Government Analyzes 30 Social Security Changes (U.S. News & World Report)

Both Obama and Geithner chimed in on the debt ceiling today. Obama gave a press conference. Geithner sent a letter to Congress.

AEI economist Andrew Biggs (formerly principal deputy commissioner of Social Security) writes in the American.com (emphasis added): 

Fun title, right? But this is a new feature on the blog. "Guest Graph" is where I'll ask experts in various fields to contribute a post built around a graph of their choice. They choose the image. They choose the argument. The only constraint is that there needs to be a chart illustrating what they're saying. I decided to start with my friend Henry Aaron, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on health care and entitlement policy. His post -- and graph! -- follows.

For retirees hoping to live long and prosper in their golden years, the U.S. is only the 19th best place to be, according to a new index by the NGAM Durable Portfolio Research Center. 

Every politician in America knows that Social Security (SS) is a third rail. Any Pol who tries to mess with the country’s largest and most popular entitlement program is going to have the likes of the AARP coming after them. It’s not possible to win an election on a platform that advocates cutting back SS.

  Every politician in America knows that Social Security (SS) is a third rail. Any Pol who tries to mess with the country's largest and most popular entitlement program is going to have the likes of the AARP coming after them. It's not possible to win an election on a platform that advocates cutting back SS.

By James Kwak In this season of fiscal brinksmanship, the topic of Social Security has once again come to the fore. Republicans are generally in favor of cutting benefits, although they are bit afraid to say so after the demise of George W. Bush’s privatization “plan”; Democrats are generally in favor of not cutting benefits. But many liberals have another argument: Social Security is irrelevant to the whole issue of deficits and the debt, since the program cannot have any impact on either.

INEQUALITY fosters resentment, but so can redistribution. That’s especially true when tax revenues go toward people considered less than deserving (currently, that group seems to be public-sector unions). But so far, one group is considered perennially entitled: the elderly. Americans are concerned about the growing deficit. Many would like to see less spending instead of higher taxes. But despite the expected entitlement debt-bomb, cutting entitlements to the elderly is still off limits.