FIVE FACTS: Rep. Paul Ryan and Social Security

What You May Already Know: Paul Ryan wants to privatize Social Security, cutting guaranteed benefits and forcing seniors into risky private accounts instead of Social Security. Here are five more things you need to know about Ryan’s plan.

1.      Paul Ryan’s Plan Takes $4.9 Trillion Out of the Social Security Trust Fund. According to Social Security’s Chief Actuary, the Ryan Social Security plan would reduce the balance in Social Security’s worker-financed Trust Fund by $4.9 trillion, endangering our ability to pay current and future seniors the benefits they earned through a lifetime of work.

2.      Paul Ryan’s Plan Slashes Social Security’s Guaranteed Benefits. The Ryan Social Security plan would cut guaranteed Social Security benefits for all future retirees. A typical middle-income worker’s Social Security would be cut by a total of 39 percent – almost $6,000 a year in today’s dollars – when Ryan’s plan is fully implemented.

3.      Paul Ryan Wants To Force All Seniors To Work Longer. The Ryan plan raises the retirement age for Social Security even for those who physically can’t do their jobs anymore. Ryan’s Social Security plan puts the retirement age on an auto-pilot march upward -- first to age 68, then 69, then 70, then 71 . . .

4.      Remember the Bush Privatization Plan?  That Was Paul Ryan’s Idea. By his own account, Ryan and his allies pressured President Bush into proposing his 2005 Social Security privatization plan, which slashed guaranteed benefits by 40 percent for all middle-income workers and forced seniors into risky private accounts. As the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza noted in his recent profile of Ryan: “As President George W. Bush campaigned for a second term . . . Ryan laid the groundwork for the Republican agenda should Bush be elected. . . . As a thirty-four-year-old representative, he set out to privatize Social Security.”

5.      Paul Ryan’s Plan For Social Security Increases the National Debt for Nearly 50 Years. The Ryan Social Security plan would require the federal government to borrow an additional $1.2 trillion – a new debt that would not be paid off until 2083. That’s better than Ryan’s previous plan, which increased the debt by $2.4 trillion just over the first ten years.

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