PA Republicans release budget that would raise the Social Security retirement age

House Republicans released a budget proposal on Wednesday that calls for raising the age of eligibility to receive Social Security benefits. Raising the retirement age is a bright red line that President Joe Biden has said he won’t cross.

The budget was released by the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus of more than 170 House Republicans that includes House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. Pennsylvania Republican Reps. Mike Kelly, Daniel Meuser, Guy Reschenthaler, and Lloyd Smucker are also members of the caucus.

The caucus’ budget proposal doesn’t specify what its compilers want to raise the Social Security retirement age to, saying only that they want to “make modest adjustments to the retirement age for future retirees to account for increases in life expectancy.” Currently, Americans born in 1960 or later can receive their full Social Security benefits at age 67.

Polling shows that raising the retirement age is extremely unpopular.

A Quinnipiac survey from March 2023 found that 78% of Americans do not support raising the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 70. The poll also found that 62% of Americans continue to hold that position even when told that raising the retirement age from 67 to 70 would make Social Security last longer. 

Biden has vowed that he won’t raise the Social Security retirement age.

“If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age I will stop them,” Biden said in his State of the Union address on March 7.

After the Republican Study Committee released its budget proposal, the White House issued a statement that said 80% of the House Republican conference wants to “cut Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act, as well as increase prescription drug, energy, and housing costs – all while forcing tax giveaways for the very rich onto the country.”

“Instead of saving Social Security and Medicare by making billionaires pay their fair share, House Republicans would rather break the sacred promise that every American should be able to retire with dignity,” Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said in a statement.  

Aside from raising the retirement age, the Republican Study Committee proposal includes support for the Life at Conception Act, a personhood bill that would declare that life begins at the moment of fertilization. Personhood legislation, which guarantees legal rights to fertilized eggs, imperils in vitro fertilization by making the discarding of embryos that happens during the IVF process a crime. In Alabama, fertility clinics briefly paused IVF treatments after the state Supreme Court declared embryos to be people with legal rights out of fear that doctors and patients could face criminal charges for discarding embryos. Services were resumed after Alabama’s Republican governor signed a bill that protects IVF providers and patients from criminal liability.