Washington (CNN) – On the day President Obama announced his vision for curbing the costs of entitlement programs and reining in the nation's deepening debt, three conservative Republican senators announced their plan to raise the eligibility age for Social Security to 70 while lowering monthly payments to upper-income retirees.
"There is no way in God's green Earth to save America from bankruptcy until you deal with entitlements," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina. "Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, combined in the next twenty years, is going to absorb every dollar of revenue coming to this place. There will be no money left for anything else."
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Washington (CNN) - House Speaker John Boehner backed off Wednesday from a previous call to raise the eligibility age for Social Security benefits, but still described the idea as logical.
In an interview on CNN, Boehner, R-Ohio, said he made a mistake in advocating such a change to the government-run pension plan without first reaching an understanding of what needed to be done to reduce the federal deficit.
Washington (CNN) - A new national poll suggests that cuts in federal spending are likely to be hard to sell to the American public, even though the desire for less spending on domestic programs is significantly higher than it was during the Reagan and Clinton years.
According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday, the number of Americans who want more government spending on domestic programs equals the number who want the government to spend less. Overall, 49 percent say the federal government should spend more money for domestic programs; that figure is up 17 percentage points since 1994. Another 49 percent saying less should be spent on domestic programs.
See the full results after the jump.
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - When House Democrats return to Washington on Monday, a top priority will be putting a $250 dollar check in the mail to 58 million Social Security recipients.
Democrats plan to vote early in the lame-duck session on a bill that would provide Social Security recipients with a one-time payment, according to the office of Earl Pomeroy, a Democrat from North Dakota who authored the legislation.
President Obama told some residents of Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday that social security would not be privatized while he is in the White House. (PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images)
Columbus, Ohio (CNN) – President Barack Obama pledged Wednesday that the Social Security system won't be privatized while he is in the White House.
In a town-hall style meeting with a few dozen residents of Columbus, Ohio, Obama said "modest" changes can keep the government pension system solvent for decades.
Republicans have called for transforming the government program to a private savings account as a way to help keep it going as America's aging population stresses its financial health.
"It will not be privatized as long as I'm president," Obama said to applause, noting that the economic recession and Wall Street collapse would have devastated the savings of retirees under a privatized Social Security system.
(CNN) - Pessimism over Social Security is at an all-time high as six in ten Americans who don't already receive benefits through the program say they never will, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.
As the program nears its 70th anniversary of implementation, 63 percent of Americans say the program won't last another 70 years.
"There have always been a significant number of Americans who thought that Social Security would not be able to pay benefits to them when they retire," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "But since 1989, when Gallup first asked this question, that number usually hovered in the mid-40s and never rose higher than 52 percent. Today, 60 percent say they will never get a benefit from Social Security."
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