Pat Dollard

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Slate:

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter strode outside the Capitol today to introduce his first well-timed policy proposal of the 2012 campaign — a Social Security reform plan built along the lines of the old Ryan-Sununu plan, one that would limit the obligations of the program by creating private accounts for people under 50 to go alongside some smaller guaranteed benefits. It was endorsed on the scene by Grover Norquist, who’d backed Ryan-Sununu, too. Naturally, most of the questions were some variation on “But what do you think of Rick Perry calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme?”

“To me, the question is not what you term a system that is unsustainable,” said McCotter. “The question is what you do to fix a system that is unsustainable. I would hope that, if anything else, this sparks debate among Republicans and Democrats. If you don’t like this either, at least come forward with a proposal that you’d use as a basis.”

I asked McCotter if he disagreed with Perry’s central critique: That Social Security was unconstitutional and bad for America’s will.

“If I agreed with that,” he said. “I wouldn’t be introducting a bill to save it, would I?”
McCotter, who won’t be onstage in Tampa — he will watch the debate from his office, he said — got to the two problems dogging Perry. One: He has criticized Social Security without proposing his own, attackable plan to replace it. Two: He’s criticized the program’s very existence, while other Republicans have limited their critiques to “how can we save it?”

What did it mean that other candidates — Romney, maybe Bachmann — were attacking Perry for talking in such terms about Social Security?

“What they’re saying,” analyzed Grover Norquist, “is that their campaigns are not going as well as they’d like.”

Below is a summary of McCotter’s “Save Social Security Act” Provided by McCotter2012.com:

1. This legislation empowers each worker age 50 and below individually with the freedom to choose a contribution to a personal savings and investment account equal roughly to half of the employee share of the Social Security payroll tax (5% of the first $10,000 of earnings each year, and 2.5% of earnings above that up to the maximum Social Security taxable income each year). That contribution would be financed by a payment each year from general revenues financed by reductions in government spending, so there will be no reduction in the payroll tax that would negatively impact Social Security revenues, and no additional costs for the worker in choosing the personal accounts option.

2. No change is made in any way for those already retired today, or those anywhere near retirement.

3. Each worker is free to choose to stay with the current Social Security program and forego the personal accounts entirely. There would be no change in Social Security benefits under current law for those who make this choice.

4. To the extent a worker chooses the personal account option over his career, the personal account would finance an equivalent percentage of the worker’s future Social Security retirement benefits, under a statutory formula. For a worker who exercises the account each year for his entire career, the account would replace the maximum of 50% of the worker’s retirement benefits, with the rest continuing to come from Social Security. For those who exercise the account option for fewer years and later in their careers, the account would replace proportionally less under a statutory formula.

5. Workers who choose the personal accounts are backed by a federal guarantee that they will receive at least as much as promised by Social Security under current law, maintaining the social safety net of the current program.

6. The Chief Actuary of Social Security scores the bill as ultimately eliminating all future deficits of Social Security, with no benefit cuts or tax increases, assuring that all current and future Social Security benefits will be paid. Because the personal accounts finance so much of the future benefits of Social Security, the deficit between continuing payroll tax revenues and continuing benefit obligations of the public program is eliminated.

7. Under this legislation, there is no change in the Social Security retirement age, cuts in the Social Security COLA, or other benefit cuts promoted by other proposals. Workers with personal accounts choose their own retirement age (62 or later) with the incentive to delay retirement as is feasible to allow further account accumulations.

8. In fact, because long term market investment returns are so much higher than what Social Security even promises, let alone what it can pay, future retirees with personal accounts will enjoy higher benefits than the current Social Security program promises. The benefits payable by the personal accounts at just standard, long term, market returns would be much higher than the Social Security benefits than they replace.