Mark Warner: We "have to" raise the retirement age

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday November 17, 2010 · 7:46 AM PST

2010/11/17 · 07:46

Virginia Senator Mark Warner, with visions of a someday presidential run undoubtedly still dancing in his head, wants The Village to know that he is a Very Serious Person who will happily spout zombie lies about Social Security.

[Sunday], Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Mark Warner (D-VA) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union to discuss various political matters. At one point, the senators addressed the proposals made by the commission. Warner said he had to give the "commission a lot of credit for, you know putting out some hard choices. It’s kind of where the reality meets the campaign rhetoric about deficit reduction." He then went on to say that because "folks at 25 or 30 years old today aren’t going to get Social Security at 65 or 67," that we’re "going to have to raise the retirement age slowly, in a slow way that doesn’t affect folks 50, 55. He concluded that "this is just math. We’ve got to do some of these things."

Which is, of course, a zombie lie on many levels--that retirement age has to be lifted, that Social Security is in jeopardy at all, and that Social Security has anything to do with the deficit in the first place. Social Security is solvent until 2037--full benefits will be paid out until then, and 75% of benefits after, provided a few simple fixes are made. Those simple fixes--in particular, raising the payroll cap on Social Security taxes--do not have to include making life harder for older Americans, either by cutting their benefits, or by forcing them to work longer, and would make the program fully solvent for decades. It's just that easy.

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Mark Warner: We "have to" raise the retirement age

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