Some More Notes On The Deficit Commission

"PostPartisan" blog from the Washington Post says the President is basically punting on today's deficit commission report from the co-chairs. They basically make the point that he didn't come out and endorse it in part or full, and kind of pushed off taking a side, which was effectively a slap at it.

The same blog later notes that the recommendations aren't really radical or bold, despite Beltway talk to the opposite. I think they are overwhelmingly right in this sense, and perhaps they are being more ambitious than anyone in Washington wants to be.

While I'm not a big fan of curbing benefits or raising the retirement age for Social Security, I generally agree with them that it's a debate worth having. The fact is, people live longer than they did at the time we set 65 as the age for Social Security, and more private retirement accounts exist now than at the program's outset. Hence, it's at least worth exploring whether or not most seniors need it as primary income, and if 65 is really the age where we want to stop most people from working. When life expectancy is for 20-25 more years after that, as opposed to 5, it's hard to say we've got it exactly right. With that said, we should first be exploring what taking off the cap on payroll taxes for Social Security (after roughly $107,000 of income you pay no more taxes into the program) would do for the program's solvency, and see what other changes we can put into law to help the program's revenue issues in the future.