Updated to include numbers from the 2006 Report of Social Security's Trustees.

Longtime Social Security Commissioner Robert M. Ball has developed a comprehensive plan to resolve the program’s projected financial shortfall through a simple combination of revenue increases and cost reductions. Demonstrating that there is little merit to claims that the program is in crisis and requires radical surgery, Ball’s plan would put Social Security on a firm financial footing for the next 75 years and beyond. And unlike proposals which would reduce guaranteed benefits over time, Ball’s relatively painless reforms would preserve Social Security’s vital role in Americans’ retirement security for generations to come.

Avoiding unpopular fixes such as raising the retirement age or taxing all income, Ball’s plan would:

• Gradually raise the cap on earnings covered by Social Security so that once again 90 percent of all income would be taxed and counted for benefits. This was the threshold set by Congress in 1983, the last time it considered this issue. Social Security taxes are now being applied to only 83 percent of earnings. By very slowly phasing in the change, the impact on the 6 percent of affected workers would be relatively modest.
• Dedicate future proceeds of a revised estate tax to Social Security beginning in 2010. Present law gradually reduces the estate tax so that by 2009, only estates above $3.5 million ($7 million per couple) will be taxed. The tax should be frozen at that level, with the revenues directed toward Social Security.
• Improve the return on Social Security funds by investing part of them in equities, as just about all other public and private pension plans do. Other government retirement systems such as ones for employees of the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Railroad Retirement Board, and the Tennessee Valley Authority also invest directly in stocks.

Together, these three adjustments—each desirable in itself—would eliminate the 75-year projected shortfall.  But Ball details two other desirable small adjustments that could contribute to a Social Security surplus. First, adopt the more accurate consumer price index recently developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the so-called “chained” index), and, second, cover all new state and local employees under Social Security. With these additional adjustments, most people who work would be under Social Security and the system would generate a small surplus over the 75 year planning horizon, even using the cautious intermediate cost projections.

Robert M. Ball was commissioner of Social Security under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and has subsequently served on many statutory advisory councils as well as on the bipartisan commission that produced the 1983 amendments. His latest book is Insuring the Essentials: Bob Ball on Social Security (Century Foundation, 2000). For additional discussion of the proposals described here, see The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble, by Nancy J. Altman (Wiley, 2005).

This brief should not be construed as reflecting the views of The Century Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress.