Letter of Experts Opposed to Cuts in Social Security Benefits


The Letter of Experts Opposed to Cuts in Social Security Benefits is fairly brief.

To see the lengthy signature list, click on the above link to the article.

As experts on Social Security, the federal budget or the economy, we write to correct a commonly held misconception – that Social Security somehow contributes to the federal government’s deficit. In fact, Social Security’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and its Disability Insurance Trust Fund are prohibited from paying benefits unless those funds have sufficient income and assets to cover the cost, and they have no borrowing authority to acquire the requisite income and assets. Consequently, Social Security is prohibited by law from deficit-spending and thus contributing to the federal deficit.

We also write to point out that Social Security’s benefits are modest both compared to those of other industrialized countries and in absolute terms. Its administrative costs are also modest, amounting to less than a penny of every dollar expended. The modest size yet increasing importance of Social Security’s life insurance, disability insurance, and old age annuities, given the trends in private sector retirement arrangements, savings, home equity and stock values, leads us, as a policy matter, to recommend strongly that Social Security’s manageable shortfall, still decades away, should be eliminated without cutting benefits, including without raising the retirement age.

 

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