Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX), Chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, has a plan to "save" Social Security: massive benefits for most, tax cuts for the wealthy few. Which is exactly what you'd expect from a Republican, but maybe not at exactly this point in time. As Talking Points Memo reporter Tierney Sneed notes, Republican leadership hasn't really jumped on board, and there are few other issues with the legislation that suggest that Johnson might be freelancing on this one, setting out his own wish-list for destroying the program, staking out a far-right position to force future cuts.
Sneed points out that Johnson's proposal is a "grab bag" of Republican ideas for cutting Social Security: it "would raise the retirement age and cut the program's cost of living adjustments so that they rise according to chained CPI, a far less generous metric than the current law’s inflation index. Other cuts come in the form of means-testing requirements, or on limits on what spouses or other auxiliary beneficiaries can receive." Johnson is throwing it all into one proposal, with the possible view of then negotiating down from there.
And here's a key point: the proposal hurts the lowest-income people the least. In fact, "extremely low-income workers would be shielded from these cuts to a degree with the inclusion of a minimum benefits requirement, but that protection is mostly directed at only those who have been in the workforce for the entirety of their working lives." Workers with higher incomes would see the biggest cuts, which starts turning Social Security into welfare, a program for the poor. That weakens the popularity of the program, making it easier to keep cutting.
“Programs for the poor become poor programs,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “The more a program resembles a safety net program, the more vulnerable it is to cuts."
Johnson likely recognizes that the politics of Social Security is changing, as Democrats coalesce behind the idea of just not protecting Social Security, but expanding it. The idea of increasing benefits isn't crazy anymore, and is being discussed as real policy. In the face of that, Johnson is perhaps putting all his most extreme ideas out there, hoping that he can push as many of them through as possible as fast as possible in the new regime, perhaps premised on the idea that the tax cut for the wealthy it represents can help pave its way. That ties into Tierny's forth point about the proposal: the timing is weird. He dropped it at the end of this Congress, and will have to reintroduce it again in January. Why? TMP asked. "'Congressman Johnson's reform proposal was introduced this month to get the conversation started on Social Security's insolvency,' said Adrienne Rimmer, a spokeswoman for Johnson, in an email Monday to TPM." Starting the conversation.
That conversation has to begin with leadership, and apparently hasn't, Tierny says in her final point. "The House Ways and Means Committee, the umbrella committee over the Social Security subcommittee, was mum on the bill when dropped it last week, as was the Speaker Paul Ryan’s office." They still don't have much to say. Ryan's office says it's "one of many Republican ideas put forward to strengthen the program, and we appreciate Congressman Johnson's leadership." House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady's (R-TX) office says he "sees the proposal as one of many ideas to address the challenges facing Social Security."
It looks as though Johnson wanted to be the first out of the gate with a proposal, to both force cutting Social Security as a primary goal for the newly unified Republican government and for making sure it has all the conservative wet dreams, stopping short of full-on privatization. When Republicans turn to the "Social Security crisis," because you know they will, Johnson will have his proposal at the ready. That's why it has to be opposed—and opposed strenuously—now.