At HuffPo, Richard Eskow of the Campaign for America’s Future accuses me of dishonesty about Social Security:
As for Ponnuru, he challenged a statement from Social Security Works which said that “If Senator Marco Rubio had his way, Social Security’s very modest benefits, averaging just $1,330 a month for retired workers, would be cut.”
“That’s not true,” insists Ponnuru.
Is he right? Rubio talked about two things: raising the Social Security retirement age and lowering the formula for cost-of-living adjustments. The former would reduce the total amount received during a person’s lifetime. The latter would reduce the amount beneficiaries receive in inflation-adjusted dollars, which is how such things are always measured.
When someone is scheduled to receive X dollars and someone suggests giving them less than X instead, that’s a cut. That wouldn’t be open to debate in an honest discussion. But that’s not what we’re having here.
The statement I challenged is clearly constructed to suggest that under Rubio’s proposals, the average benefit level would be lower than $1,330 a month for retired workers. But neither raising the retirement age nor reducing cost-of-living adjustments would have that effect. If the statement had read “Rubio would cut future benefit levels” or “Retirees would get less under Rubio’s plan than they are scheduled to get now,” I would not have challenged it. The organization’s actual statement has more punch, which it gets by misrepresenting the facts.
Eskow’s statement about cost-of-living adjustments makes no sense. If he’s saying that benefit levels will be lower with reduced COLAs than with unreduced COLAs, then his statement is obviously true—but it’s banal and the verbiage about an inflation adjustment is unnecessary: The nominal amount of the benefit will also be lower with a reduced COLA. If, on the other hand, he’s saying that a reduced COLA will mean that the inflation-adjusted average benefit will be less than $1,330 today–which, again, is what Social Security Works was suggesting–then he is wrong. Average benefit levels in inflation-adjusted terms will go up, not down, because changing the COLA formula will do nothing to arrest the escalation of initial benefit levels, which are indexed to wage growth rather than to inflation. (He is also begging the question of what the right inflation adjustment is. Much of the impetus behind reducing COLAs comes from the view of many economists that the current COLA formula overstates inflation.)
I am not enthusiastic about raising the retirement age—I think there are better ways to improve Social Security—and oppose a reduction in COLAs. But I am for presenting issues as accurately as possible. Whether Eskow has failed to do that out of dishonesty or incompetence or both, I have no idea.