by Glenn Gilbert – A group that brands itself as a rival to AARP is pushing non-partisan reforms to Social Security that Congress ought to consider.
Although the seven-year-old Association of Mature American Citizens calls itself a conservative alternative, the group’s proposal lacks the privatization features that have doomed other plans advanced by groups on the right side of the political spectrum.
AMAC might do better if it eschewed political labels because, in fact, its proposals are voted on by the group’s membership, using a tool that ensures that members can only vote once.
“Our members choose the issues and drive the agenda,” said Andy Mangione, AMAC’s vice president for governmental relations.
And members have overwhelmingly chosen Social Security and its future as their major concern.
“People don’t save enough for retirement — we know that,” Mangione said.
AMAC’s proposal, for which Mangione has been lobbying on Capitol Hill, takes a two-pronged approach. The first facet would maintain the same or increased benefits for those with lower earnings and the second would provide a means for all earners to have more income available at retirement.
It would guarantee cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security recipients annually, using a tiered approach to calculating the COLA. No increases were granted in 2009 and 2010, even though gasoline and food prices rose.
For beneficiaries with a household income level less than $20,000, COLAs would range from a 3 to 4 percent increase..
For beneficiaries with a household income between $20,001 and $50,000, the COLA range would be 1.5 to 3 percent.
For beneficiaries with a household income of $50,001 or higher, the COLA range would be from 1 to 2 percent.
AMAC’s plan also would phase in a change in the earliest retirement age. Starting in 2016, it would add three months each year so that by 2023 it would be 64 instead of the current 62.
Starting in 2017, it would phase in a change to the normal retirement age by adding three months each year so that by 2024, it would be 69 instead of the current 66 to 67, which depends on the birth year.
AMAC’s plan also would lower benefits for higher income earners while maintaining the same benefits for those with less income, beginning in 2019.
The current annual Social Security trustee report projects a shortfall in the program’s trust fund of 4.5 percent in 75 years. If AMAC’s proposals were adopted, there would be a surplus of .17 percent.
Meanwhile, the plan also calls for a voluntary, portable tax-deferred Early Retirement Account program implemented through employers. It would allow the employee to set aside up to $5,200 annually and the employer to contribute up to $2,600 annually. Both employees and employers would be eligible for tax deductions.
Unlike 401K plans, which are routinely tapped into for a variety of reasons, the ERA would not be available until retirement. Enrollees could accumulate up to $354,000, Mangione said.
AMAC’s common-sense proposals apparently are catching on. Membership is growing by 40,000 every month, and has doubled to about 1.1 million from 500,000 in 2012. AMAC seeks to designate representatives from each of the nation’s 435 congressional districts and eventually hopes to organize state chapters.
AMAC membership costs $16 annually and is available on the organizations’s website at amac.us. Anyone over the age of 50 may join and 40 percent of the group’s members are not retired.
Dan Weber, a family business owner in New York, founded AMAC because he felt the other major 50+ organizations were too liberal and did not represent his views.
But Mangione emphasizes that only members can set the agenda, and they are polled on a weekly basis. The group does not support candidates and has met with 140 members of Congress from both parties.
“We will meet with anybody,” Mangione said.
AMAC’s Social Security reforms should appeal to everyone. They include incentives to save, protection for those with lower incomes, modest restraints for everyone and small reductions in benefits for those with higher incomes.
Congress and the public should rally behind these ideas.
Social security as it is currently structured is: (1) unsustainable and (2) immoral. It is not a system for individual retirement, it is a collectivist “pay-go” Ponzi scheme that will continue to fail, even after more “fixes” to reduce benefits and raise taxes (or continue to borrow without taxation, which is, effectively, a regressive tax via inflation).
The proper, moral, practical position is to advocate for the full elimination of the social security system. The only issue should be how to humanely wind it down as soon as possible.
I don’t agree with raising the age limit. Very few companies will hire people that are in their 40’s & 50’s, they want to staff all these young people that have nill to none experience because they don’t want to pay the older workers the salaries they deserve. So they are opting for the younger nonexperienced cause they can pay them less.
Tens of millions of people spend their entire working years in physically demanding jobs.
I wonder if Mr. Mangione has ever worked on a factory floor, in a coalmine, a steel mill, or even picked up garbage for a living.
Probably not, he wouldn’t support raising the minimum social security age for retirement if he had.
The FULL retirement age for younger workers has already been changed. People currently in their mid 50’s & the full retirement age is now 70. I disagreed with that when it was changed & also think early retirement should remain age 62. It doesn’t matter whether you work in a factor, construction work, etc or an office, by the time you reach your 60’s MOST people are beginning to have health issues.
