:: Social insecurity
Every birthday provides its own little wake-up call. But when Kathleen Casey-Kirschling turns 62 in a few months, the wake-up call will be heard coast to coast. Casey-Kirschling, who was born one second after midnight on New Year's Day 1946 and is considered the nation's first baby boomer, will start receiving Social Security benefits Jan. 1. This week, she officially applied for Social Security's early retirement benefit, or 75 percent of the full benefit provided to those who wait until age 66 to apply. Casey-Kirschling is the start of the deluge: about 80 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 will qualify for Social Security and Medicare during the next 22 years.
As USA Today reported, 3.2 million baby boomers will turn 62 next year - at a rate of 365 an hour. By 2011, they'll turn 65 and be eligible for Medicare. In 10 years, more will be paid out in Social Security benefits than is brought in by Social Security taxes. Fewer younger workers and more retirees mean that by 2030 "every couple will have their own retiree to support," Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation told USA Today.
Awake yet? If not, U.S. Comptroller General David Walker is participating in a "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour" designed to "state the facts and speak the truth regarding the nation's current financial condition and long-term fiscal outlook in order to increase public awareness and accelerate actions by appropriate federal, state, and local officials," according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office website. As the weighty quote implies, it's a meeting intended for policy wonks, though the public is more than welcome. The closest one to the Lower Hudson Valley is scheduled for Oct. 23 at University of Hartford.
Fixing Social Security is a vexing issue that gets harder every year - not that you would know it from the 2008 presidential campaign, given the undo attention given to such matters as John Edwards' hair or Hillary Clinton's laugh. President Bush's failed plan to privatize Social Security is dead - as it should be. But Casey-Kirshling's application for Social Security reminds us that a new plan is needed. The sooner, and more bipartisan, the better.
