Impact of increasing retirement age on the size of the economy

From the CBO blog:

Raising any of the ages of eligibility would cause some people to work longer, thereby increasing the size of the workforce and the economy. Although the magnitude of those effects is difficult to predict, CBO estimates that:

Raising Social Security’s early eligibility age to 64 or the full retirement age to 70 would, in the long term, boost the size of the workforce and the economy by slightly more than 1 percent.
Raising Medicare’s eligibility age to 67 would also boost the size of the workforce and the economy, but by a much smaller amount.

Bill Clinton worries that Democrats will use the NY Congressional election as an excuse not to do anything on Medicare

From ABC News:

"So anyway, I told them before you got here, I said I'm glad we won this race in New York," Clinton told Ryan, when the two met backstage at a forum on the national debt held by the Pete Peterson Foundation. But he added, "I hope Democrats don't use this as an excuse to do nothing."

Ryan told Clinton he fears that now nothing will get done in Washington.

"My guess is it's going to sink into paralysis is what's going to happen. And you know the math. It's just, I mean, we knew we were putting ourselves out there. You gotta start this. You gotta get out there. You gotta get this thing moving," Ryan said.

Clinton told Ryan that if he ever wanted to talk about it, he should "give me a call." Ryan said he would. . . .

Who is most likely to destroy Social Security and Medicare?

Democrats cut $500 billion from Medicare and it is Republicans who are going to destroy it? With the huge deficits created by Democrats, that will be what threatens Social Security the most. If the deficits were still around $160 billion per year as they were the last year that the Republicans controlled both the Congress and the presidency, there would be much less of a threat to Social Security. I am hardly a fan of keeping Social Security or Medicare as they currently are, but it seems that the huge deficits that Democrats have created are what really endangers Social Security.