Behind Alan Simpson Bluster, a Warning Sign for Workers and Retirees

Behind Alan Simpson Bluster, a Warning Sign for Workers and Retirees

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Alliance for Retired Americans President Barbara Easterling wrote this at The Huffington Post.

Behind the shock and awe of Alan Simpson's hate-filled letter to the California chapter of my organization—he recently wrote that members of the Alliance for Retired Americans were "a wretched group of seniors" and "greedy geezers"—lies a cautionary tale for workers and retirees: Beware of politicians looking for political cover to cut Social Security.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Social Security's death have been greatly exaggerated. The little-known truth is that the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.7 trillion surplus, enough to fully pay all benefits through 2033 and a vast majority through 2086. Mitt Romney and Alan Simpson and others spread these popular myths of gloom and doom to deflect attention away from a major cause of our deficits: unneeded tax breaks for the rich and big corporations.
The December 2010 recommendations of a fiscal commission co-chaired by Simpson continue to greatly influence the Social Security debate. Mitt Romney and GOP congressional leaders want to lower Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age to as high as 70. Romney, like George W. Bush before him, wants to privatize Social Security, putting seniors at risk while Wall Street profits from gambling Social Security savings on the stock market. A more responsible approach is one by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) to significantly strengthen the Social Security Trust Fund by removing a loophole that allows upper-income Americans to avoid paying their fair share in Social Security payroll taxes.