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This Just In: These Are Supposed to Be Social Security Fixes?

From Martin Weiss Research.

"The GAO report reviewed eight areas where, it said, benefit changes were most commonly proposed. The report looked at how effectively each proposal would help lower-income beneficiaries, whether it would have much of a financial impact on Social Security, and on how difficult it would be to administer.”

So just what were those areas? What are some of the most common ideas our lawmakers are coming up with when it comes to making Social Security better? Here are a few of them:

1. Guaranteeing a minimum benefit amount for people who have worked lower-wage jobs during their careers.

2. Lowering the number of credits needed to become eligible for the program.

3. Adjusting Social Security calculations to get more money into the hands of low-income single workers.

4. Giving credits to stay-at-home parents so they don’t miss out on benefits.

5. Increasing survivor benefits so widowed spouses, particularly those who didn’t work, are less affected by spousal deaths.

And the other ideas are much the same — they essentially amount to increasing benefits and coverage, particularly for folks who didn’t pay into the system (in many cases, voluntarily)."

...and the big one nobody's talking about since Lou Dobbs went off the air: immigration reform. The theory is, you let more Toms, Dicks, and Harrys in, they get jobs, they pay into the system to support people currently on it. According to some of the proposals above, the aim is also to get more people ON the system--more of that social justice again.

Immigration reform is slated for the 2010 presidential agenda--this, too, will go over like a lead balloon.

Health care reform was supposed to fix Medicare--instead of "fixing" these programs, we should look for ways OUT of them altogether. Look for another welfare reform package in 2011 (I can smell it).

Posted by Cute at 8:47 PM

Labels: politics, social issues