nerd has got to do. [applause] ♪

announcer: washington journal continues. host: alex lawson is the executive director of social security works. thank you for being here to talk about the future of social security and medicare. what is your take on what should happen with this program? >> it's really simple. social security work, everybody knows no one gives us anything when it comes to social security. we pay for it, we see it coming out of our paychecks. it is our money. so the last thing that anybody wants is some politician reaching their hand in your pocket and stealing our money by cutting our budget.

and that is what is being debated. so we fully reject that. and the idea that there is any sort of crisis. this is not a system in crisis. if we just asked millionaires and billionaires to pay the same rate into social security as all of the rest of us do, then we could expand benefits, increase benefits for everyone and have solvency into the next century. it's the opposite of a crisis. it's actually incredibly safe and millions of americans know that. >> let's talk about the current state of social security. the retirement trust fund can pay 100% of benefits until 2033, a year earlier than last year. te2010 -- 23, reserves become depleted and continuing inco c pay up to 77% of benefits. disability insurance trust funds can pay 100% of benefits until 2097. you said millionaires and

billionaires need to pay the same rate. what do you mean? >> right now there is a cap on what you pay into social security. people pay on the first $160,000 of their wages. after that, people don't pay in at all. the more money someone makes, the less they are paying into the system. there is no reason for it. right now, that explains the entire problem that we are seeing with social security. there is a problem with social security. the benefits are too low for millions of people. but in 2033, you have to do the whole system and is 80% of benefits after 2033. there is a 20% automatic benefit reduction because social security can't borrow any money. so that is the problem, a 20% benefit cut.

the solution can't be a 20% benefit cut right now. and that is what republicans are proposing. that is what a lot of experts will be proposing. but they are not being honest with the american people. all we have to do, we have a decade to get millionaires and billionaires to pay into the system on all of their income just like the rest of us and there is no problem. in fact, we can expand benefits, increase them for everyone in the country. host: you call it an accident of history that we have this cap. explain? guest: it literally is just an accident of history. there's always a back and forth in terms of creating policy. that was true during the new deal era as well. a lot of things that frances perkins and the other new dealers wanted like health care was originally part of the new deal were not included.

even then, there is this republican and democratic debate and the republicans were consistently trying to give less. they wanted to cut things back. so deals remained. one of the deals, rich people were going to pay less into the system than working people and that is the only problem that we really have to fix with those -- social security. host: your argument is rais interest cap on millionaires and billionaires. earlier this week, a former public trustee of social security and medicare trust funds discussed proposal to raise the cap on earnings. here is what he had to say. >> it only gets you so far. one of my frustrations as a former trustee is that there's a lot of exaggeration in media commentary, social media commentary. it doesn't do all that much. even if you completely exposed and eliminated the cap, got rid

of it altogether, exposed all earnings without limited taxation, it only solve about 38% of the permanent shortfalls. why is that? in social security, benefits and prosecutions are linked. you painted the system, you make a major benefit. there is a way around that. what you can do, you can ratchet down the benefits approval rate so it is not a big benefit windfall for them. but that just get you back to the starting point that there is really no way to avoid dealing with the growth of the benefit formula on the high income end. with an increase in the tax base, without an increase in the tax base, you are pretty much stuck having to do that. we are going to have to do a little bit of each. a little bit on the tax side, a

little bit on the eligibility side, a little bit on the benefit formula side. host: your response? guest: with all due respect to chuck, the man is a paid liar. nothing that he said there is actually true and we have all the paper to show it. senators elizabeth warren and bernie sanders released a bill, and in the bill they removed the cap on what people pay in the. they asked millionaires and billionaires to pay all of their income just like the rest of us do. they not only achieved 75 year solvency, they also increased everybody's benefits in this country by $200 per month. it is simple. this man -- i'm sorry, i am pointing at chuck -- he is not being honest with the american people. he is making it seem like the only choice to address the problem of a benefit cut in a decade is to cut benefits now.

that's not a solution to the problem, it is just the problem sooner. and then his math is not correct. you can check the actuaries math on the sanders-warrenville and see that it achieves 75 year solvency. host: does it do that by delinking benefits to income? guest: yes, it does. what it does, you just adjust the formula which is what we have right now. the more that you pay in in social security, the less there is a return on the seller's -- salaries at the high end. you just continue that, and that is a way of making the benefits very progressive. right now, the revenue is incredibly regressive. the richer you are, the less you pay into social security. now, all we have to do, make the revenue progressive, continue

with the benefit structure and again, solvency into the next century, increased benefits for everybody. everybody wins except maybe some billionaires. that is what this is about. the billionaires saturate this town with money. they create whole thing take -- thinktanks to pretend there is a crisis. there is not a crisis, they just don't want to pay taxes. they have the entire industry set up here. huge money pulling into this town so that they don't have to pay their fair share. > what would be the millionaire and billionaire's fair share? what is the percentage, all of their income? guest: correct. host: what would be the percentage? guest: 12.6% just like everybody in this country. the vast majority of americans in this country. they pay 12 point 6% into social

security from their wages. it is how they earn their benefits. half of it comes in their employer, half of it comes from themselves. millionaires and billionaires do not pay 12.6%. the more they make, the less that percentage is. someone like elon musk probably pays .0000001% of his income. i want him to pay the same amount as every american on all of his income. these billionaires have an army of lawyers. and what those lawyers do is create complex financial situations so that they don't have to pay their fair share. i say we end the rig system that allows millionaires and billionaires to have an unfair redistribution of wealth in the country and instead, we have them pay the same rate as the rest of working americans. it is pretty simple. host: the medicare trustees report. the programs will be able to pay 100% of benefits until 2031,

