President Clinton Signs Legislation Expanding Opportunities for America's Senior Citizens

AS A FIRST STEP TOWARDS SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM, PRESIDENT CLINTON WILL SIGN LEGISLATION EXPANDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR AMERICA’S SENIOR CITIZENS

April 6, 2000

Today President Clinton signs H.R. 5, "Senior Citizen’s Freedom to Work Act of 2000" into law. In his January 1999 State of the Union Address the President stated that "we should eliminate the limits on what seniors on Social Security can earn." The House and Senate responded to his call, passing unanimous legislation that will usher in a new era of opportunity for America’s senior citizens.

 

President Clinton Has a Fiscally Responsible Plan to Extend the Solvency of Social Security. Eliminating the Retirement Earnings Test will help build bipartisan trust toward working with Congress to extend the life of Social Security. The President believes that more should be done to extend the life of Social Security until the middle of the century and strengthen the benefits for elderly women. The President has proposed a specific plan that would ensure that the benefits of the debt reduction that are due to Social Security are used to extend the life of Social Security and pay down the debt held by the public by 2013:

 

New Tools to Help Retirement Planning. The President also announces that Social Security is releasing a new Social Security Retirement Planner. This is an Internet-based application that will allow workers to obtain estimates of their Social Security benefits based on their past and expected future earnings and other plans. Social Security is the foundation for a secure retirement, but for most people a comfortable retirement rests on the three-legged financial stool of Social Security, pensions, and savings. The new financial planner will enable people to take advantage of the tools of the Internet economy to plan their pensions and private savings to ensure that they enjoy a dignified retirement. (Note: to maintain privacy and protect records from unauthorized users, none of the calculators are linked to individual earnings records or any other information in SSA’s database. All benefit estimates are based strictly on input from the users.)




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