Also, the longer older people are forced to work, the longer younger people have to wait to replacement us in the work force. The ones suggesting the older retirement ages need to take that into consideration. It appears all anyone is considering is how to save money by waiting longer to pay out SS benefits.
AMAC developed the Early Retirement Account as a savings mechanism that enables people to retire prior to the early retirement age that we propose in the Social Security Guarantee. We understand that people who work jobs that include a lot of physical stress may have the need to retire before the age required to receive their full benefit. The Early Retirement Account bridges the gap between retiring early and the start of Social Security benefits.
Thanks for your feedback.
The only problem here is that a retiree will lose about 10% per month of what they would have drawn if they wait until full retirement. I only retired 1 year before full retirement & I lost approximately $100 per month for the rest of my life.
Since this plan proposes increasing early retirement age I propose the PENALTY for early retirement be eliminated. If the SS rules are changing to the negative for retirees for a 2nd time, a change in FAVOR of Seniors is due.
Do you remember 2004 in the beginning of GW Bush’s 2nd term? He staked his presidency on privatization or partial privatization of Social Security. He believed that seniors and future seniors wanted to invest their own retirement money in the stock market.
What happened? The American public loathed it. Nobody in congress wanted anything to do with it. It was a dead issue by Memorial Day. That was going to be the signature issue of Bush’s 2nd term.
Mr. Mangione, 9 out of 10 people that have commented on this article disagree with your reform plan.
They know that Social Security has nothing to do with balancing a budget or raising or lowering the deficit.
This sounds like a good idea, but I do wish people who write articles about Social Security would stop using the term trust fund. There is no SS trust fund. All the money goes into the general fund.
Actually the Office of the Chief Actuary on the official security website, ssa.gov, (Social Security Trust Fund FAQ’s) is now “referring” to SS funds as a trust fund. These funds weren’t originally held in a trust fund but had been “accounted for” as a separate fund from the general fund until they were combined into one fund with the general funds by LBJ for accounting purposes. He used excess SS funds to balance his budget (it’s called creative accounting-aka stealing). Ronald Reagan changed the accounting of the funds back to separate accounting. Don’t know if there is an “actual” trust fund now or just a separate accounting.
Hi HAM,
Actually there is no actual trust fund. Just like there is no actual “lock-box”, that the politicians keep talking about during election cycles.The Chief Actuary can use whatever descriptive language he desires to describe the electronic book-keeping entry system used by SSA, but that’s merely for public relations purposes. It sounds better than saying the SSA tax dollars are designated a special tracking code prior to their disbursement to current retirees in the form of monthly checks. Money collected today from current workers is turned around and sent out to current retirees monthly. Money in, money out. Any excess tax dollars remaining can be re-directed to the general fund of the United States Treasury, if the Treasury desires to do so, in exchange for special purpose IOUs. The IOUs have NO market value on the open market (worthless outside of a non-binding “promise”, not enforceable in any court of law per the Supreme Court, by the federal government to eventually pay the money back some day), to pay for virtually anything the government so desires.
There are NO separate accounts, in the classic sense, of an account with your actual money being set aside for your retirement. As described above, the money collected from one group is quickly spent on another group. In many ways, this mirrors the basic structure of a Ponzi scheme, but since it’s the federal government, it’s deemed all legal. If you or I were to run a retirement insurance system in this exact fashion, we would be serving time in federal prison.
What actually exists are electronic book-keeping entries of what we’re each theoretically going to collect from the system. This sounds far less glamorous than “Trust Fund”, so you can see why SSA would use better sounding language. The government can of course change the system at any time, per the Supreme Court, so benefits are not guaranteed. All that exists is a non-binding “promise” to pay, which is simply that. Just a promise, the terms of which can be changed at any time..
I can remember 30 years ago when corporations worried about the benefits of their employees and their concern was to offer the best benefit for the most eligible candidate for fear of losing them to their competitor. Now all that the stock holders care about is how much money can they keep when filing bankruptcy, closing other locations, firing more employees, offering less for one employee to multitask their duties, long hours with less pay. Wow is this progress or another recession?
Time to change has past repair…America have procrastinate long enough to do the right thing for Americans.
We all young and seniors have to be on the same page to fight for what is best for all Americans today and future.
Better economy, better education, better jobs, and less negative complaints. Positive attitude and less what me wants, remember the fights of the past, civil rights, women’s right, it took a long time but it got done with people joining in as one group for the same fight.
Gotta be in it to win it. Don’t just talk about it, speak up and do something about it, tell your congress people this is what you voted for them, to make the change for a better life.
