Congress is now shadow boxing about the payroll tax holiday that is set to expire at the end of this year. Currently, workers are getting a break equal to 2% of earnings up to the Social Security taxable maximum of $106,800. The temporary tax cut was part of a deal struck last year to extend [...]

Texas Governor Rick Perry is being rightly criticized for his loony claims about Social Security in last night’s GOP presidential debate. But what troubles me the most is this whopper: “It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you’re paying into a program that’s going to [...]

Social Security has two obvious problems. While the system is not “broke,” as some insist, it will have only enough money to provide future retirees with about three-quarters of their promised benefits.  At the same time, it is poorly designed for the needs of a country where life expectancy and the nature of work and family have [...]

Ideological heresy may not quite be breaking out all over Washington, but in the growing debate over the burgeoning debt, there are helpful hints of apostasy. And hope of a bipartisan consensus for responsible deficit reduction may lie atop those tiny waves of dissent. The latest whiff of hopeful heterodoxy comes from three Republican senators– Saxby Chambliss of [...]

Three-quarters of Americans believe that entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security “will create major economic problems” over the next 25 years. But two-thirds are opposed to addressing these challenges by reducing benefits, and 56 percent are against raising taxes. And congressional candidates, who read the polls, are scrambling to pander to the free-lunch [...]

If Social Security reform is political dynamite, the battle over whether to raise the retirement age may be the fuse. I got a hint of the passion behind this issue at an Urban Institute panel I moderated yesterday on Capitol Hill.
In recent weeks, both Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who is the number #2 House Democrat, and John Boehner (R-OH), the top House Republican, have put the idea on the table. Ah, you say, there is finally bipartisan support for something in Washington. Not so fast. Both are far out on a legislative limb with little public support from fellow lawmakers.

Maryland Democratic congressman Steny Hoyer is something of a throwback. In an age of ideological extremes, the House Majority Leader is a moderate. At a time when elected officials are held in low esteem, the #2 House Democrat proudly serves in his fourth decade as a legislator. And when incendiary speech is the ticket to political stardom, Hoyer is far more comfortable counting votes in legislative backrooms than delivering red-meat polemics.

President Obama’s Bipartisan Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is having its first meeting today. As I peer at my bookshelf full of well-meaning policy prescriptions produced by similar panels over the years, I am skeptical at best. These enterprises are, as Dr. Johnson said of second marriages, “a triumph of hope over experience.” Still, you never know. As my colleague Gene Steuerle reminds me, few thought tax reform would get off the ground in 1984-85. Yet, by mid-1986, it had happened.

I know it is risky so early in the year, but I have a nomination for the worst idea of 2010. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), wants to make Social Security retirement benefits available beginning at age 60. Temporarily. To create jobs.
His logic appears to be this: If one million people between 60 and 62 (the current age for early Social Security eligibility) retire early, they will open up one million new opportunities for younger people. Somehow, in Kucinich-math, this creates jobs.

The thing about a donut hole is that it is empty. There is nothing. And that, it seems, is what is left of Barack Obama's plan to fix Social Security.
The Obama people now tell us that his proposal, which is built on a tax hike for those earning more than $250,000, won't take effect until at least 2018. You heard right: 2018.