“The choices are not particularly easy,” Santorum admitted to a New Hampshire town hall audience today, admitting that, “there is no easy fix to Social Security.”
He explained to the crowd that in 1937, Social Security was implemented when life expectancy was 61 and the retirement age was set at age 65. “We put a system together for really old people, at the time, to make sure that these really old people had some basis of support.” he said, reminding the audience that expectancy is now at 80.
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“70 percent of Americans today start collecting social security benefits at 62.” he said, “Raise your hand if you think the average American at age 62 is too old to work.”
Santorum added that life expectancy for people over the age 62 is now 85, leaving them to live on Social Security for 23 years which is not how the act was structured.
Santorum explained that people over the age of 65 were the wealthiest group of Americans.
“The answer is we gotta fix it through spending cuts or tax increases.” he said.
“If you think about where the wealth is if you think about longevity if you think about all of these issues, I think it leads to one way of solving these issues over another.” Santorum concluded, “But we’ll leave that for later.”
