Don’t RUSH to co-sponsor this one

It may surprise you that of the three senators – Mark Kirk (R-IL), Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski (both D-MD) – sponsoring the Responding to Urgent needs of Survivors of the Holocaust (RUSH, because RUNSH is stupid) bill, only Cardin is Jewish. It’s said that putting two Jews together to debate something will get you three different opinions, which may have benefited this one.

The bill would:

• add Holocaust survivors to the list of groups to receive preference for services of the Older Americans Act (OAA);
• amend the nutrition section of said act to provide meals that meet religious/cultural dietary requirements;
• appoint someone in the Administration for Community Living to implement survivor services;
• and offer grants to non-profits that improve transportation for survivors.

I took the liberty of asking my grandmother what she thought about this bill. She made three points: 1. What about housing? (Not on the list of programs covered by the OAA, but that’s beyond the scope of this bill.) 2. It should do something for seniors who have to live in apartment blocks full of smokers. (It’s her pet issue.) 3. The population of survivors is dwindling by the day and this bill won’t be needed very long. (Completely true.)

Now here’s what I think: It is absolutely true that Holocaust survivors, compared to many other seniors, have it tough. Many of them, including my grandmother, came from the Soviet Union, where they were essentially blocked from accumulating enough wealth to last into their older years. Plenty still don’t know English well enough to have held well-paying jobs. Any fool could tell you that.

However. Once you start giving out preferential status under legislation like the OAA on the basis of which traumatic historical event the group in question has experienced, you open the floodgates to demands for similar status on the basis of other traumatic historical events. Why not survivors of Katrina, or the Cultural Revolution, or the Khmer Rouge? The Holocaust may outweigh them, but this is an important consideration in penny-pinching times. Furthermore, the focus on Holocaust survivors could spark a wave of anti-Semitic sentiment that would benefit no one.

Those are the reasons I would vote against this bill, despite the inevitable political backlash. (And my grandmother would be mad, which is worse.) Existing Jewish organizations provide this kind of help to their seniors, especially survivors, every day, and they don’t need help from taxpayers outside their neighborhoods.

Social Security’s rule of 70

Flipping through Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) The Truth (with jokes) yesterday, I learned that it’s really not a good political idea to make Social Security benefits less accessible. He was talking about privatization at the time. Today, we’re talking about raising the age at which Americans can receive Social Security. (I don’t want to call it SS, so we’ll abbreviate it to SocSec.)

The last update made in this respect was in 1935, when SocSec was introduced. The retirement age has been 65 from then until now. Since then, however, in its 75th year, life expectancy has been extended by six years. That’s not always a reliable indicator of when every senior will need some extra aid, but it does add the necessary biological element to the debate.

Here’s part of the economic element: An increasing percentage of seniors continue to work beyond 65, sometimes because they need the money and sometimes because they enjoy it. It doesn’t improve the job outlook for my generation, sadly, but it keeps us from paying too much more into their aid. My mom has co-workers who continue to teach past the age of 65, sometimes as subs and sometimes under tenure. And teachers get paid quite handsomely in Canada.

Politically, both parties are intrigued by the idea of raising the retirement age, as this would demonstrate a bipartisan commitment to debt reduction. Or at least one source of it; the Congressional Budget Office estimates that only 0.4% of GDP would be saved by 2040, by which time benefits would run out under the current system. So they are in agreement that more needs to be done. Medicare and SocSec are not quite on the chopping block, but they are on the cheese grater, despite the taste it surely leaves in people’s mouths.

I’ve mentioned before that an opt-out clause for SocSec and Medicare beneficiaries might help. These seniors are not in the majority, but some of them have saved plenty of money for retirement and do not require anything more, least of all from the government. However, this would likely require a way to ensure that opter-outs don’t have their payroll taxes deducted beforehand, or at least have them deducted less. Paying it back in a lump sum wouldn’t really be saving anything. And who really knows if they’ll need SocSec until, say, 55?

Until then, raising the retirement age is an effective first step. It won’t do much, but every bit helps, and debt reduction needs many bits. By the way, “rule of 70″ in the headline refers to a determining factor in the doubling time of an investment. If you got it, you get ten points.

The brave and the old

It’s never good thing when a political point is best summed up by a Simpsons quote:

BART: “Didn’t you wonder why you were getting checks for doing absolutely nothing?”
GRAMPA: “I figured ’cause the Democrats were in power again.”

That’s the attitude President Obama and 47 senators shared about an extra $250 for anyone on Social Security. But they were overruled on Wednesday by 50 other senators, including at least 10 Democrats, who were reluctant to add an extra $13 billion to a $108 billion jobs package. Considering that they approved an unspecified amount of money per recipient last year, you can’t blame them for wanting to be more prudent this year.

Apparently Obama’s justification is that they had to make up for not increasing Social Security payments, as they usually do every year. The above article quotes one senator who voted yes, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and one who voted no, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). Gregg: “This would not follow the law that states we must index Social Security payments to inflation.” Sanders: “But we must help the seniors! WE MUST!” The non-emotional argument wins, and well it should.

Call me heartless, but I personally like it when a government decides to freeze wage and payout increases; it reminds those who get them that they won’t be able to rely on taxpayer money forever. Obviously, seniors, veterans, and disabled persons are not the most ideal people to pick on for making this sort of point, but even they have the ability to make money on their own somehow. And as evidenced by the above paragraph, the “no” votes were garnered out of respect for the law and little else. That sounds like principle.

I should point out that it seems nonsensical to approve an extra $250 after flattening regular payouts. Honestly, which is it going to be? If you think you can afford that much, why not just go through the regular channels for making these kinds of increases? And where would the money be coming from except the existing Social Security fund?

I’m sure a lot of people will back me up on this: When they have all their marbles, physically and mentally speaking, seniors can be the most stubborn people on Earth. They won’t accept help from anyone. Hell, my grandmother, who is about six inches shorter than me, doesn’t even like it when someone offers to carry her library books upstairs for her. We can’t know the ratio of these seniors to those who need help for everything, but the former won’t worry too much about this.