U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., said on Friday that his proposed changes to Social Security were necessary to save it.
Ribble, of Appleton, had proposed several changes to the program that he, along with more than 50 other Republicans, have suggested be conditions of any long-term increase of the federal debt ceiling.
Besides expanding the raising of the retirement age, he said he also wants to change the inflation formula for calculating future growth, and add means-testing to determine benefits for high-income recipients.
He said he wants to raise the wage cap for payroll taxes to levels that would subject 90 percent of wages to Social Security taxes, as was typical in previous decades, to help the program raise more revenue. Currently, only about 83 percent of wages are taxed, and Ribble said that number is projected to decrease as American incomes rise.
“We’ve always taxed around 90 percent of payrolls,” he said. “But, so many Americans have moved above that threshold. It’s inevitable that the cap must go up.”
Ribble also said he wanted some level of customization in how a raised retirement age might function.
“I’m extraordinarily sensitive to the fact that not everyone can work to the age of 67, 68, 69,” he said.
Instead, he said, he supported building a process where people in “difficult trades” can receive benefits earlier, while healthier people might opt in later.
Ribble said that with more Americans retiring and fewer workers contributing to Social Security, reform of some kind was necessary to save the program.
“If you don’t like these, offer your own, but we can’t just ignore it,” Ribble said. “I think those are commonsense reforms that have broad bipartisan support.”
He said Social Security reform was a hard, controversial subject, and that Congress often ignored it as a result.
“The status quo is the worst possible solution,” he said.
He said changing the fund’s inflation calculation to use chained CPI, as proposed in one draft of the 2014 budget, wasn’t a fair solution either.
“You’re putting all the burden of the fix on just one generation of Americans,” he said. “I don’t think that’s right.”
