Raising the Retirement Age IS a Cut in Social Security
And a large and racist cut in benefits to boot
The MAGA GOP folks are expressing distress that Joe Biden has accused them of wanting to cut Social Security. The horror of being attacked for what members of the GOP have said repeatedly was their goal.
Oh, they don’t say “cut” but cloak it in words like “reform” or “restructuring” Social Security or, a very popular approach, changing the retirement age for Social Security. Multiple House members, including Speaker Keven McCarthy, voted to raise the retirement age to 70 back in 2015, three years more than the current retirement age of 67. The Republican Study Group, which a majority of Republican House members belong to, laid out a budget last year that called for raising the retirement age to 70 in what they call the Social Security Reform Act:
The RSC Budget recognizes that, due to Congressional inaction, the Social Security Reform Act’s retirement age increase would need to be extended to age 70 to achieve long-range sustainable solvency and help prevent the slashing of benefits that accompany depletion of the trust fund.
The bizarre propaganda in that statement is the failure to acknowledge that raising the retirement age to 70 is a massive cut in benefits, eliminating three years of income for every retiree. Given the average monthly Social Security check is $1,682 a month, that amounts to a $60,552 loss in benefits on average for every retiree- or over $120K loss for a retired couple. (All data on social security payments from this chart from the Social Security Administration).
Since the average person only lives to age 76, that means out of nine years of payments after the current retirement age of 67, they would lose one-third of their current projected social security benefits.
And that loss is even more extreme for black retirees, who, as this chart reflects, live just a few months more on average than the proposed Republican retirement age:
This means that African Americans, who already receive less per month on average - $1449 per month - would see their lifetime benefits drop from $66,074 (over a projected 45.6 months currently) to just $13,910 in benefits over the average 9.6 months they would end up receiving it under the GOP proposal.
**** $13,910 for a lifetime of paying into social security. ****
An almost 80% cut in benefits compared to the current law. The horrendous cut in social security benefits proposed by many GOP leaders is highlighted in this chart, which would be one of the largest economic assaults on the incomes of the American people in the history of this nation- and a particularly racist one in its impact on older African Americans.
The lies the GOP tells to pretend they are not proposing this massive cut in benefits for older Americans are stunning. They may hate that Biden keeps calling them out for their documented history of making these proposals, but Democrats need to relentlessly highlight these numbers and hold them accountable for it.