three years later than reported last year. continuing program will be sufficient to pay 89% of total benefits. what we do about the program, in your opinion? guest: again, the trustees report should be an occasion every year for everyone to be happy and the like, look, everything is going for the well. and we have a decade to figure out some small tweaks of making millionaires and billionaires pay the same rate and the system will continue functioning. with medicare, the reason it has increased is because the administration has put forward some ideas to stop corporations from ripping off the american people. for example, we just allowed medicare to negotiate drug prices. that's hundreds of billions of dollars into the system, and all we had to do was say pharmaceutical corporations can't rip off the american

people anymore, who, for the most part, the american people pay to develop the drugs through the nih and tax dollars and then we pay the highest drug prices to the world. let's stop getting ripped off by corporations on health care, put that money into medicare, stand medicare benefits, cover vision, hearing and dental, so people don't have a liability that they can't afford. these are the ideas that are really simple, that stop insurance corporations from making their money by delaying and denying care and ripping off the government by just overcharging them. again, we see some emotion in that direction from the biden administration. we are talking tens of billions of dollars per year. again, there is no crisis except for the crisis of political will. who does this town work for? does it work for the american people who have built this

country, for the billionaires who are definitely pouring money into the city, but are doing it so that they can extract from the country, not add to it? host: the president in a statement on march 7 says "my budget proposal to increase the medicare tax rate on earned and unearned income above 400,000 dollars to 5% from 3.8% as proposed in the past, my budget will also ensure that the tax that supports medicare can't be avoided. this modt increase in contributions from bills of the highest incomes will help keep the medicare program strong for decades to come. your reaction? guest: that is one part of the plan on medicare. it is a little bit tax policy-wonky because the deals with pass-through incomes, but the real easy thing is what i said before. billionaires have an army of lawyers and accountants, and what they figure out how to do

is create complex financial situations so that they don't have to pay what they actually owe. when you have them pay what they owe, there's no problem. so most of it president biden is addressing is actually a loophole that was exploited by the ultra-wealthy. host: let's get to the calls because they are lighting up for you. executive director director of social security works. bob in wisconsin, republican. caller: i believe mr. lawson accused someone of lying when he himself i think is at least misleading the public. he said something like that it is an accident of history that the contributions are capped. actually, what happened with the benefits were capped because the social security is called supplemental security income, and they believed back then when they started that people of a certain income category would

not need that supplemental security income, so they capped the benefits first, and then they tied the benefits cap -- excuse me, the contributions cap to the benefits cap. we can have a discussion on whether you want to raise that, but are you going to raise the benefits as well? or are you just going to make it more of a welfare program when it comes to not paying people their fair share? host: bob, hang on the line. alex lawson will respond. guest: a couple things. supplemental security income is a different program than social security. it is administered by the social security administration, but it is not what we are talking about today, just as a point of clarification and fact. ssi is different than social security. some of the other things that you said are true, except backwards.

there was a maximum tax rate, and because of that, a maximum benefit rate. and it went in that direction. the idea is that social security is an insurance program. you pay into it, you earn your benefits when you become fully insured, and again, we could have had everybody paying in on all of their income from the beginning with a benefit structure that is very similar to what we have right now, it just returns less and less as you get up into those elon musk numbers of billions of dollars. host: bob, do you have a follow-up? caller: i believe he's wrong. social security was originally, as i believe, the ssi and all the other things that you are about have been added on between when that started and now. that is what i was talking about and i still think he is wrong about how it began.

benefits were cap first. i still believe that's true. guest: i would invite anybody who is listening to just google "ssi history" and you will see that this program happened way later than the creation of social security as we are talking about it. ssi is a critical program that we actually need to increase -- i just want to clarify this on the facts. and again, if you're interested, i would suggest that you take a look at nancy altman's book, "social security works." you can read about the history of it. you could also just google history of social security and read all about how it came together, wide areas decisions were made, and how a lot of it is, like i said, accidents of history. accidents of history might be eating a little generous.

it is actually just the give of politics. the reason that we don't have health care today is because that was negotiated away to some of the conservative senators at the time, and we still don't have guaranteed health care in this country. the history of social security is really accessible if you want to actually just google it. host: albuquerque, new mexico, independent. caller: good morning. i'd like to combine another social issue with this, and that is illegal immigration. lots and lots of businesses cheat by hiring illegal immigrants. the democrats don't say or do anything about it, they just want to let everybody in the country. and i'm sure the far left is really going to push for any part of immigration reform. we are going to just hand hundreds of millions of people,

we are just going to give them everything. we are going to give them social security and we are going to give them medicare and medicaid. with that part of your plan, alex? please inform me. guest: a couple things. one is that you have it completely reversed. the problem with our broken immigration system right now is that millions of people are working in the shadows to benefit big business, and those workers who are trying to make a decent living basically following the rules of this country, including paying into social security to the tune of tens of billions of dollars that they are paying into social security, undocumented people paying into the system without getting any benefits out. that is the current situation. what i would do in the future, if we fix our immigration system, if we bring people out of the shadows so that they are

actually working with the same legal protections as citizens in this country, then we are going to see wages go up for everybody. that is the single best policy for social security possible. you don't have to believe me, you can go and look at the actuary website and see it for yourself. if we stop letting billionaires and big business rip us off, in this case by creating a broken immigration system so that there is a pool of low-paid workers that drives every working wage down in the country, we have a very american immigration system where we invite people into this country and we say if you play by the rules, if you work hard, we are going to have your back. social security is going to have your back. labor laws are going to have

your back. you are not going to be able to be exploited by a big corporation so that they can profit off of your unpaid labor. i'm sorry, caller. i think that if you look into this, you will find that there is a lot of misinformation being fed to you by the billionaires to protect their money, and to go even further, to reach into your pocket and steal your money. so what it all comes down to, we all need to stand together and say no more. it is ti