The Observation Deck

should the Romney/Ryan ticket get elected

especially when your own side supports the "Complete Live System" of Ezekiel Emmanuel which cuts benefits to seniors.

He offers literally no solutions to SS reform that are worth mentioning

It's just a bunch of political grandstanding.

Democrats are still hammering an old, and since replaced, GOP proposal, claiming it would “end Medicare,” and cost seniors $6,000 more a year for their health care. The newest Republican budget, proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, keeps traditional Medicare — unlike his plan from 2011 — and the increased cost claim is no longer applicable to it.

■For seniors who are now in Medicare, nothing changes. They can stay with the traditional program as it is.
■Beginning in 2023, 65-year-olds would have their choice of insurance plans — private and traditional — on a new Medicare exchange. A premium-support payment, like a subsidy, would be sent to the plan of their choice.

■If the chosen plan costs more than the premium-support, the senior would pay the difference.

■The Medicare eligibility age would be slowly raised to 67 by 2034.

■All plans on the Medicare exchange would offer a base level of benefits, and they would be regulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

■The premium-support payments would be tied to the second-cheapest plan, which can’t grow more than gross domestic product plus 0.5 percentage points. If the cost does grow faster, Congress would be required to step in and take some action to keep costs down.

The Obama campaign depends on some false or dubious assumptions

We also take issue with the claim that at age 67 the fictional Julia can “retire comfortably” under Obama but, “Under Mitt Romney: Julia’s benefits could be cut by 40%.”

We’ll start with the fact that Obama has not proposed any measures to address the sorry state of Social Security’s finances, which (according to the most recent report of the system’s trustees) will be unable to pay currently promised benefits beyond 2033. After that — unless Congress acts — “tax income would be sufficient to pay only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2086,” the trustees state.

Under intermediate assumptions, considered the most likely, scheduled benefits would have to be cut 25 percent in 2033, and a bit more in later years, reaching a 27 percent cut in 2086. (See bottom of Table IV.B3.) Therefore, Julia’s benefits would be cut automatically under what Obama has proposed so far, which is nothing. So would benefits for everybody already on Social Security now and in the future.

Interestingly, the White House chose its words carefully here, and didn’t really promise that Julia actually would get benefits as generous as those in current law. It just said that at age 67 “she receives monthly benefits that help her retire comfortably.” That leaves open the possibility that Obama might accept a change in the benefit formula to slow the future growth in the system’s cost. And indeed, a recent story in the New York Times Magazine says that Obama was prepared to make some cuts in the future growth of benefits to get a “grand bargain” with House Speaker John Boehner last year.

The Times reported that the president had rejected Boehner’s proposal to raise the retirement age above 67, where it is now for all who were born after 1960. Instead, the Times reported: “Obama was willing to apply a new, less generous formula for calculating Social Security benefits, which would start in 2015.” In an interview in July 2011, ABC News’ Jake Tapper asked Obama twice if he would consider raising the retirement age, and the president responded the second time by saying, “I’m not going to get into specifics.”

“I’m not going to get into specifics.”

Stephen Eisel wrote:

It's just a bunch of political grandstanding.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/no-end ... are-claim/

Democrats are still hammering an old, and since replaced, GOP proposal, claiming it would “end Medicare,” and cost seniors $6,000 more a year for their health care. The newest Republican budget, proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, keeps traditional Medicare — unlike his plan from 2011 — and the increased cost claim is no longer applicable to it.

http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/8284.pdf

■For seniors who are now in Medicare, nothing changes. They can stay with the traditional program as it is.
■Beginning in 2023, 65-year-olds would have their choice of insurance plans — private and traditional — on a new Medicare exchange. A premium-support payment, like a subsidy, would be sent to the plan of their choice.

■If the chosen plan costs more than the premium-support, the senior would pay the difference.

■The Medicare eligibility age would be slowly raised to 67 by 2034.

■All plans on the Medicare exchange would offer a base level of benefits, and they would be regulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

■The premium-support payments would be tied to the second-cheapest plan, which can’t grow more than gross domestic product plus 0.5 percentage points. If the cost does grow faster, Congress would be required to step in and take some action to keep costs down.

