The Congressional Budget Battle

and the debt ceiling...man what a psycho episode.

Made worse by the spineless president. That was not what I voted for. I would agree with a post I saw online today, where someone wrote that Obama should have acted more like LBJ would have, by saying something more like: "You want cost of gov reduced? I'll halt all the projects in your district tomorrow--that'll reduce the cost of government." Which can be done...USG can issue a stop-work order at any time, on any contract, and you as contractor cannot bill any further. The executive branch makes those kind of decisions regularly.

Which means that of course the executive branch can always turn off expenditures anywhere, at any time--so even if the President can't make the budget law, he can simply not spend all of what's allocated.

What continues to amaze me is that so many folks are complaining about how we can't raise the retirement age on Social Security--it has been clear for years that the eligible retirement age needed to go up. It really ought to be 70 *now*, rather than sometime next decade. *I* expect to have to work until I'm 70 (or die at my desk, whichever comes first). The economic downturn over the past several years I think pushed back my retirement opportunity a few years.

Recall when SS started? 1935? The retirement age was set at 65 because that was the actuarial expected lifetime for someone in America at the time. So you could retire at that point, and start getting $, until you died, which probably wasn't all that far off (not to suggest that folks couldn't live longer, IIRC both John Adams and Ben Franklin lived to be 90, more than 100 years earlier). Now, thanks to all the medical improvements, we can now expect to live well past that, the actuarial average death age is about 80 (from USG website). Which means that you are likely to be able to collect 15 years worth of payments. Or more. That really isn't sustainable.

While it sounds good to say "well, let's index the retirement age to follow the actuarial numbers", it's a near certainty that your work years past 70 aren't going to be as productive as those just before. We all are starting to slow down at that point, so 80 isn't really a feasible date. I think 70 is good, now, however, because we can all do better at living healthy lives to that point. That said, I know folks age 80 who are pretty active, but not like they were at 60.

If retirement age rises, that should let SS be stable for any foreseeable future.

Means testing is critical on this, too. If you believe what you hear, most folks will face retirement with only around $50K in savings--which means that SS is critical for them, the only thing separating them from poverty.

Of course the Republicans, for all their scare talk of Death Panels, would prefer that anyone who can't take care of themselves just die, that no "social safety net" even exist in such a way that they are taxed for any of it.