Five budget realities no politician will talk about (not even Ron Paul)

2. Social Security is fixable, but ignored

Joshua Lott/Reuters
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign event in Mesa, Ariz., Feb. 13, 2012. He proposes to have future Social Security benefits grow more slwoly for the wealthy, but the proposal wouldn't save much money.

The gap between promised benefits and expected revenue of Social Security is $9 trillion. In principal, the program could be made solvent with a combination of raising the retirement age, changing the formula for raising benefits over time, and raising payroll taxes. Candidates for president, however, prefer to avoid the issue. Paul promises to “preserve Social Security for those elderly retirees who have come to depend on it.” Mr. Romney also emphasizes that if he is elected there will be “no change for retirees or those near retirement.” 

Last summer, the president reportedly proposed linking future Social Security benefits to a slower-growing index than the one currently in use, which would have resulted in major savings. The idea went nowhere. Romney now proposes the same thing, but only for wealthy recipients. But since the wealthy receive roughly the same benefits as the middle class from entitlement programs, changing their benefits will save very small amounts of money.

In short, no candidate currently offers a specific plan that would significantly reform Social Security.

2 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.