improvements in growth. which most economists expect .3% improvement in gdp which, at the current rate, would push us towards 3%. you have to grow faster to keep this from adding to the debt over ten years. depending on welfare reform last year, there could be offsets. there are ways to reform entitlements without affecting individuals kurntsly receiving them. raising the retirement age for people my age who currently have a retirement age of 67, you can push that to 70 it doesn t really matter. you can push the retirement age a little bit beyond that for millennials. it would dramatically alter the math both for social security and medicare without having an impact on benefits. the real key here though i think, chris, is as was said earlier if you wanted to design a cut for the middle class, you would expand the earned income tax credit. you would give folks a payroll tax holiday because that s really the larger hit that most lower and middle income individuals take. this is really de
deductions which are quite high. if you really wanted if the folks who are writing this really wanted to give middle class americans a tax cut, you d do it two-year payroll tax holiday. you d stop having them put in their social security and medicare taxes. and that would be cash in their pockets. what this is it s unclear what the economic rational behind this particular tax reform plan is, other than as ben said to give corporations and largely speaking wealthier americans a tax cut. you re going to get about a 1.7% tax cut. which means if you re making $50,000 a year, it s just not all that much spending money. maybe about $80 a month for the first year that the tax plan would be in place if it indeed passed. at which point my mom louis would say, holiday, the only holiday i m not going on is the one i can t afford because my taxes are so high, brendan greely, is this tax cut really going to cause companies to give people raises? because i don t see it. louis, i m going to b
introducing. a pm pain reliever that dares to work all the way until. the am. new aleve pm the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour strength of aleve. for republicans fighting the president s supposed tyranny on immigration, today was like ronald reagan s birthday and a payroll tax holiday rolled into one. house republicans held two high-profile hearings on president obama s executive action. and in the morning the white house had to hear how the house gop huddled behind closed doors
to the payroll tax holiday. and the auto bailout kept 1.5 million americans on the job. the government launched a massive expansion of the safety net. in june of 2008, president bush extended unemployment benefits that were provided by the states. that program has been extended 11 times. the cost so far, $225 billion. the obama administration says it kept 11.4 million people out o poverty. ken, the question is did they do enough to keep people? the answer is no. we should have kept more of the borrowers in their homes. that would have helped everybody. that would have helped the banking sector indirectly. the mess would not have unfolded as badly. we should have done more
infrastructure. this would have lasted a long time. they worry some of it will be spent seven years later. you have to bear in mind nobody knew what was going on. they thought europe would collapse. it could have been worse. if wall street had collapsed, then main street would have been worse off. it is easy to be mad at wall street when wall street recovered. there is no question there is an important feeling of unfairness that strains our social contract and something needs to be done to make an adjustment to that. there is no debate about that. the unemployment benefits program is not the first recession program to end. the payroll tax holiday ended. the food stamps benefits were cut back last year. are we pulling back too soon? we are pulling back too soon. food stamps program is the best program out there. the republicans are asking