According to the left-leaning Center for American Progress, one thing American workers should expect in the coming months are less Social Security benefits if the bill introduced Thursday by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), chair of the House Social Security subcommittee, gains traction.
However, Johnson counters these criticisms by saying his bill modernizes the Social Security system by recalculating how benefits are allocated and effectively saves the program without raising taxes.
Yahoo News reports that CAP's associate director for tax and budget policy Michael Linden used Twitter to make the point that even the Social Security’s Office of the Actuary calculated workers who made approximately $50,000 would see their checks shrink between 11 percent and 35 percent.
Additionally, Yahoo reports:
Nearly every income bracket would see a reduction, save for the very bottom. People making around $12,280 in 2016 who have worked for 30 years would see an increase of around 20%. But young people making the same amount would be hit hard by the changes. If they had 14 years of work experience by 2016, they would see their benefits cut in half.
The plan would also cut entirely cost of living adjustments (COLA) for retirees earning above $85,000.
While this is all presented in a very negative light, Johnson himself wrote an op-ed for the Dallas Morning News defending the cuts as necessary to help save Social Security:
As Chairman of the Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee, I have long fought for changes to modernize Social Security, reward work and improve retirement security. The plan I released a few days ago, the Social Security Reform Act, does exactly that and it does it without raising taxes.My plan modernizes Social Security by improving how benefits are calculated by increasing benefits for low earning, long workers and limiting benefits for high-income workers. My plan gradually updates the retirement age from 67 to 69, and it calculates the annual cost of living adjustments in a more accurate way via means-testing. What's more, it actually cuts taxes that seniors pay on their Social Security benefits.
The reality is these cuts are what happens if one is to save a government entitlement program without raising a new tax to do it. It will be interesting to see which side wins the public relations war on Social Security.
