[This couple will get more back in Medicare benefits than they paid in taxes, but this is primarily because our health care costs twice as much per person as in any other wealthy country. This is a good argument for reforming the U.S. health care system but has nothing to do with the topic of the article.]
This article also repeatedly refers to the debate over cutting benefits as being an "ideological battle." There is no evidence presented in this piece that there is any ideological issue at stake. On the one hand are hundreds of millions of workers who want to see the benefits that they paid for. On the other hand are many wealthy people, exemplified by people like Peter Peterson and Erskine Bowles who would rather use Social Security money to keep their own taxes low or to serve other purposes.
This is a battle over who gets the money. The references to ideology just confuse the situation.
[Addendum: In a comment, Art Dover calls my attention to another inaccuracy in the article. It asserts: "The payroll tax holiday is depriving the system of revenue." This is not true. Under the law, Social Security is 100 percent reimbursed from general revenue for the taxes that were lost as a result of the payroll tax holiday. This is yet another fabrication by the Post in its crusade to cut Social Security.]
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