Senior and disability advocate weighs in on Social Security

If you had asked me a year ago today, "Do you think privatizing Social Security is a good idea in order to save it from crisis?" my answer would have been a hesitant and uninformed, "Sure." The experiences that I have had in the past year post-graduation have changed my worldview in a number of ways as I have embarked upon a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) in San Francisco. Having read Kevin Boland's opinion article titled "Reforming the third rail" in the Feb. 7 edition of The Heights, I felt called to share information that was omitted from this article regarding the Social Security debate, especially since I work at a advocacy group, working for seniors and persons with disabilities, those people who are the primary recipients of Social Security income.

Since beginning my work in August, I have spent hundreds of hours studying articles and analyses of issues affecting seniors and disabled persons, the most prominent of which is Social Security. I would like to thank Mr. Boland for bringing this controversy to light in his article. As I have come to see through my work, it is too often that persons with disabilities and seniors are ignored in our society. He highlighted the projection that in 2018, the Social Security trust fund will no longer be taking in as much money as it pays out. Additionally, there is only enough money in the trust fund for payments to be paid in full until at least 2042, 38 years from now.

I would like to add a few other numbers, however, that all members of the Boston College community, young, old, and differently-abled, should be made aware in order to develop more informed positions on this matter. First, if nothing at all is done in regards to Social Security, it will not be bankrupt in 2042. It will be able to make upwards of 73 percent of payments for an additional three decades. This situation is not the imminent "crisis" that the president has repeatedly described. Second, the cost of changing the system to include privatized accounts has been estimated as high as $2 trillion. This transition could not be done by a government that currently owes more than $7.6 trillion in debt without borrowing more money from other sources and increasing its debt. Thirdly, it is important to know that the cost of maintaining private accounts is 20 times higher than the current cost to administer the privatized program. Social Security recipients would foot the bill by diminishing their payments from the program.

The proposal to privatize Social Security is only one of several options from which those in power can choose in order to reform this safety-net program. But are there any simpler and less expensive changes that would make Social Security a solvent program once again? The answer is a resounding "Yes." One significant answer lies in the fact that persons who make more than $90,000 per year do not pay into Social Security for every dollar that they earn over $90,000. A cap exists so that those dollars are not paid into Social Security. Removing the $90,000 cap would make Social Security solvent up to 17 percent in 75 years. How's that for resolving a crisis without the government spending more money to do it? Ironically, persons who make nearly six-digit figures do not rely solely on Social Security, in contrast to low-income seniors and persons with disabilities.

To pull out the safety net from persons of low-income by gambling in a privatized system that will profit the richest members of our society contradicts what I learned in my Jesuit education of being "men and women for others." Indeed, privatizing Social Security contradicts President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vision for American citizens when he said in his Second Inaugural Address in 1937, "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Bill Schrecker is a BC alumnus from the class of 2004.