U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood said he favors an approach to dealing with the looming Social Security insolvency that takes at least some of the political gamesmanship out of the issue.
“Both parties have been at fault. We have to appropriately reform some of these systems of government in a bipartisan way,” said LaHood, a Republican who represents a largely rural district that includes parts of McLean County.
By some estimates, Social Security will lack adequate money to pay beneficiaries by 2031-2032.
LaHood indicated during a news event Monday at the Central Illinois Regional Airport that he is “somewhat supportive” of creating a federal debt commission, noting the nation is $39 trillion in debt.
“That would be bipartisan, a small group of Senate and House members that would meet for one year and come up with significant proposals that we would vote up or down on after a year, similar to the Simpson-Bowles,” said LaHood.
The Simpson-Bowles Commission was bipartisan panel created in 2010 by President Obama to propose solutions for reducing the national debt. It aimed to cut the deficit by approximately $4 trillion. The commission's final proposal did not have enough support to present it to Congress.
Up or down votes would reduce the chance of members of congress tinkering with the plan and weakening its impact. The tactic also packs all the political pain into a limited number of votes.
LaHood said letting Social Security go into deficit spending is “difficult.”
“We set retirement ages at Social Security at 61 or 65 or 67 when people only lived to be 70 years old. People now live well in their eighties and nineties. Government hasn't appropriately adjusted,” said LaHood, adding there are “a lot of things” the nation can look at to address the problem.
Just a few of the commonly mentioned tools include raising the age at which people can start collecting Social Security payments, taxing wealthier earners at a higher rate earlier in life and reducing benefits.
The Bowles in Simpson-Bowles refers to Erskine Bowles, President Bill Clinton's chief of staff. The Clinton administration, incidentally, was the last time the federal government had a balanced budget. In 2001, the government had a surplus of roughly $128 billion. Before that 1998-2001 period of surpluses, the last budget surplus came in 1969, according to the Kennedy School at Harvard.
