Thought Leaders Weigh In on Social Security Reform - The Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PGPF)
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PGPF), a nonpartisan organization focusing on the nation’s fiscal issues, provides various forums for policy influencers to contribute to the legislative conversations shaping the future for America’s seniors. PGPF’s Solutions Initiative 2024 is one such forum. The recent publication of the Initiative’s formal report, the first in five years, created a space for seven participating groups—the American Action Forum (AAF), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), the Center for American Progress (CAP), the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the Manhattan Institute (MI), and the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI)—to set forth viewpoints on America’s fiscal outlook, with a significant portion of this space dedicated to outlooks regarding the largest program in the federal budget: Social Security.
The full Solutions Initiative 2024 report can be accessed here, and it provides a wide-ranging assessment of the researched opinions offered by these seven influential organizations. Concerning Social Security, the report provides insight into the views on program reform that will likely shape Congressional thinking in the (hopefully) near future, including a “score card” in chart form that enables easy comparison across the seven sources. For example, four of the seven suggest raising the full retirement age as a solution to the Social Security solvency problem, while one suggests raising the early eligibility age and one advocates indexing the full retirement age to longevity but with a special early retirement age for low-income wage earners. Modifications to promote means testing and add more progressivity to the program’s formulas can also be found in the details offered by each group, while the issue of “raising the cap” on taxable earnings surfaces on several.
The Solutions Initiative 2024 contains links to each individual participating organization’s detailed proposals, making it a comprehensive repository of leading thoughts on reform measures needed to resolve Social Security’s looming financial crisis. It’s interesting to note that many of the specific recommendations align well with the Association of Mature American Citizens’ (AMAC) approach to addressing the problem–the AMAC Social Security Guarantee.