SocialEssay Preview: SocialReport this essayRetirement seems to be one of the most often overlooked areas of peoples future plan. Simply because it seems so far away, it is an area that is subject to procrastination. People are expected to live longer now than ever before, this is another reason why young adults and teenagers are not worried about saving for their retirement. The baby boom generation, the seventy seven million people born between 1943 and 1960, face an entirely different retirement plan. As they began to retire, people are starting to think that there will be no money left and this will turn into a crisis. What will happen when seventy-seven million baby boomers begin to want the money they paid inÐ but it is not there? Retirement provisions such as Social Security, IRAs, and 401k are there to help when you are deciding how to save money.
There is much-heated debate on the issues of Social Security today. The Social Security system is the largest government program of income distribution in the United States. Today there is a surplus within the Social Security system. They are generating more tax revenues from workers than they are paying out to beneficiaries. But the problem a lot of people are concerned with is that they wont see a dime of what they worked so hard to contribute into the Social Security system for so many years. Social Security provides benefits to about forty-three million Americans. Not only to retired workers, but also to their spouses and dependents of the workers who die prematurely. It also provides benefits to disabled workers and their dependents. Without the benefits some social problems such as poverty and elder abuse may develop throughout the country. Now that the baby boomers generation approaches retirement age, there is concern about the consequences it will have on Social Security.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Social Security program is generating about $2 million per year more in payroll taxes than it was before the Social Security Act of 1935. It would pay about $9 billion less in the decade to 2030 than the current Social Security Act and would be in deficit less than it would have been without the law. And the impact is still being felt as people begin to make new purchases like cars and furniture.
We’ve made much progress with the Social Security Act over the past seven years. The changes we made had significant cost savings from better management and a shorter time frame in collecting benefits, and the cost savings have largely passed in the past five years as people try to make even greater contributions to the retirement budget and to the economy.
The budget will continue to grow in the most critical years since the 1930s, but the changes the budget will make come at a cost both in terms of its long-term effects on the economy that includes: 1) greater spending in the pension age, 2) the retirement benefits and 3) the cost-of-living adjustment. The budget also includes a lot of savings that we haven’t really planned to add, including more than $1.5 billion in savings over the next three years. Inflation risk will also remain high. There is little of that happening in future years.
In order to offset the more than $4.2 billion our president proposed to cut to the Social Security system over five years, we propose to eliminate the most important retirement element: the cost of retirement. All of the new benefits will be in service, and these people will also continue to be able to buy their own 401(k)-style retirement plan.
We’ll also increase retirement contributions and to include those of workers with disabilities to help offset some of the most critical social services that will be replaced by our Medicare program. We’ve also promised to increase the contribution limits for people on the federal Disability Insurance Program. We’ve also pledged to increase lifetime benefits in a number of ways until we reach our long-term goal of increasing the lifetime income limits for people currently receiving disability assistance to 30%, and for people with high incomes to 15% of the average Federal poverty level.
We’ve also pledged to add another $4 billion to our pension system to help offset the costs from the Social Security Act in the second half and the full decade of the program. The Social Security Act has been very good to our veterans and their families.
President Obama is promising to cut Social Security benefits. To ensure we’re on schedule to make health care decisions on time as a result of the Affordable Care Act, he needs to deliver for those who need it most — our veterans. To take his word for it, Sen. Sanders said yesterday on the Senate floor that President Obama deserves more tax credits for American workers.
I say pay more to help more Americans succeed and that makes me proud of this promise. As I said yesterday, this program for some was too big a program to give to everyone who needed it most and that’s the reason we cut this program so heavily.
That does nothing to address real entitlement reform. We are still living in a system that is too big, too big a program so the best thing for most Americans is to be able to save and live by saving and living on.