GAO Reports  
GAO-05-649R May 06, 2005

Options for Social Security Reform

As you requested during my testimony before your committee on March 9, 2005,1 this report provides a list of the various options available to reform the Social Security program. Following this introduction is a table that lists a wide range of provisions that various proposals have used in some form. Following the table is a list of such proposals, all of which have been scored by the Social Security Administration´s Office of the Chief Actuary (SSA/OCACT).

Our list of provisions is intended to be generic and conceptual in nature. The list attempts to reflect, in general terms, all provisions that have appeared in SSA-scored proposals in the past few years. For each generic provision, a variety of approaches and parameters could be applied and have been proposed. For example, provisions to raise the retirement age take a variety of forms, including simply speeding up the currently scheduled increase from age 65 to 67, increasing the full retirement age to 68 or 70, indexing the retirement age to improvements in longevity, and even combinations of these. All of these variations have been consolidated into one general provision for increasing the retirement age.

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