[Blandocyte]

5. Budget for wars may need to be lowered

Wanna see a bunch of pissed off baby boomers? Raise SS eligibility age or cut the benefits. Even the TeaDumbasses will revolt against that.

[TomCADem]

Not A Single Fox News, Er, Tea Party, Candidate Supports Cuts To The Military. Indeed,...

...They attack President Obama as "gutting" the military even though he has not made any actual cuts.

[TomCADem]

6. Not A Single Fox News, Er, Tea Party, Candidate Supports Cuts To The Military. Indeed,...

...They attack President Obama as "gutting" the military even though he has not made any actual cuts.

[clarence swinney]

12. WAR CREATES $$$$$$$

NEVER ATTACK WAR
Rich make $$$
Wall Street defense stocks zoom and Rich owners get richer.

Do not deter the Rich on Wall Street.

[SoapBox]

7. ...when the RICH try to tell the little people what they can have or not have...

Ya gotta love it!

The filthy RICH (Paul, NutMeg DimWhitman, Carly Stinkorina, etc.) that are just dying
to be able to "dish out" some bits to 98% of Americans.

Randy Pauly Dude? How about this about your plan, to keep Americans from getting their OWN money
that THEY (and their employers) have paid into the system...

NO! Oh...and KISS MY ASS!

[LiberalFighter]

8. Lies Lies Lies -- Fact #1 - We are not going to double the amount of retirees.

Fact #2 - We don't need to raise the retirement age.

Fact #3 - We are not borrowing money for Social Security.

[clarence swinney]

10. yes we will

if none die in fifteen years after retirement
79 Million and they will die off
after baby boomers all pass on then what?

Health Care our Big Cost problem.
Profits big. Wall Street Owns us.

For decades, before $4.00 oil, Pharmaceutical Industry made more profit on revenue than any industry. bless them po souls

[LiberalFighter]

36. If none die off? I didn't know we were immortal or gods.

[clarence swinney]

9. Social Security Raise that durn Cap

Solvent for next 75 Years.
Party priorities show on this one.
Middle Class of America versus Wall Street of America

SOCIAL SECURITY CON JOB
If you work hard you can pay 6.2% of your total income into Payroll Tax
The Cap on Payroll tax for Rich is disgusting. Sicko.
Why let the ultra Rich get all the goodies. They have too much.

If they paid 6.2% on ALL income as do overwhelming majority of workers
here is result: Cap is now $106,000.
6.2%
$1,000,000 Pays $62,000
$10 Million Pays $620,000 not $106,000= minus $514,000
$100 Million Pays $6,200,000 not $106,000= minus $5,140,000
$1 Billion Pays $ 62,000,000 not $106,000 = minus$ 51,400,000
$4 Billion(2009 Top Income)pays $248,000,000 not $106,000= minus$205,600,000

Lookie at amount we could collect from Luckie Duckies
who would never miss a meal.
If find error in numbers inform me [e-mail]

[rocktivity]

11. Rocktivity: Social Security Salary Cap Ought to be elmininated

:eyes:
rocktivity

[Aramchek]

13. Rand got off his leash again

[Hubert Flottz]

14. Spoken by a spoiled rich kid who never sweated out a hard days

work in his pampered life. Go work construction or down in some freakin' coal mine for 40 years and see how able you are to work another ten.

Edit... everybody don't have a pansy assed easy job.

[defendandprotect]

15. Congressional salaries and benefits may have to be lowered ... ????

[Hubert Flottz]

16. Great idea!

Those deadbeats never work a full week of eight hour days in all their years in Washington.

[AzNick]

18. And unlike in France, the sheople would not demonstrate in mass

Because they would miss Pit Boss on Animal Planet.

[ProudDad]

19. Social Security is easy, Medicare a little harder, War the hardest...

As others have said a removal of the cap on FICA (in the words of Steve Forbes, make it a FLAT TAX instead of a heavily regressive one biased to favor the rich) would take care of Social Security well past the time when the ice caps melt from catastrophic global climate destabilization and cover half of the Earth's cities...and finally render the Earth uninhabitable for large air-breathing mammals...(about 100 years)!

Medicare for All -- everyone in, nobody out -- no insurance company PROFIT (only not for profits need apply) with strict price controls on Medical Services, drugs and equipment (like the ENTIRE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD ALREADY DOES!). That would take care of that. It'll be too bad about the millionaire Docs and their for-profit "clinics", the insurance corporations execs and drug pushers, they'll have to struggle along on $250,000 to $500,000 per year like the rest of us...

War's the hardest. The entire phony house of cards laughingly called "an economy" in the USAmerican Empire of 2010 MUST HAVE "permanent war" to survive. This was the unstated decision of those who restructured the world economy at Bretton Woods in 1944. They realized that if they went back to the status-quo-ante, the Depression would return with a vengeance with catastrophic results for capitalism. So, to buy some more time for that end-stage-disease called capitalism, they invented the "Cold War", engaged in constant military build-up, fought numerous "small wars" to keep people's jingoist tendencies active and, in the case of the Empires (U.S. and European Union), used the exercise to rob the Earth of the majority of Her resources for a small minority of Her population.

This is not sustainable, folks!

Either prepare to survive the Great Die-Off or join it... www.transitionus.org
Begin by changing our idea of an ecomony... Steady State - not capitalist war economy http://steadystate.org/

Begin by changing our idea of "society" and what it's for...

