Obama’s Budget Head Would Cut Social Security

[Phred42]

Obama’s Budget Head Would Cut Social Security
By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive

http://www.alternet.org/story/108956/

Peter Orszag, Barack Obama’s choice to head the budget office, is on record favoring a reduction in Social Security benefits.

Barack Obama’s choice to head the budget office is on record favoring a reduction in Social Security benefits.

On Tuesday, Obama picked Peter Orszag to direct the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Orszag believes that Social Security benefits should be cut back to help balance the Social Security Trust Fund over the next 75 years.

He spells out his views in a paper he wrote with Peter A. Diamond for the Brookings Institute back in 2005, called “Saving Social Security: The Diamond-Orszag Plan.”

In it, they call for “a reduction in benefits, which would apply to all workers age 59 and younger.”

The younger you are, the more you’ll get hurt.

“The reduction in benefits for a 45-year-old average earner is less than 1 percent,” the plan says. “For a 35-year-old, less than 5 percent; and for a 25-year-old, less than 9 percent. Reductions are smaller for lower earners, and larger for higher ones.”

In the paper, Orszag and Diamond come out strongly against replacing part of Social Security with individual accounts, which Republicans have proposed. The authors call this “a grave mistake.”

[msongs]

1. its all about phrasing - "less than 9%" = MORE than 8% cut nt

[cali]

2. I'd have to read the paper before making a judgment.

If he really calls for SS cuts across the board, I find that alarming. Calling for cuts in SS for upper income earners doesn't concern me. My mother collects the maximum in SS. She doesn't need a cent of it.

[jwirr]

9. Yes, there has to be some kind of consideration for those who are

totally dependent on SSA. However, I get only $241.00 a month and if they cut me it would be given back in SSI. I would not lose anything. I do favor a cut for high rollers but only if it is accompanied by a raised ceiling and closing the loop-hole that allows government to raid the contents.

[babylonsister]

3. But would Obama? Orszag is working for Obama, and he's

calling the shots.

[OKNancy]

4. Whatever. He has no say in it

Congress would have to vote for reductions, and that ain't gonna happen.
Also, he wrote some plan up in 2005... that doesn't mean he still believes the same way or would even have the same opinion.

Truthfully, I think this is just another article trying to stir up crap toward Obama.

[Idealism]

5. Some things just won't ever happen, especially in this political and economic climate

Stop pining for bad news

[OKNancy]

6. And one more thing... the author of this article also wrote this:

"But Al Gore would not be a good president either from where I sit."

----
But Al Gore would not be a good president either from where I sit. So I would not vote for either of them, either if Ralph Nader weren't running. And I don't think Nader wants Bush to win, and I don't think he subscribes to the view that the worse the better.

...

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: The first reaction will be one of terrible recrimination and bitterness and anger toward those of us who didn't act like good little boys and girls and vote for Al Gore but instead chose to vote our conscious and voted for Ralph Nader.

So the blame will be quite extreme and the hysteria already is amazing. I mean Senator Paul Wellstone* the Liberal Senator from Minnesota is warning that George W Bush will repeal the Twentieth Century. I didn't think a president had that kind of power.


http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s206942.htm

[Idealism]

8. This guy shouldn't be allowed to call himself a progressive if he backed that lackey

[tabatha]

7. Obama favors keeping SS benefits as they are - and

changing the cap.