Candidates offer ideas on Social Security

WASHINGTON, July 8 (UPI) -- Both major U.S. presidential candidates are proposing dramatic changes to Social Security, but they diverge on how to keep the program solvent, observers said.

Aides to likely Republican nominee John McCain said the senator from Arizona could support a number of ideas to ensure the New Deal-era program, including raising the retirement age, reducing scheduled benefit increases and allowing younger workers to put money they currently pay for Social Security taxes into personal savings accounts, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Private savings accounts were floated by President George Bush, but fell flat.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, proposed raising taxes on upper-income Americans to address projected Social Security shortfalls -- an idea also given a less-than-warm reception.

Len Berman, director of the Tax Policy Center, said Obama "should get credit for doing something about Social Security," but the proposal lacks specificity about its tax increases and whether increases would slow the economy.

Some Democrats said they don't think Obama should address Social Security at all since any benefits wouldn't be distributed until the next decade and a deficit isn't projected until at least 2041, the Post said.

"From the standpoint of the Democratic Party, I would think it would make the most sense to leave it alone," said Dean Baker, an Obama supporter and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "It's not an immediate, pressing issue."