State of Minnesota secondary Archives: on Social Security

Heather Johnson: Privatize program to make up for borrowing & defunding

A: Yes, our government mishandled this greatly, borrowing against a program and defunding it cost the stability that millions expected after retirement. Now my generation and younger, may be working until our late 70s to early 80s. The government's track record with programs and funding is terrible. Worse, they are not held accountable for corrupted acts and misuse of American tax dollars.

Kurt Bills: Increment retirement age; rely on other streams of income

BILLS: It's moving up rapidly toward insolvency, so how do you keep this program around? You have to be able to secure it for the people who are there. We do have to look at that retirement age and adjusting that by a small increments starting in, I think the platform [in the Rand Paul budget proposal] starts in 2014, just three-month increments. We shouldn't have people relying on Social Security as their only stream of income, but we need to make sure it's there for the people who are paying into it. Adjusting for retirement and also means testing, as I mentioned before, is a big part of that.

Amy Klobuchar: No raising retirement age; no cost of living increase

KLOBUCHAR: I believe that if we can shore up this deficit and balance the budget, that we can then start shoring up Social Security. This Congress has raided $925 billion from Social Security. And you go back to the Clinton administration.

Q: Would you raise the retirement age?

KLOBUCHAR: I don’t believe that is the solution.

Q: Cost of living increase?

KLOBUCHAR: I don’t believe that’s the solution. If we can get that balanced budget in place, we’re going to be able to secure Social Security for the future [as we had under Clinton]

Q: With no changes in the system?

KLOBUCHAR: We can have a bipartisan commission look at those changes. They should be options to be looked at, but it would be a hard sell on me because I believe our priority should be to balance the budget. There is a better way to do this by being fiscally responsible instead of giving billions of dollars in oil giveaways.