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Publications by Topic
Topic: Social Security
Are There Opportunities to Increase Social Security Progressivity despite Underfunding? (Discussion Papers/Tax Policy Center)
Author(s):
Melissa Favreault , Gordon Mermin
This paper reviews why Social Security fails to lift more aged low-wage workers and people of color out of poverty. It examines the payroll tax and benefit formula and reviews literature about OASDI outcomes by race, gender, and earnings level. It describes how mortality, earnings, disability, childbearing, immigration and emigration, and marriage patterns all differ across U.S. racial/ethnic groups, and highlights the importance of these differences for program outcomes. The paper then uses the DYNASIM model to examine lifetime OASDI redistribution under current law and a trust fund-neutral reform package that would enhance system progressivity and improve outcomes for some vulnerable to retirement poverty.
Published: 11/25/08
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Interview with Dr. Eric Toder (Interview)
Author(s):
Eric Toder
In this interview for the American Bar Association Taxation Section News Quarterly, Eric Toder discusses the relationship between the Social Security trust fund account surplus and budget deficits, prospects for future tax reform, reforms of corporate taxation, and the possible future role of consumption taxes in the federal tax code.
Published: 08/08/08
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Taking Back Our Fiscal Future (Occasional Paper)
Author(s):
Joseph Antos , Robert Bixby , Stuart Butler , Paul Cullinan , Alison Fraser , William Galston , Ron Haskins , Julia Isaacs , Maya MacGuineas , Will Marshall , Pietro Nivola , Rudolph G. Penner , Robert D. Reischauer , Alice M. Rivlin , Isabel V. Sawhill , C. Eugene Steuerle
The authors of this paper—longtime federal budget and policy experts—were drawn together by a deep concern about the nation's long-term fiscal outlook. Despite diverse philosophies and political leanings, they found solid common ground and agree that unsustainable deficits in the federal budget threaten the health and vigor of the American economy and the first step toward establishing budget responsibility is to reform the budget decision process so that the major drivers of escalating deficits—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—are no longer on autopilot. The paper provides specific policy recommendations and outlines the reasons action is critical.
Published: 03/31/08
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Tax Considerations in a Universal Pension System (UPS) (Discussion Papers)
Author(s):
Adam Carasso , Jonathan Barry Forman
The inadequacy of the current U.S. public and private pension systems may warrant the establishment of a universal pension system (UPS), which would cover all workers—full-time and part-time—and require them to contribute at a level that can help provide them with adequate incomes when they retire. This paper develops options for a system of individual accounts to which, starting in 2007, each employee or self-employed worker would be required to contribute 3 percent of covered payroll (i.e., 3 percent of up to $97,500 in 2007). The UPS we describe would raise the total "replacement rate" for average wage men to 49.0 percent of final wages—provided Social Security is fixed—or 39.8 percent if not
Published: 12/20/07
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How Much Federal Spending Is Uncontrollable? (Article/Tax Facts)
Author(s):
Rudolph G. Penner , Julianna Koch
Discussions of the federal budget often refer to mandatory spending — on Social Security, Medicare, and similar programs — as "uncontrollable." In contrast with discretionary programs that Congress usually funds with annual appropriations, entitlement spending is determined by permanent laws specifying who qualifies for what benefits. This article examines changes in the percentage distribution of federal outlays since 1962. It highlights the rapid growth in mandatory spending driven by increased spending for health and retirement programs and the contrasting decline in defense spending as a share of total spending.
Published: 07/16/07
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Tax Policy at a Crossroads (slideshow) (Slideshows)
Author(s):
Leonard E. Burman
Burman outlines "action forcing events" including exploding entitlement costs, the AMT, increased economic inequality, and the expiration of the bush tax cuts that make a change in tax policy necessary. He concludes with good and bad ways to raise income tax revenues.
Published: 06/01/07
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Defining Our Long-Term Fiscal Challenges (Steuerle): Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee (Testimony)
Author(s):
C. Eugene Steuerle
In testimony before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, senior fellow C. Eugene Steuerle explained how, in recent decades, the government has wound a straightjacket around federal spending and tax subsidies. The main culprits have been in the broad areas of retirement, health, and taxation. Left alone, it leaves Congress with almost no control over its own budget. Only major systemic reform can restore a normal democratic process. He also highlighted ten consequences of the current budgetary situation.
Published: 01/30/07
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Defining Our Long-Term Fiscal Challenges (Reischauer): Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee (Testimony)
Author(s):
Robert D. Reischauer
The recent fiscal situation and the intermediate-term budget outlook may appear relatively benign, Urban Institute President Robert Reischauer told the Senate Budget Committee, but deficits and debt will gradually grow to unprecedented and unsustainable levels if current tax and spending policies are not altered significantly. "The challenge we face," he said, "is determining how to balance our desire for improved health against our other priorities. We cannot have it all and ask our children and grandchildren to pick up the tab." The longer policymakers wait to act, the more wrenching the adjustments will have to be.
Published: 01/30/07
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Social Security Reform: One More Time (Research Report)
Author(s):
Edward Gramlich
There has been much breast-beating lately about future entitlement spending burdens. The out-year liabilities of Social Security seem quite large—$11 trillion in present-value terms. How can the nation ever deal with such major funding problems? While I have offered a specific plan in the past, most notably when I chaired one of the Social Security advisory councils ten years ago, in this paper I focus only on a broader strategy. While the present Social Security system is not by itself terribly far out of long-term actuarial balance, when combined with Medicare, the country is facing major problems in funding projected entitlement spending down the road.
Published: 09/25/05
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A Radical Proposal for Escaping the Budget Vise (Policy Briefs/National Budget Issues)
Author(s):
Rudolph G. Penner , C. Eugene Steuerle
It's clearer by the day that fundamental, radical reform is needed to restore fiscal responsibility to the federal budget. Under current policy, spending grows automatically by default, faster than tax revenues as the population ages and health costs soar. These defaults are threatening the economy with large, unsustainable deficits. More important they deny to each generation the opportunity to orient government toward meeting current needs and its own preferences for services. This brief discusses some ways this might be achieved.
Published: 06/01/05
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