( CNN ) -- As the nation faces a looming retirement crisis , a member of Congress has proposed a terrible idea that would bash seniors . Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California asked the National Park Service to consider raising the price of the senior lifetime pass to help solve the parks ' $ 153 million budget gap caused by the sequester cuts . Pause for a moment and consider that $ 153 million is a tiny portion of the federal budget . It is a little more than the value of Bill Gates ' house and a fraction of the price of a B-2 bomber . People over 62 can buy a $ 10 lifetime pass to the more than 2000 federal recreational sites . For volunteers , the disabled and young children , it 's free . With the exception of a few other cases , it 's $ 80 for an annual pass to all the sites . If the park service doubled the cost of the senior lifetime pass , it would raise $ 5 million . That 's such a tiny drop in the bucket it 's laughable . This is not about the $ 5 million . Raising the lifetime park pass for seniors is not offered up to lower park admission prices for young people . In other words , there is no fixed pie . If grandma gets more , then baby Charlie gets less . No . Unlike reptiles , human societies do not arrange to eat their young . There is a sincere but mistaken belief out there that the old are taking advantage of the young . Societies that pay for the old can pay for the young , too . It 's not a zero-sum game . My colleagues and I have analyzed the national budgets in more than 63 nations . When a society spends more money on the elderly , they also spend more money on education and other programs benefiting the young . For example , in the United States in the 1970s , education spending tripled , education attainment rates soared and Social Security and Medicare expanded . The park pass proposal comes across as another attempt to erode the financial situation of American seniors who are already facing threats in their coming old age . The various proposals floating around to cut Social Security are scary enough for older Americans . For example , one idea from the Simpson-Bowles Commission is to raise the age seniors can collect their full Social Security benefits from 67 to 70 and the eligibility age from 62 to 65 . President Obama has proposed replacing the regular consumer price index , or CPI , to adjust Social Security benefits with the chained CPI -- often called the cat food CPI because the index assumes that when the price of human food rises , seniors can substitute cheaper food to get the same nutrition . A chained CPI would lower lifetime benefits to the oldest seniors by more than $ 25,000 . With the U.S. economy growing at a sluggish pace , older Americans who are nearing retirement face more uncertainty . In 2012 , a report from the Government Accountability Office found employers are reluctant to hire older workers , citing reasons such as outdated skills as one of the factors . Workers who are 55 years old and up who lose their jobs have it the hardest . They face the longest period of unemployment . Members of Congress who want generational fairness and balanced budgets wo n't get there by whacking the elderly with Social Security cuts or higher park pass prices . Why ca n't Congress be smarter about finding ways to revitalize the economy and create jobs ? That is a rhetorical question . They are busy finding coins in the sofa cushions instead of creating a sustainable and stabilizing federal budget . Raising the price of park passes for the elderly wo n't make a real dent or help young people enjoy the trees more . With this budget process , fewer and fewer families or the elderly will be able to get to the park if they 're busy scrambling to get by . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Teresa Ghilarducci .
A congresswoman proposes raising the price of the senior lifetime pass to national parks . Teresa Lopez : Raising the price for the elderly wo n't make a real dent . She says the idea seems like another way to erode the financial position of American seniors . Ghilarducci : There is no more pie ; it 's not as if seniors get more , then young people get less .