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Politicians of both parties are growing progressively more comfortable with the status quo for Social Security. Someone needs to ask the hard questions that pushes the discussion of Social Security reform into the public view on honest terms
The senior advocacy group AARP recently hosted a forum on the future of Social Security, featuring two lawmakers—Rep. John Larson and Sen. Bill Cassidy—who are among those hoping to make changes to stabilize the program for future generations.
As an organization, AARP is concerned about the future of the program, and it should be. According to the latest forecast, someone who is 79 today expects to outlive the system’s ability to pay scheduled benefits at which point the program is expected to deliver life changing reductions to benefits to its members.
Read: Want to save Social Security? ‘Speak out. Scream. Vote.’
The forum unfortunately did more to reinforce the status quo than to shed light on the choices that America must make in the coming decade.
“There is no more important aspect of Social Security than its independence from the financial woes of the broader government.”
Since the last major reform of the program, the cost to fix the system for current voters has grown to roughly $22.5 trillion. Most Americans understand that there is a significant problem, but fewer Americans understand the cause: Congress.
Specifically, Congressional inaction on the program accounts for roughly two-thirds of the cost to fix the system.
Read: Opinion: The 2023 Social Security 2100 Act is a bad version of a great bill
The delay on reform which we have experienced for more than 40 years is the predictable outcome of a debate that has largely devolved into an exchange of sound bites, where the sound of the bite is more important than the fact of it. Politicians, and it is both parties, are free to simply make up fact out of fiction.
As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Right now, we are witnessing the anti-Moynihan effect where you are entitled to have your own opinion on the subject based on your own set of facts. This type of dialogue leads nowhere because there is no foundation of fact on which to build consensus for change.
AARP, which did not respond to a request for comment, should know better to give politicians a forum to wax poetic about a world far removed from the one in which we live. This is the problem, not the solution.
Everyone expects politicians to put their ideas in the best light possible. We have unfortunately gone well beyond common politics. At this point, politicians are free to simply make up facts because no one will challenge them on their claims.
Larson deserves a great deal of credit and appreciation from the members of AARP. There isn’t a member of Congress who has been a more visible champion of the program. As hard as he has worked in the past, he told the audience at the forum that “Congress hasn’t improved Social Security in more than 52 years!”
While his concern sounds alarming, the statement is not true. The fact is that Social Security has improved benefits on its own every year for the last 51 years. Congress addressed this concern back in the 1970s by incorporating the indexing feature of the program. As a result, the average benefit received by new seniors has grown by 36% in real terms since 2000.
Bending the truth is not limited to the blue side of the aisle.
Cassidy, the featured Republican, wants the federal government to borrow $1.5 trillion to invest as a separate fund. “All we’re doing is what every other 401(k), every other national pension fund does,” he said.
No 401(k) is legally allowed to do what he is proposing, and no other pension on earth is run with the profits of a hedge fund.
A question to ask Republicans: Ahead of the 2016 election, then-candidate Trump promised not to touch Social Security because a growing economy would solve its financial challenges. In fact, the program’s finances deteriorated at a record pace during his term during a period of low inflation. What happened?
A question for the Democrats: Research suggests that nearly half of those 62-65 plan to take benefits early specifically over concerns of over the solvency of Social Security. These decisions will last decades, causing havoc for those unfortunate enough to live into their 90s. The impact of insolvency is here today. As a party, Democrats are roughly $10 trillion apart on what benefits the program should provide. Why are we talking about increasing benefit levels which have grown substantially over the last couple of decades when the program can’t pay the bills it has?
AARP has the right objective: to increase the visibility of Social Security’s prospects. To realize that goal, the organization has to shape a discussion bounded by facts, as well as, provide answers that all seniors deserve, and their members deserve.
There is no more important aspect of Social Security than its independence from the financial woes of the broader government. Over the past year, Social Security benefits were secure even as the rest of the country skidded toward default.
The troublesome fact is that both of the featured speakers offer ideas that would chip away at the independence of the program. AARP members need to take a long pause to think about the implication of these adjustments. No senior wants to face a year-to-year budget battle where their benefits are valued against every other priority of the government.
Here is the role that all of our senior organizations can fill. They should provide members with an explanation of the problem and the options at hand in down-to-earth terms. They need to resist the urge to serve as a megaphone for the noise that has derailed any level of reasonable discourse about the future of a program on which the rest of us depend.
Moynihan was right. You can’t have your own set of facts and hope to solve any problem.
Brenton Smith is a policy adviser to The Heartland Institute.
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