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Senate Contenders Outline Proposals

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Johnny Isakson (R), left, and Jim Barksdale (D), right. Photos courtesy of the campaigns.



By Ann Hardie
In the Nov. 8 election for U.S. Senate, voters will choose between someone they have known a long time and someone they are still getting to know.

Republican incumbent Johnny Isakson, 71, first elected to the Senate in 2004, is running for a third term. Before that, he served three terms in the U.S. House and 17 years in the General Assembly.

Democrat Jim Barksdale, 63, has never held political office and is running as an antiestablishment candidate. Barksdale is founder of an Atlanta investment firm, where he serves as president and chief investment officer.

In phone interviews both candidates maintained that Social Security and Medicare need to be protected, but they have very different views on how to achieve that goal. Unless changes are made, Social Security will not be able to pay full benefits after 2034; Medicare, after 2028.


Social Security
With Americans living and working longer, Isakson advocates gradually raising the age that people can begin drawing their benefits from 67 to 70—and possibly higher. He emphasized that any change that he would support would not affect current retirees.

“We are talking about people whose eligibility is 30 or 40 years away,” he said.

Barksdale said the financial threat to Social Security may be overstated. “It is a politicized argument meant to create fear in the hopes of drumming up demand for privatizing it.”

He opposes privatization because of his investment clients who, he said, have been harmed by various financial schemes. Isakson has supported proposals that would have allowed workers to put a portion of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts.

Although Barksdale said some unspecified changes could be made to extend Social Security’s solvency, he opposes raising the eligibility age for full retirement benefits. He said people retiring from physically demanding low-wage jobs might need benefits earlier and would be hurt if the retirement age were raised.

“Just because people live longer does not mean that physical labor affects them less,” he said.

Concerned about possible abuses by people who fraudulently claim Social Security disability benefits, Barksdale suggested there needs to be greater oversight of the disability program.


Medicare
Isakson supports expanding means testing for Medicare, which would require higher-income beneficiaries to pay a greater share of their health care costs. But, he said, “I don’t think you can take Medicare away from anybody who has paid into it for years.”

During this Congress, Isakson has chaired a Finance Committee bipartisan working group exploring ways of providing and paying for chronic care.

Isakson has repeatedly voted to repeal, defund or dismantle the Affordable Care Act and said increasing insurance coverage and reducing health care costs could be achieved by boosting competition within the private sector.

He supports allowing Medicare beneficiaries and physicians to freely contract for items and services outside of the Medicare system.

Barksdale said Medicare is a more difficult issue to deal with than Social Security because of rising health care costs. He supports allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with prescription drug companies and health care providers. “We are not using as much of the government purchasing power to negotiate prices as we need to,” he said.

Isakson supported Georgia’s decision not to expand Medicaid. Barksdale is in favor of expanding Medicaid to cover those uninsured Georgians who don’t qualify for Medicare but can’t afford private insurance.

To learn where the presidential and congressional candidates stand on Social Security, go to 2016takeastand.org.

Ann Hardie is a writer living in Atlanta.

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