When will the liberals open their eyes?

[TheDoctor]

I recall Clinton on many occasions advocating using what at that time was a large budget surplus to shore up social security. Since he had a republican congress, that went nowhere. It was more important to squander the money on tax cuts for the wealthy.

The bush tax cuts have been a disaster. If they are allowed to expire, we can get back to surpluses.

Today, the non-partisan CBO has a different take. If bush's tax cuts are allowed to expire, the budget deficit will go down. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/washington/25budget.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 — The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted on Wednesday that the federal budget deficit would shrink again this year and could actually swing into a surplus in 2012 — but only if President Bush’s tax cuts expire in 2010.

The agency predicted that the deficit for 2007 would decline to about $200 billion. It would be the third big annual decline in a row, and it would come even though spending on the war in Iraq is expected to remain high this year.....

Extending the tax cuts would cost the Treasury $1.4 trillion in the next 10 years and increase the deficit in 2017 alone by more than $400 billion.

 

[Chicago526]

I think the first thing that needs to be done is to raise the retirement age from 67 to 70 (and since I'm 30, this affects me). Nothing stoping a person from retiring at 67, 65, 60 or 50, you just can't get SS until you hit 70. I'm not sure when to raise it, obviously anyone nearing retirement shouldn't have the age raised, it would pull the carpet out from under them. But younger workers shouldn't collect until 70.

After that, if there is still a short fall, there are three options. 1) raise SS taxes 2) lower payouts and 3) means testing, anyone with an estate worth more than $X million dollars can't collect SS. Non of these are fun options, but those are our chioces. Pick your poison, but putting off these dificult choices is only going to make things worse.

Just an asside, but it's something I've wondered about. Most of the SS mess is due to the large baby boomer generation, right? Once most or all of the BB's die off, the generations following have all been smaller and smaller. Once the BB's are gone, won't the short fall right itself again? Just wondering!