NASI event: “Strengthening Social Security for the Long Run: Insights from 1983”

Strengthening Social Security for the Long Run: Insights from 1983

 Register Now – Space is Limited

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

10:00 – 11:30 am

B-318 Rayburn House Office Building

In policy discussions about the long-term financing of Social Security, reforms enacted in 1983 are often held up as a model of balanced political compromise. But that is not exactly what happened. Only the short-term reforms, aimed at getting the program safely through the 1980s, contained a mix of changes that affected Social Security contributors and beneficiaries more or less evenly. The piece Congress added to address the remaining long-term shortfall was not a compromise. It was solely a benefit cut that is still being phased in today.

As the president's fiscal commission nears its reporting deadline, the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) is releasing a new policy brief, Strengthening Social Security for the Long Run.

Moderator:   Lisa Mensah, NASI Chair and Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Initiative on Financial Security

Speakers:      Janice Gregory, NASI President and Social Security Subcommittee staff, 1983

                       Virginia Reno, NASI VP for Income Security and Greenspan Commission staff

Discussant:   Wendell Primus, Policy advisor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and chief economist for the Committee on Ways and Means, 1983

·         What happened in 1983?

·         Why the growing concern about the inadequacy of Social Security going forward?

·         Can we afford Social Security in the future? What do Americans say they want? 

·         How might we improve benefit adequacy at an affordable cost?

·         How might we design a 75-year financing plan? 

 Click here to register.

NASI's new brief, Strengthening Social Security for the Long Run, will be available as will copies of Bob Ball's memoir, The Greenspan Commission: What Really Happened, edited by Tom Bethell.