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Thursday, April 07, 2005
Upcoming Social Security Legislation
Next week Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) plan to reintroduce their bill on Social Security reform in Congress. Their bill includes payroll tax-financed individual accounts.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is also moving ahead with work on his Social Security legislation. His bill will also include payroll tax-financed individual investment accounts, but unlike other GOP bills, will most likely propose to raise the retirement age for benefit eligibility. He is considering the age of 68 as of right now (the current retirement age is 67).
Graham is also exploring various approaches to "progressive price indexing," an idea which is touted by in Robert Pozen's Social Security reform proposal. Pozen, a Democrat, was a member of Bush's 2001 Social Security commission. His plan, which is getting increasing favorable attention from President Bush, would protect the lowest-income seniors by keeping them under wage indexing but would gradually blend in price indexing until the seniors at the upper end of the income scale would be subject to full price indexing.
Posted by Becky Lewis
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