Social Security

Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady on Thursday rejected a proposal to reduce Medicare catastrophic health insurance premiums that congressional analysts expect will generate a bigger surplus than is needed. Brady, in a letter to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), said the insurance program "is literally in its first few months of life" and the Bush Administration wants to be sure it is not left with insufficient reserves. The new insurance program, approved by Congress last year, provides extended coverage for the costs of hospital and medical care and drug benefits.

WASHINGTON - Seeking to present a unified Democratic front in an election year, President Obama is backing away from a proposal to restrain spending on entitlement programs, focusing instead on economic priorities likely to please his party's base. Obama's next budget will not include a change that would have slowed cost-of-living increases for Social Security and other programs, the White House said Thursday. The proposal, which was included in last year's budget, was reviled by liberal Democrats but billed by Obama as a good-faith gesture intended to draw Republicans into deficit-reduction talks.

Re "Two views of Social Security," Postscript, April 28 I have a solution for Social Security: Why not let the Social Security deduction tax all wages, as the Medicare deduction does? What is the reasoning behind Social Security stopping at $110,100? This makes no sense to me. Why just penalize the average worker with this deduction and let the rich cease paying at this foolish number? This solution would fund the account for decades to come. Seems like a very simple solution.

Dear Liz: Recently I've paid off almost $20,000 in credit card debt and am determined not to go down that path again. Because I haven't used these cards in a while, though, I'm starting to get notifications from the credit card companies that they're closing my accounts because of inactivity. I know having long-standing accounts on your credit report is a good thing, but I don't want to be tempted to use these cards just to keep the account open. Is it a bad thing if almost all of my credit card accounts get closed?

For a 77-year-old, Social Security is looking pretty spry today, the anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's signing of the Social Security Act in 1935. The program covers more than 54 million Americans, providing a dignified retirement and keeping the families of premature deceased workers out of poverty.  Among those who should be celebrating: Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisc., the newly-anointed GOP candidate for vice-president. As has been widely reported , Ryan's father died in 1986, when the future congressman was 16. The younger Ryan collected Social Security survivor benefits, which he put away for college, until the age of 18. Yet he returned the favor by proposing one of the most draconian plans to privatize Social Security in 2005.

Deciding when to start collecting Social Security retirement benefits is one of the most important financial decisions Americans face. Beginning too soon - or too late - can end up costing you tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how long you live. Some key things to consider: • You can start receiving Social Security payments at age 62, but the amount will be reduced 25% to 30% from what it would be at your "full" retirement age. If you were born in 1960 or later, your full retirement age is 67. For those born from 1943 to 1959, it's somewhere from age 66 to 66 years and 10 months.

Re "Don't rush for Social Security," Business, April 29 While it is true that delaying collecting your normal Social Security benefit beyond your full retirement age gives you an 8% annual increase, to get that 8% increase you give up 100% of the normal benefit you could be collecting. Here's an example: You can start collecting $1,000 a month at 66 or delay until age 70 (48 months), and get $1,320 a month (8% yearly increase for 4 years). To get that extra $320 a month you've given up $48,000 that you could have already collected, and you'll be over 82 before you finally catch up - if you live that long.

Reporting from Dover, N.H. -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry told a voter in Dover, New Hampshire Thursday that he had no plans to change the Social Security system for those who are nearing the point where they would receive benefits.  "You don't have to worry about anything," Perry told an older man who asked him to explain his position during a visit to Harvey's, a coffee shop in Dover. "There's not going to be any changes in the program that we've got for folks that are your age. We'll have a conversation with the rest of the country about what is the age that we start transitioning away from the program we've got now. " "The folks who are either on or soon to be on, they don't have anything to worry about.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama's proposal to trim Social Security's cost-of-living adjustments has sparked not only Democratic outrage, but Republican confusion. In the days since Obama put the idea in his 2014 budget, Republicans' reactions have included support, opposition and refusal to commit. The proposal was once a mainstay of the GOP's deficit-reduction overtures to the White House. House Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that the idea, the so-called chained Consumer Price Index, “is the least we must do to begin to solve the problems in Social Security.” DOCUMENT: President Obama's 2014 budget But the chairman of the House Republican Congressional Committee, who is trying to preserve the party's majority in the House in the next election, called it a “shocking attack on seniors.” “You're trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors and I just think it's not the right way to go,” Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon told CNN.   That potentially off-message comment provoked swift rebuke from the powerful Club for Growth, the conservative advocacy group that supports the measure as a starting point for reining in spending on government entitlement programs.

