35 Years After the Greenspan Commission, Is It Time for a New Social Security Commission?
35 years ago, President Ronald Reagan appointed the National Commission on Social Security Reform, whose recommendations set the stage for bipartisan legislation to extend the life of the Social Security program by 50 years. With Social Security’s trust fund on a rapid path toward insolvency, is it time for another bipartisan commission to shore up its finances?
Join us on as we gather lawmakers and Social Security experts to discuss the Social Security programs past, as well as its future.
Date and time: Wednesday, December 7, 9:15 am - 10:30 am. Breakfast will be served at 9:00 am.
Location: Room HVC - 201AB, United States Capitol Building, Washington D.C. 20004. This is on the House Side of the Capitol Building so please use the South entrance.
Keynote:
- Congressman Tom Cole (R-OK)
- Congressman John Delaney (D-MD)*
Panel Participants Include:
- Dr. Edward Berkowitz, Professor of History and Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University
- Jim Kessler, Senior Vice-President for Policy, Thirdway
- Dr. Sylvester Schieber, former Chairman, Social Security Advisory Board
- Maya MacGuineas, President, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
- Moderator: Scott Horsley, White House Correspondent, NPR
*Invited Speaker
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1 comment:
We certainly do not need another Greenspan Commission and I think from what Greenspan recently said, he would not agree with one either. Greenspan was wrong in 1983. Since 1937, Social Security has always crowded out savings. It takes a bit of the first dollar of every paycheck. Workers adjust by cutting back on savings.
He says they knew this 25 years ago, but his speeches and writings did not indicate this. Even in 1983, the US government had not run a surplus 26 years. You had to be pretty stupid to think congress was going to change its habit.
ALAN GREENSPAN, FORMER FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: We have a global problem of a shortage in productivity growth.
And it is not only the United States, but it is pretty much around the world. And it is being caused by the fact that the populations everywhere in the Western world, for example, are aging, and we're not committing enough of our resources to fund that.
We should be running federal surpluses right now, not deficits. This is something we saw -- we could have anticipated 25 years ago. And, in fact, we did, but nobody's done anything about it. And this is the crisis which has come upon us. It's slowing productivity, because entitlements are crowding out savings and, hence, capital investment.
Capital investment is the critical issue in productivity growth. And productivity growth in turn is the crucial issue in economic growth. So, we're running -- we're running at the end of the -- end of this period to state of disaster, unless we turn it around.
http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2016/05/26/alan-greenspan-entitlements-are-crowding-out-savings/
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