On Edit: the basic question is, "What is the human community?" Is it, as the corporate Dems and repukes would have it a dog-eat-dog world where everyone is "free" to grab however much they can -- no matter how that effects the community as a whole? Or is it a community of equals who share the bounty of Earth (yes, SHARE!) while preserving Her as a hospitable environment for our posterity.

We were programmed by evolution to be the latter, it's only in the last 10,000 years or so of an experiment in dominator hierarchy that we've lost our way.

We don't need the twin goads wielded by the dominators; those of money and fear in order to be inquisitive, creative and "innovative" creature. We are those things at BIRTH!

It's time to find our way back to our true natures.

[ElboRuum]

20. Hey Rand...

You realize that the younger generation VOTES, don't you?

[boppers]

38. I'm young-ish, but have to wait till 67 to get full benefits.

http://www.ssa.gov/retire2/retirechart.htm

I expect it to be 75 by the time I get there, but I also expect life-expectancy to have similar increases, which may not help much if the same elderly workforce discrimination exists.

[bluestateguy]

23. And that won't even save any money anyway

You'll just have more people going on disability, food stamps and welfare as they become unemployable or too unhealthy to work.

[tomm2thumbs]

24. ... said one entitled child wanting to 'play house' like daddy. /nt

[yurbud]

25. I hope ALL Republicans running for office say this out loud--then the Democrats

will win in spite of their typical lackluster messaging.

[yurbud]

26. great idea--with high unemployment, add MORE people to the workforce by not letting them retire

[MannyGoldstein]

27. Sure, but there are many other issues that he and Obama *disagree* on. nt

[Cleita]

28. This red herring they are throwing out needs to be

countered with facts. Social Security is solid until 2039 even if nothing is done to make it even more secure. More bullshit from the Wall Street shills who want to privatize it. Raising the retirement age to 70 keeps more older workers in the market making jobs less available for new graduates.

[pampango]

29. Paul ...claimed that a third of the people who were helped by the (HCR) law are illegal aliens.

Republican Rand Paul said he would support raising the retirement age for "young people", while Democrat Jack Conway claimed he never supported the clean air act known as Cap and Trade, during a thirty minute nationally televised debate in Louisville Sunday.

Conway was on the defensive about whether or not he ever supported the Cap and Trade bill, which is strongly opposed by the Kentucky coal industry. "I'm against Cap and Trade, always have been," Conway asserted. When both Wallace and Paul mentioned news reports to the contrary, Conway repeated, "I am against Cap and Trade." Paul has repeatedly stated his opposition to Cap and Trade and said, "If we pass Cap and Trade, it will be a disaster to Kentucky's economy and to Kentucky jobs."

On the healthcare law, Conway said "we've got 654,000 Kentuckians getting health care for the first time because of this bill." But he said the bill needs work. "We are going to have to look at costs going forward."

Paul, who favors overturning the healthcare law, claimed that a third of the people who were helped by the law are illegal aliens. When moderator Wallace said that was not true, Paul replied that it was happening because "it's illegal to ask if they were illegals."

http://www.wave3.com/story/13259444/rand-paul-jack-conway-square-off-in-national-debate-from-louisville

[customerserviceguy]

30. Saw that this morning

Couldn't watch Meet the Press because they wanted to cover some golf game instead, and I didn't find This Week entertaining enough with the topic choice, so I was stuck with Faux News Sunday.

I've advocated a system where we rate jobs on a five point difficulty scale, and we restore the age of 65 for the toughest careers. People like me who sit at a desk can do so till we're 70, and if we want to retire earlier, we can save up to do it. There are occupations that could be arrayed on a 65-70 year old retirement age schedule, and we could let those who work the hardest lay their burdens down a bit earlier.

No doubt we'll get cap raises when inflation starts chugging back up again. I remember when I started doing income taxes in 1981, the 1980 wage base of $25,900 seemed pretty lofty to me then, and only a few of my clients exceeded that wage base.

Obviously, the level today will be a working-class wage after enough years of inflation, and we'll certainly have to raise it. But that will involve higher payouts to retirees, and the inflation that gets us to that point will increase benefit costs even more.

Is Rand Paul going to pay politically for what he's said about future retirees, or is he just going to be viewed as realistic? We'll know a month from now.

[Gman]

31. Let's just make sure the good people of KY know he thinks this

as well as the true facts.

[DesertFlower]

32. in france they're out in the streets protesting

because they want to change the retirement age from 60 to 62.

[HockeyMom]

33. A lot of us don't SIT at a desk in front of a computer

I can almost not do this now, lifting a 40+ child every half an hour, at the age of 62. At 70? IMPOSSIBLE. What do they think we are supposed to do?

[notadmblnd]

34. I clean rich slobs houses

and I'll be 52. Can you see me at 70 on my hands and knees wiping piss off toilets? And yes, most rich people (at least the houses I've been in)live like pigs.

[brentspeak]

35. Doesn't this idiot know that the gov't is borrowing FROM Social Security?

And that the government has an obligation to pay its IOU's to Social Security back completely?

Rand Paul: fool or liar? Hard to tell.

[zogofzorkon]

37. why not both? n/t

[Enthusiast]

42. Fool and liar. nt

[lovuian]

39. Wel that isn't a vote getter

next it will be 70

[raccoon]

43. No effing way! We can't let the bastards get away with that.

I am counting the months/years until I turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.