[loeg]

I hope not. One would have to exclude benefits to a lot of people who have been paying the top tax rate for SS to save any significant amount of money. In effect, this would be a retroactive tax. SS has never been a means tested program.

See also:

> Social Security benefits are relatively evenly distributed among retirees. The vast majority of benefits go to people who are low- or middle-income by any standard. This means that a means test that is focused on taking back benefits from upper income retirees is likely to raise very little money...

> This suggests that means testing is not an effective route for reducing the cost of Social Security.

Source: http://cepr.net/documents/publications/ss-2011-03.pdf

[harryh]

You raise a very good point that means testing wouldn't save very much money unless the cutoff was very low and cut into middle-income retirees.

So perhaps my guess about this is wrong. It just seems so politically easy though. "Why should millionaires get SS benefits while the middle-class suffers?" is a good sound bite.