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June 12, 2015 at 12:20 PM
Mike Huckabee has garnered some unfair criticism about his commitment to Social Security. His campaign website says that he “will kill anything that poses a threat to the promises we have made to America’s seniors.”
The media coverage portrays his position in sharp contrast to other candidates within the GOP. Huckabee himself promotes the distinction saying: “Unlike some in Washington who want to cut benefits for seniors, I will protect Social Security and Medicare. Period.” He further calls-out Chris Christie’s proposal as ‘an insult’ to Americans who have had their paychecks garnished for 50 years.
While Huckabee’s words about Social Security are different from his GOP contemporaries, there is no substantive difference between any of the candidates in the GOP field. No one in the GOP field is talking about cutting the benefits of seniors or even near seniors. The essential difference is that Huckabee says that he will do nothing, while the rest of the field put forward ideas that deliver nothing.
Social Security is a battleship in the bathtub. Changing the financial course of the system through gradual reform requires decades, particularly if the policy option insulates existing retirees. Jeb Bush for example discussed the possibility of increasing the retirement age to 70. Under a typical pace, gradual change would not bring the normal retirement age to 70 until 2060, roughly 25 years after Social Security is projected to be insolvent.
The life expectancy of future retirees is not a structural driver of the imbalances in SS. A typical reader believes that increasing the retirement age is a reasonable change because we are living longer. The prospects of a retiree at the age of 65 in 2000 is roughly the same as the projected life prospects of retiree of 67 in 2050. It is sell side noise.
The entire field of candidates for the GOP nomination seems oblivious to the research from the Social Security Administration which says that someone turning 67 today on average expects to live to 2034, whereas the Trustees say that Social Security has less than a break-even bet to pay full benefits through 2033. None of the candidates explain how they plan to protect existing retirees, much less near-retirees, from the economic black-hole that is developing inside the Social Security program.
