by MARTHA BURK
When former senator Alan Simpson, Republican co-chair of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, called Social Security “a milk cow with 310 million tits” last summer, it was not only a misogynistic insult but a symbolic shot at the benefit program older women depend on most.
Started in 1935, Social Security today is the main retirement program for elderly women in the U.S. Fifty-seven percent of all 62-and-older Social Security beneficiaries are women, as are 68 percent of all beneficiaries 85 and beyond.
Even so, Social Security is by no means a plush retirement plan. In 2009, the average yearly payout was just $12,132 for women. Men’s average annual benefit was $15,744, reflecting their earnings advantage during their working years and the underlying sex discrimination of the Social Security program.
Simpson’s attack was a warm-up for the fiscal commission report released in December, which recommended a rise in the retirement age, an effective cut to Social Security benefits, as a way to help pare the nation’s growing debt. Ironically, while the annual budget deficit has many causes, Social Security is not one of them and has been running at a surplus for decades, receiving more funds than it’s been paying out. The problem is that Social Security monies have been loaned to the rest of the federal government via Treasury bonds and not saved in the Social Security trust fund (so the trust fund is filled with federal IOUs).
Despite this, the program is still solvent and will remain so for at least the next 25 years. Not until 2037 will funds be insufficient to pay scheduled benefits, and even then there will be money to pay 76 percent of benefits—meaning the program is far from “broke,” as many claim.
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