According to an article by Phillip Longman
slated to appear in
Fortune, Bush administration staffers are mulling proposals to enable privatization by raising the retirement age to 72:
FORTUNE has learned that a new reform idea is percolating within the Social Security Administration. Nothing's official, but the idea is so good that we're previewing it here to get some public discussion going.
The idea starts with the creation of Early Retirement Accounts... How would Social Security make up for the loss of revenue? Monthly Social Security benefits would remain what they are today, but the age at which future retirees qualified for them would be delayed. Today you can qualify for early, reduced benefits at age 62; that age would gradually increase to 68. The retirement age for full benefits would be pushed back from 65 to 72.
Paul Hewitt, the current head of the Social Security Administration's policy division, has been an advocate for raising retirement ages since the 1980s, when he helped start a conservative-funded organization called Americans for Generational Equity.
Phillip Longman, author of the
Fortune piece, seems to have his own dog in this fight-- a little Googling turns up the fact that he was one of
Hewitt's co-workers at A.G.E.