On the recordApril 7, 1998
Let me say again, I believe that those of us who have higher incomes should pay more on the Social Security cap. I don't have a problem with that. The only point I was making is, if you took the cap off altogether on upper income people, they literally--they wouldn't be in a Social Security system anymore, they'd just be writing 6 percent of their income for something that they'd never see. And we do tax them more on the income tax side, considerably more. And we also have no cap on what they pay into the Medicare Trust Fund, which you pointed out. But the thing that has made Social Security work in the past is that everybody has had to pay in and everybody got to draw out, that there was a guarantee and a mutuality of responsibility. The earned-income tax credit has been somewhat controversial in Congress, but if it were up to me, I would have it even more generous. Because the way it works now is the average family of four with an income of $30,000 a year or less is paying approximately $1,000 less in income tax, including eligibility for refunds, than they would have paid if the law hadn't been changed in 1993. And we did it to try to take account of the fact that the payroll tax was so high for people and that incomes of people--the lower 20 percent of our work force had not gone up very much in the last 10 years. But it seems to me that it's better to have some giveback there and still have a universal participation in the system, since we want everybody to be a part of both the responsibility for paying in and then be able to get the minimum amount coming out. [An audience member, citing the stalemate in campaign finance reform, asked for assurance that something would actually be done, and panelists responded that Congress was working to achieve a bipartisan solution and expected to act on Social Security reform in 1999. Ms. Ifill then asked for the President's closing comments.]
Source
govinfo.gov