Thealexa Becker wrote:Nowhere did I say that he was trying to get rid of Medicare if that is what you are implying.

The Romney-Ryan budget would devastate the security of senior citizens, ending Medicare as we know it and privatizing Social Security.

Prior to the GOP debate in Florida, Republicans and Democrats alike floated false statements on Social Security. The Florida Democratic Party incorrectly says in a web ad that Mitt Romney "would privatize" Social Security, while Romney wrongly claims in a campaign flier that Rick Perry "wants to end Social Security."

It's true that Romney has expressed support for allowing younger workers to voluntarily invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in private retirement accounts. But that's not the same as privatizing Social Security, as we have written before when Democrats have made similar attacks. And while it's true that Perry has called Social Security a "failure," he has not advocated ending it. He has called for a national conversation on how to change it.

That's not true. In his book "No Apology," Romney lays out what he calls "at least four ways one could repair Social Security" (beginning on page 173). He rejects one of the four: raising payroll taxes. The other three he is willing to consider:
■Increase the retirement age with exceptions for people "physically unable to work beyond today's retirement age;"
■Use the consumer price index, instead of the wage index, to determine Social Security benefits for "high-income individuals" — a change that would reduce future benefits for those individuals;
■Allow younger workers the option "to direct a portion of their Social Security tax to a private account."

Romney says "one or a combination of these last three options will put Social Security on track to sustainably meet its obligations to current and future retirees."

It's the last option — the creation of private accounts — that Democrats have mischaracterized as privatization ever since President George W. Bush first proposed "personal accounts," as he called them, back in 2005. Bush's plan was voluntary and it would have allowed less than one-third of anyone’s Social Security taxes to be put into private accounts. Currently, Social Security payroll taxes amount to 12.4 percent of taxable wages, and Bush would have allowed up to 4 percent of that to go into private accounts. That's not at all like Chile, which did privatize its Social Security system in 1981.

Romney spoke highly of Bush's plan during the 2008 campaign. At a town hall meeting four years ago, Romney said "personal accounts would be a big plus." He also embraced Bush's plan at a presidential debate, saying "that works," after describing what the president wanted to do. He has tempered his support for private accounts, but still supports them. In his book, he writes that he does not want to "divert" money from Social Security.

The Romney-Ryan budget would give an additional $250,000 tax cut to millionaires. Middle-class families could pay thousands of dollars more a year in taxes to help fund tax breaks for millionaires. So I guess this means the Romney-Ryan budget is marvelous for millionaires but not the middle class or seniors.

Romney’s tax plan would make numerous changes, including cutting all marginal tax rates by 20 percent — which would benefit all taxpayers. Romney also would eliminate taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest for taxpayers earning less than $200,000 in adjusted gross income. In a proposal that would benefit mostly upper-income earners, Romney also would repeal the estate tax, lower the corporate tax rate, and repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. Romney would also extend the Bush tax cuts that are due to expire at the end of the year. However, he would allow Obama’s tax changes to expire — including an expansion of the earned income tax credit for low-income workers.

In an analysis of Romney’s plan, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center considered the impact of those changes based on current policy and found “about 11 percent of tax units would see their 2015 taxes go up an average of nearly $900 while 70 percent would get tax cuts averaging almost $4,300.” A TPC table shows that the average low-income taxpayer would see their taxes go up, because Romney would not extend Obama’s tax policies. “The tax increases reflect the expiration of three provisions enacted in 2009: the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the expansion of the earned income credit and the child credit,” the tax center says, noting, however, that Romney has said that the low- and middle-income groups will pay “no larger shares of federal taxes than they do now.”

Middle-income taxpayers — those earning between $39,862 and $69,074 — would see an average tax cut of $810.
Of course, under Romney’s plan, the more money you make the more you could potentially see in tax cuts. The Tax Policy Center says that Romney’s plan, based on current policy, would result in a $149,997 average tax cut for the top 1 percent — which is where Priorities USA Action gets its figure of $150,000. But the center also notes that Romney’s plan would increase the tax base by making unspecified changes in “tax preferences,” such as tax credits and deductions. The center, however, could not determine what impact those revenue-raising changes would have on taxpayers, so none of the center’s figures takes that into consideration.