America has a debt problem, driven in part by huge entitlements. The liberal solution? Make them bigger. “An expansion of Social Security not only would be good for America's retirees, it also would be good for the broader macroeconomy” argued New America Foundation [1] political writer Steven Hill [2], in an article [3] for “The Atlantic.”
According to Hill, the problem with Social Security is not the lack of money going into the system, but rather that there aren’t enough benefits coming out of it. “The bigger problem is that Social Security's payouts are so meager -- far too low for the program's new role as America's de facto national retirement system. It only replaces about 33 to 40 percent of a retiree's average final wage, which is simply not enough money to live on.”
"Social Security has been running a deficit for the last three fiscal years. In 2012, the program ran a $47.8 billion deficit [4]."
Hill paints an optimistic picture of the future of the program. “The real problem with Social Security is not, as its critics say, that it is underfunded. Contrary to gloomy predictions, the program is on solid financial footing, with the Congressional Budget Office projecting that Social Security can pay all scheduled benefits out of its own tax revenue stream through at least 2037.”
As of October of this year, the Congressional Budget Office [5] released a statement saying that “under current law, resources available to the Social Security program will become insufficient to pay full benefits in about 20 years” because “Social Security outlays are projected to grow more rapidly than the economy and more rapidly than the program’s dedicated tax revenues.” While Hill makes it sound like the program has enough money to last 20 years or more, what the CBO actually said was that the program is running and will run a deficit each year and won’t be able to even pay full benefits in 20 years.
The New America Foundation has received $3,800,000 from George Soros’s Open Society Foundation since 2001. In the past 10 years, Soros [6] has given more than $550 million to liberal organization in the United States. That total represents about 27 percent of the $2 billion given out by the American branches of his Open Society Foundations from 2000 to 2009.
Steven Hill is also the author of “Europe’s Promise [7],” a book which advocates implementing Europe’s “bold new vision” for economics and healthcare in the United States. According to the official flyer for the book, Hill says that Europe has “the best health care and other workfare supports for families and individuals.”