Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
November 10, 2010 at 07:00 PM
WASHINGTON BUREAU — Members of a federal deficit-fighting panel may say Congress should raise the normal Social Security retirement age to 68 and reduce annual cost-of-living increases.
The panel, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, is also thinking about calling for tough Medicare cost curbs, a 3-year federal salary freeze, a ban on congressional earmarks, and studies on the idea of limiting the home mortgage interest deduction and reducing spending on defense and federal farm subsidies.
The 18-member, bipartisan panel has included those provisions and others in a draft report posted today. The final draft is due Dec. 1.
President Obama created the panel. Members hope to come up with recommendations for reducing the federal budget deficit to about 3% of gross domestic product by 2015, from 8.9% for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
To get from the draft into the final report, a proposal must win the votes of at least 14 of the panel members.
The American Academy of Actuaries, Washington, wrote to the commission in October to urge it to increase the normal retirement age, to reflect the steadily increasing life expectancy of the typical American worker.
The mortgage deduction changes proposed in the draft could remove deductions for