Maggie Ellis spent more than 20 years as a teacher, including 10 at a public school, before she learned a dirty little secret: She won't be getting all the Social Security she would be entitled to in retirement. Ellis' current job, as a fifth-grade teacher in the Elk Grove Unified School District, isn't covered by Social Security. Her previous work, as a counselor and teacher in the private sector, was covered. And she's about to get married to a self-employed man who's also covered by the program.

Dear Liz: I often hear financial planners say you should save 10% of your income, but they don't go into exactly what that means. Is that 10% separate from retirement or including retirement? Does that include saving for your emergency fund? Is this just archaic advice now? I'm 46 with only $40,000 saved for retirement so I'm in the panic mode that I will never be able to save enough for retirement. Answer: Saving 10% for retirement is often considered a minimum for those who start saving in their 20s. The older you are when you begin, the more you'd need to save to match the nest egg you would have accumulated with an earlier start.

Neiman Marcus Group offered more details Thursday about the data breach it disclosed late last week, saying that although credit and debit card information was stolen, customers' social security numbers and birth dates were not. And because the company doesn't use PIN pads in its stores, the identifying numbers that are usually punched into the machines appear to be safe, Neiman Marcus said. And, as of Wednesday, the company said accounts linked to its Neiman Marcus card aren't showing signs of fraudulent activity.

It may not feel this way to the millions of Americans who can't afford to retire, but there's an economic upside to delaying retirement. As people are forced to work longer in life, they'll generate additional tax revenue that could reduce federal budget deficits and spending on Social Security. That's the thesis of a new book by two fellows at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C. The increase in work could boost government revenue by as much as $2.1 trillion over the next three decades, according to the book “Closing the Deficit -- How Much Can Later Retirement Help?

On my 16th birthday in 1950, I went to work for the daily newspaper in the small East Texas town where I grew up. It was a racially divided town - about 20,000 people, half of them white, half of them black - a place where you could grow up well loved, well taught and well churched, and still be unaware of the lives of others merely blocks away. It was nonetheless a good place to be a cub reporter: small enough to navigate but big enough to keep me busy and learning something new every day. I soon had a stroke of luck.

Re "CEOs want you - to fix the debt," Opinion, Dec. 1 Consider my modest proposal on the matter of the CEOs at the Business Roundtable advocating the reduction of Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age to the highest in the developed world, while they have benefits averaging about $86,000 a month: All income from any source, including stock warrants and options, in excess of $400,000 a year will be taxed at the rate for Social...

Many of the nation's top CEOs have joined forces to "fix the debt. " They want to achieve this goal, in part, by reducing Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age to 70. One of the chief executive officers, David Cote, runs Honeywell. "As an American, I couldn't know about this problem and not try to do something about it," Cote told Wall Street Journal TV. Cote has $134 million in his Honeywell retirement account, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and he has worked there only 11 years.

In a departure from most medical privacy cases, Anthem Blue Cross said it accidentally posted online Social Security or tax identification numbers for about 24,500 California doctors. [Updated 1:03 p.m. PST Nov. 25: An Anthem spokesman said Monday that 24,500 doctors were affected, up from the previous 5,900 figure issued by the company. ] Anthem, a unit of insurance giant WellPoint Inc., said the private information was mistakenly included with its online provider directory for about 24 hours late last month.

Like many Republicans - what's more, like many Americans - I regard Ronald Reagan as my political hero and inspiration. For conservatives who came of age in the 1960s and '70s, President Reagan offered a principled and compassionate argument for individual freedom and an equally compelling case for personal responsibility. In 1989, Reagan described his view of America "as a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.