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.

Dear Liz: I went with my brother to his credit union to refinance his house and found out his wife has about eight medical bills that went to collections and he owes a phone company more than $2,000. Their debt totals about $6,300. I could lend them the money or they could do a debt consolidation or talk to a credit counselor. What's your opinion on these options? Answer: None of these options is likely to work the way you hope. Your brother should be wary of any "debt consolidation" offers he gets, as many will be scams and others will charge outrageous interest.

Re "Fix Social Security, now," Editorial, April 25 It's hard to take this editorial seriously because it fails to talk about the Social Security payroll tax holiday enacted in 2010. If you want to fix Social Security, the first thing you need to look at is rolling back this tax break. With every extension of the payroll tax holiday, the prospect that Congress will ever restore the tax to its statutory 6.2% of covered income becomes increasingly remote. In case you haven't figured it out yet, this is the tax that funds Social Security, so it should be no surprise that Social Security will run into trouble if we don't pay it in full.

Gay rights advocates in Michigan cheered Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.'s announcement Friday that the federal government will recognize about 300 same-sex marriages hastily performed March 22. But the small victory translates to more complications for some newlyweds. After a federal judge struck down the state's gay marriage ban March 21, Deborah Dolney, 28, and her fiancee, Jessie-Mae Secord, 33, seized the opportunity to get married. Four counties opened their offices the next day to issue marriage licenses, and Dolney and Secord were among those in line.

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.

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.

The Social Security trustees projected this week that funding for retirement benefits will run short in 2033, three years sooner than had been estimated a year ago. After that, the program will be able to pay only about 75% of the amount now promised to retirees and the disabled. That's still a long way off, and lawmakers may not want to meddle with Social Security in an election year. But the longer Congress waits to deal with the problem, the harder it will be to solve. The last time lawmakers made significant changes to Social Security was in 1983, when they raised payroll taxes and gradually increased the retirement age. Those changes were made not just to solve a near-term funding crisis but also to gird the system for the baby boom generation's retirement.

In the wake of some wide-ranging breaches in credit card data, Mastercard and Visa this month announced an initiative to increase payment security, including expanding chip technology in the U.S. “The recent high-profile breaches have served as a catalyst for much-needed collaboration between the retail and financial services industry on the issue of payment security,” Ryan McInerney, president of Visa Inc., said in a statement this month....

Lee is making some changes in his life. He wants to know what happens if he renounces his U.S. citizenship and becomes instead a citizen of the Philippines. Can he keep receiving Social Security checks? An intriguing scenario. Lee doesn't say why he wants to switch teams, but it could have something to do with taxes. A number of Americans jump ship each year because they're displeased with the U.S. tax system. ASK LAZ: Smart answers to consumer questions In any case, the Social Security Administration does have a status for ex-citizens who may be due monthly checks.

Dear Liz: I am 55 and my wife is 65. She only worked a few part-time jobs as she spent most of her working years raising our nine beautiful children. My question is, since she does not have enough credits to collect Social Security on her own work record, can she claim spousal benefits on my work history? If so, at what age and how will it affect my benefits? Answer: Your wife can receive spousal benefits based on your work record, but those checks can't start until you're old enough to qualify for benefits at age 62 (when she's 72)

Chalk it up to Republican obstinacy , Democratic opposition , or just plain common sense, the White House has dropped the noxious chained CPI from its Social Security proposals for the upcoming federal budget. The chained consumer price index is a new way of calculating inflation that backers say is more "accurate" than the traditional CPI. As we demonstrated conclusively last year, it's not more "accurate. " But those who advocated using the chained CPI to calculate annual Social Security cost-of-living raises didn't really care about its accuracy.

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.

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?

We've never met the man, so we're willing to stipulate that Sen. Tom Coburn (R- Okla.), a physician who recently announced his early retirement from the Senate, is a sweetheart to have at a dinner party. That's the bottom line on Coburn offered by Bloomberg columnist Margaret Carlson, who seems genuinely bereft at the thought of his leaving Washington. " He was the most ego-free, funny and sensible person you could meet," she wrote a few days ago.  Coburn is evidently considered an engaging fellow in Washington facing serious medical problems, so you can count Carlson's piece as the harbinger of a flood of similar insider encomiums.  Curiously, however, there's very little in Carlson's column about the reason that any of us outside Washington might care one whit about Coburn -- his positions on a host of important issues, or his tactics for making his positions stick.

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.