Anyway this is what American dream is suppose to be all about….freedom and quality of life!
I am not for raising the age limit. Workers in manufacturing or construction who use their hands a lot actually wear the joints out in their fingers and wrists. I have worked as a machinist since I was 17 and now I am 60. Yet for the past 3 years I have been wondering if my knees, fingers and wrists will last until I am 65. I have joint pain when I am doing nothing sometimes. Yet X rays shows nothing. Also while working I have to hang on to something to do hand work or measurement. If I am doing a lot of the same thing my hand won’t release the part/object. I then have to open that hand with the other hand to let go of the part. It is hard to find a job that is less production oriented and more of a low production or rebuild type shop where one to five parts are required. There is a big difference between office workers and people who work in industry. A lot of people in industry are let go because their body can’t take the strain and they slow down in their production. Not because they want to, but because their body is showing signs of age and physical strength is lower their body demands less strain on it. For instance the diesel mechanic who can no longer loosen large nuts and bolts or remove heavy parts due to a natural reduction of their strength because of a reduction of hormones due to the natural aging process. Many of these people have built our ships, sky scrapers, planes, trucks, power generating plants etc. yet are now out of work for no reason other than they are older workers. Who when their unemployment runs out have to live off of their 401K or other retirement plans until they can draw SS. These same people are not disabled enough to qualify for SSD. I think we would be causing more people who have built things to lose their homes trying to survive until the increased age of retirement. While I don’t know if I will be able to work until 65? I am one of those people who made components for landing gear on large aircraft, semi trucks, farm tractors, fork lifts, Navy ships, oil tankers, guided missiles, and tooling for the microchip industry. I think it is unfair for people who have desk jobs, that don’t understand the physical stress put on industrial workers body to think the easy fix is to up the age for SS. I think the better fix is to not give SS to non-citizens, because they are not here legally and are allowed to only work a fraction of the time paying into the system while withdrawing for life the maximum benefits. I feel this is taking away from those who have paid in all their lives and giving to someone who has not.
I don’t believe the retirement age should be extended for the reason that most people start having health issues in their 50s and can’t work. This would mean more people would be on SS disability which would take away a lot more of the SS money from the rest of us. One of my concerns is all the people who are getting SS disability payments when they are able to work but try to cheat the system. I went on SS at age 62. My husband had terminal cancer and I had to care for him. These situations happen more often than most politicians see. Raising the age just seems to be another way to hurt senior citizens.
I THINK REDUCING THE AGE FOR BENEFITS TO 60 WOULD SHIFT A LOT OF PEOPLE OUT OF THE JOB MARKET THAT IS INCREASINGLY RELUCTANT TO HIRE THE OLDER WORKER. THOSE WHO ARE A LITTLE MORE WORN OUT THAN OTHERS OR A LITTLE MORE DEPENDENT ON HEALTH CARE COULD CHECK OUT EARLY AND IMPROVE THE JOBS AVAILABLE FOR THOSE YOUNGER AND LOOKING FOR WORK. CORPORATIONS BUY OUT EMPLOYEES ALL THE TIME. LETS GET THE CONTRIBUTIONS THING WORKED OUT FOR HIGHER EARNERS AND IRON OUT THE IMMIGRANTS PROBLEM AND GET THESE PEOPLE TO BECOME CITIZENS AND CONTRIBUTORS TO THE PROMISES OF AMERICA THAT BROUGHT THEM TO THIS COUNTRY IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I don’t believe in raising the full retirement age; but the income tier plan may just help save the SS program for workers. I will admit as a 62 yr. old and reading up on heart disease and attacks; as I had a severe HA; that most occur in the late fifties to early 60’s rendering a person disabled if severe heart damage is done!
I would also recommend that people start in thier 20’s with thier own retirement plan as adding even $10.00 a month will add to future retirement funds.
AMEN! Social Security was never meant to be the sole means of support for retirees. It was insurance to help those that COULD NOT support themselves in retirement. Individuals have a personal responsibility to support themselves and their families and not rely on other people to do so. We could start saving some of the money we spend on smartphones, big-screen TVs, coffee at Starbucks, and other electronic toys. Unfortunately we have become a nation that values ‘toys’ over our own accountability and responsibility.
I do not agree with raising the age at which you can retire and get full benefits; it should be 65 period. Due to health concerns, this is the age at which a person should get full benefits and still have a little time to enjoy retirement before not being able to travel, golf, tennis, or what ever….before health decreases to the point that a person can’t enjoy it; after all, we have spent our LIFE working for someone else!