Paul Ryan drinks deeply from pool of Social Security lies

Paul Ryan drinks deeply from pool of Social Security lies 

By Michael Hiltzik

March 12, 2013, 11:36 a.m.

Commentary LATIMES

.... 

I'd like to offer my thanks to House Budget CommitteeChairman Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) for doing so much to validate my list of the five biggest lies about "entitlement" programs published on Sunday.

Ryan's proposed federal budget, released Tuesday, uses four of them. As a dividend, he exploits a few that I didn't mention.

The ones from my list are: He uses the thoroughly discredited "infinite horizon" projection to claim that Social Security andMedicare are "tens of trillions" of dollars in the hole; he suggests that retirees aren't paying their fair share for their benefits; he suggests that the programs are hammered by benefits going to the wealthy; and he treats Medicare and Social Security as though they're similar programs with similar issues. All false; my explanations can be found here.

But Ryan also exploits several further nuggets of pure disinformation.  ...

...Ryan suggests that as a consequence of this bogus statistic, maintaining benefits for future retirees will mean raising payroll taxes to "crushing levels." Nonsense. The Congressional Budget Office, among other sources, projects that Social Security's share of the U.S. economy will increase by about 1.5 percentage points, to 6.63%, over the next 70 years. Removing the cap on annual income subject to payroll tax, currently set at about $113,000, would eliminate the projected deficit under almost any circumstances. [Emphasis added]

See the article ...

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