Nancy Altman

The Honorable Erskine Bowles
Co-Chair
National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

Dear Mr. Bowles:

While we have extremely serious objections to the Social Security provisions proposed in the Bowles-Simpson plan and, indeed, its inclusion at all in a deficit reduction package, this is not why we are...

The Washington Post doesn't seem to want to take any prisoners in its on-going assault on Social Security. On October 31st, the paper ran a front page, above the fold, "news" article ("The debt fallout: How Social Security went 'cash negative' earlier than expected") falsely claiming that Social...

Co-authored by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson

No surprise, this Tuesday, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (a.k.a., the "Supercommittee") is listening to all the normal Washington insiders talk about why Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a host of programs critically important to the American people must be sacrificed...

The 1% is using the super-secret Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (a.k.a. the Super Committee), to reach directly into the pockets of the 99% and steal hundreds of billions of dollars from them. This committee has unprecedented power. It has been meeting behind closed doors for weeks. Finally, though,...

CO-AUTHORED BY NANCY ALTMAN and SUZANNE BLOUIN

This week, the Social Security Administration will name a boulevard on its Woodlawn campus, west of Baltimore, after a man who contributed enormously to the creation and development of Social Security. Robert J. Myers began working on Social Security in 1934 --...

A Social Security Administration employee's story about 9/11: "The most difficult, and at the same time most gratifying, work I did was to help relatives of 9/11 victims file for Social Security... One woman, in particular, stands out in my mind. Her husband was only in...

Social Security appears to be a key bargaining chip in the struggle over the debt limit. President Obama may have played smart politics when he threatened that, if the debt limit is not raised, Social Security checks might not go out on time. But he was needlessly scaring the program's...

CO-AUTHORED BY NANCY J. ALTMAN and ERIC KINGSON, co-chairs of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign (www.strengthensocialsecurity.org)

In a recent Politico column, Jon Cowan and Jim Kessler, respectively the president and senior vice-president of The Third Way, criticize "progressives" for opposing deals that cut Social Security benefits. They advise...

Many Americans believe that their Social Security contributions have been stolen, diverted to some unauthorized purpose. They are wrong -- at least for now. On Wednesday, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rand Paul (R-KY) proposed to do just that -- steal our money.

Their

Imagine that you bought an insurance policy that guaranteed you $1,100 a month starting at age 62. When you tried to collect, you couldn't reach an agent on the phone, so you went to the office during its business hours, but the office was closed. When you finally found a...

Most Americans would not know the name Robert M. Ball, but all owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Starting with Social Security just four years after its enactment, he spent the next seven decades improving and defending the most successful and popular program in the nation's history. Friday, a...

In Tuesday's State of the Union address, President Obama undoubtedly will discuss the budget deficit. What if anything will he say about Social Security? The right message could lead to a resurgent Democratic party. The wrong message will spell disaster for the Democrats.

Poll after poll consistently shows...

By Eric Kingson, Nancy Altman and John M. Cornman

Washington's policy elites just don't get Social Security. On Thursday, Congress passed the Obama-GOP compromise tax bill, replacing 15 percent of revenue dedicated to Social Security with borrowed money that will increase the federal deficit in 2011. On Dec. 3, a...

President Obama and the Republicans will say that the payroll tax holiday is all about stimulating the economy. But don't be fooled. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, there are many better ways to stimulate the economy with that $120 billion the payroll tax holiday will cost,...

Tuesday's election gave expression to a deep frustration that Washington is not listening to Main Street. This frustration seems reasonable after reading the tin-eared response to the elections penned by former OMB Director Peter Orszag, in his recent opinion piece with its fear-mongering title, "Saving Social Security."

...

In 1982, at the first meeting of the so-called Greenspan Commission, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, "We are all entitled to our own opinion, but not to our own set of facts." Alan Simpson, the former Republican Senator from Wyoming and current co-chair of the National Commission...

As Obama's Fiscal Commission prepares for its June 30 hearing, the Roosevelt Institute's New Deal 2.0 blog invited me to participate in its Social Security's Fiscal Fitness series, which examines the soundness of the program, its relationship to the federal deficit, and the vital role it...