Clik here to view.
Warning: Disability Insurance Is Hitting the Wall
Teaser: For years Social Security’s trustees (of which I am one) have warned that lawmakers must act to address the troubled finances of the program’s disability insurance (DI) trust fund. Congress...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to Fix the $960 Billion Budget Deficit
Teaser: The decrease in the federal budget deficit has been touted as an accomplishment by many—most recently by President Obama during his State of the Union Address—but America’s debt situation is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Pathway to Solvency
Teaser: This week the House and Senate Budget Committees released their proposed budgets for fiscal year 2016. The chambers will go to conference on the budgets after the Easter recess, and a unified...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to Fix Disability Insurance
Teaser: In late 2016, right around the time we elect the 45th president of the United States, we are due for our first entitlement crisis in two decadesThis article is excerpted from How to Fix...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Will Welfare Reform Increase Upward Mobility?
Teaser: One possible force for greater upward mobility is the welfare reforms of the 1990s. Hear me out, because I think the case is stronger than is generally admitted. We probably won’t know the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rubio’s Health Plan Is a Fresh Breeze
Teaser: As the starting gate loads for the large field of 2016 presidential candidates in the Republican party, there has not been much differentiation thus far in what the leading contenders have said...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Costs of Merging Social Security Retirement and Disability Funds
Teaser: Merging the OASI and DI trust funds would be a significant departure from lawmakers’ previous promises that the establishment of disability benefits within Social Security would not reduce the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
To Make Social Security Disability Insurance Fairer and Sustainable,...
Teaser: Factoring societal and technological advances into the disability determinations process will end Disability Insurance’s unsustainable expansion and restore fairness to our nation’s critical...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Government Debt Disinherited the Next Generation…and How To Fix It
Teaser: Burdened with an obligation to pay government debt they did not incur, young Americans – those born between the early 1980s and the beginning of the 21stcentury, or millennials – begin life at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Lower Labor Force Participation Rates Tell Us About Work Opportunities...
Teaser: It is my belief that much of what we think we know about living standards, economic insecurity, and the state of the economy is incorrect, based on a mistaken read of the available data. Our...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Time is Running Out to Fix Social Security
Teaser: This column summarizes key information from this year’s Social Security report. Last week saw the publication of the annual Social Security and Medicare trustees’ reports, along with an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Warning from the Medicare Trustees
Teaser: My most recent article for e21 summarized the 2015 Social Security trustees’ report released last week. This companion piece does the same for the Medicare report. These are the last annual...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Six Mistakes Paul Krugman Makes About Medicare's Finances
Teaser: Dr. Krugman’s piece reaches incorrect conclusions about entitlement spending challenges “disappearing” based on incomplete information and analysis.My usual custom when writing about Medicare...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Unprecedented Debt Burdens Facing Millennials
Teaser: Summary of testimony before the House Budget CommitteeThis is a summary of testimony before the House Budget Committee. Read the full testimony here.Chairman Price, Vice-Chairman Rokita,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Future Work Still Needed after Budget’s Disability Fix
Teaser: Passage puts the program in better condition but it will rapidly grow worse unless legislators enact further Social Security reforms in short order.The bipartisan budget bill just passed by...
View Article