Four Principles Designed to Salvage Social Security for the Long-Term - beaumontenterprise.com
The solvency dilemma Social Security faces has gotten some attention in the early days of the 118th Congress, but despite the urgency–full depletion of the program’s reserves is less than a decade away–proposals to ward off a catastrophe haven’t gotten much serious consideration. This fact was pointed out by Texas A&M University’s Andrew Rettenmaier and Dennis W. Jansen in a post on beaumontenterprise.com, which included a quick refresher on Social Security’s cash flow problem and in general terms the operation of its trust fund accounts.
The post by Rettenmaier and Jansen also recapped program reforms adopted during the Reagan Administration, as well as the failed reforms attempted during the George W. Bush presidency. Noting that no other attempts to address Social Security’s long-term financial ills have been made in two decades, the economists set forth four principles they believe policymakers and lawmakers should consider in the crafting of reforms.
| 1. The program should be self-funded in the long run so that its annual revenues match its annual expenses. |
| 2.The reform burden should be shared across generations. |
| 3. The government should make sure that Social Security benefits will be adequate for lower-income retirees for years to come. |
| 4. Any changes to Social Security should help constrain the future growth of federal spending, given the current and projected growth in the budget deficit. |
In their post, they provide additional perspective on each of these philosophical guidelines, and offer thoughts on the criticality of acting sooner rather than later to enact program reforms. Expediency would make more options available for factoring into these reform measures and, likewise, would provide program beneficiaries more lead time to adjust to changes affecting their participation in the program.
Read the Rettenmaier and Jansen post here.