Raising the age is high on the agenda of those who want to cut Social Security as part of any deficit deal Congress may make after the election. All options to reduce benefits are in play in ongoing Beltway discussions over fixing Social Security, which is projected to be able to pay full benefits until 2033, but only seventy-five percent of benefits after that, unless Congress changes the law. So far, the political climate has not permitted a robust discussion of other approaches, such as raising payroll taxes either outright, or by increasing the amount of wages subject to Social Security taxes—currently $110,100.
Still, when the AP asked whether Social Security taxes should be raised so that benefits could be kept the same for everyone, 53 percent said yes. Thirty-six percent said they would rather keep the tax rate the same but reduce benefits for future generations. The question did not permit a choice of an across-the-board tax increase or raising the wage base for the tax. Other polls show that around two-thirds of Americans prefer raising the wage base.
Raising the retirement age has a lot of political appeal because people are living longer. On the surface, it seems logical, and the pols can sell it easier than saying they want to cut benefits across the board. So when a story comes along, especially one that has such a long reach, that does not make clear that raising the retirement age is a benefit cut, it tends to confuse the public even more about a program that’s complicated. But, as the AP’s own poll shows, it’s one that is super important to most Americans.
Laurel
Meanwhile: Kudos to AP reporters Jack Gillum and Richardo Alonso-Zaldivar for taking a close look at what vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan and others, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said about Medicare at the GOP convention this week.
Ryan, for example, said: “The biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly…So they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.”
Ryan was talking out of both sides of his mouth, the fact checkers found. They pointed out that Ryan, who heads the House Budget Committee, himself assumed those same cuts in the budgets he pushed through the House and used the money for deficit reduction. Their fact check also noted, as CJR has repeatedly reported, those cuts do not affect Medicare beneficiaries directly, but “reduce payments to hospitals, health insurance plans, and other service providers.”
The AP told readers that Ryan’s own plan for Medicare would “squeeze the program’s spending even more than the changes Obama made, shifting future retirees into a system in which they would get a fixed payment to shop for coverage among private insurance plans.” The AP correctly noted that those changes would “expose the elderly to more out-of-pocket costs.”
Gillum and Alonso-Zaldivar then tackled the convention rhetoric of Christie and others, too. The piece is worth a read, and we hope the AP continues on its fact-checking mission on both parties, and that other reporters and news outlets will do the same.
Trudy Lieberman’s “Medicare primer” is here. And an archive of her critiques of press coverage of the issue is here.
Thank you for reading our four-part series examining the long-term health of Social Security. We feel it is an important issue and we are very pleased with the way it’s been received, getting great play online and in newspapers across the country. I was the lead writer for the series, and I read the “Dart” you gave the final story. We welcome constructive criticism of our work but I wanted to make sure you knew there were a couple of inaccuracies in your critique.
The final installment in our series was a story about an Associated Press-GfK poll on public attitudes toward Social Security. We asked people their opinion of several options for addressing Social Security’s long-term financial problems.
As you noted in your Dart and we said in our story, in previous polls, most of the options for addressing Social Security scored poorly among the public. In general, people have said they don’t want to pay higher taxes and they don’t want to get fewer benefits. Knowing this, we wanted to find out which options people would be most willing to accept. To do this, our story said, the AP-GfK poll forced people to make a choice: Raise taxes or cut benefits? Raise the retirement age or cut monthly payments?
The results were newsworthy. As we reported, when given a choice, 53 percent of adults said they would rather raise taxes than cut benefits for future generations, according to the poll. Just 36 percent said they would cut benefits instead. The results were similar when people were asked whether they would rather raise the retirement age or cut monthly payments for future generations — 53 percent said they would raise the retirement age, while 35 percent said they would cut monthly payments.
In your Dart, you made this statement: “The problem? The AP didn’t tell survey responders or its readers that raising the retirement age is a cut, a big one that will result in smaller monthly benefits.”
This statement contains two inaccuracies. First, raising the retirement age does not by itself result in lower monthly benefits. It does, however, result in lower lifetime benefits because people would have to wait longer to qualify for full benefits.
Second, our story did tell readers that raising the retirement age is a benefit cut. Here is the passage: “The options for fixing Social Security fall into two broad categories — raising taxes or cutting benefits, or some combination of the two. But there are many options within each category. For example, raising the retirement age is a benefit cut for future generations, because they would have to wait longer to qualify for full benefits.”
The goal of the question was not an attempt to hide the fact that raising the retirement age is a benefit cut. It was an attempt to see which type of benefit cut people would be most willing to accept -- a higher retirement age or lower monthly payments?
Thank you,
Stephen Ohlemacher
Reporter
The Associated Press
#1 Posted by Stephen Ohlemacher, CJR on Thu 13 Sep 2012 at 11:27 AM
Thanks to Stephen Ohlemacher for tacking this subject and for his respectful reply to our criticism of the AP piece. And for pointing out that the AP story did say that "raising the retirement age is a benefit cut for future generations." But we continue to believe that the wording in the article was more confusing than clarifying, in that if the official Retirement Age is is raised, benefits are cut for anyone who retires at any age in the range allowed, 62 and up. Trudy Lieberman has written an additional article—"What raising the Retirement Age really means: a Social Security mini-primer," to further explain. It includes a chart that we hope is helpful to any reporter tackling this subject or any reader interested in it.
#2 Posted by Mike Hoyt, CJR on Thu 13 Sep 2012 at 11:47 AM