NEWS
August 13, 2012 | By Michael Hiltzik
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.
BUSINESS
November 25, 2012 | By Scott Wilson, Los Angeles Times
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.
NEWS
August 18, 2011 | By Maeve Reston
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.
OPINION
January 27, 2005 | Benjamin R. Barber, Benjamin R. Barber, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, is the author of "Jihad vs. McWorld" (Ballantine, 1996) and other books.
Social Security privatization has been vigorously challenged on both economic and technical grounds. It has been said again and again that privatization increases risk for prospective retirees without solving the long-term Social Security financing shortfall (if there actually is one). It has been argued that privatization is merely a scheme to divert money from the Social Security trust fund for speculative stock market investments.
NATIONAL
April 12, 2013 | By Lisa Mascaro
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.