The discussion over the future of Social Security has once again drifted to the sidelines this political season. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because it has pulled a vanishing act every election year over the past decade.
While you have likely heard that the program pays more than 70 million people, not many address the fact that another 30 million Americans are about to start collecting Social Security over the coming decade. Although monthly Social Security payments may not be important to every one of these people, roughly 40 percent will depend on their Social Security check as their primary source of income. Basically, the program is a lifeline to millions of Americans.
For most of us, these people are also known as mom and dad; ma and pa; and soon enough, the person in the mirror. Despite the importance of the program, any question about the reliability of its payments drifts from election to election as it maintains its inevitable course toward insolvency.
Against this backdrop, voters need to consider that the longer we do nothing, the worse the problem gets. Or put another way, the greatest threat to Social Security is the passage of time and the politics of the status quo.
To illustrate this point, then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) co-sponsored the Social Security Expansion Act of 2019. That proposal was based on the 2018 Trustees Report, which used data from the year ending 2017. So, the last time that the current Democrat nominee for president looked at the problem, it was nearly half the size that it is today.
Moreover, Harris’ proposal didn’t deal with the entirety of the problem as it was. It came up 20 percent short of what the problem was even back then.
As another example, presidential candidate Joe Biden back in 2020 argued that the wealthy should pay their fair share. He defined wealthy as those earning more than $400,000 in annual income. In 2024, the definition hasn’t changed despite inflation levels the country hasn’t seen in decades. In a growing economy, the definition of rich should rise faster than inflation. In Biden’s mind, the measure fell by nearly 20 percent in real terms purely as a matter of the clock going tick-tock.
Folks, the clock continues to tick. On August 14, Kamala Harris released a statement: “For 89 years, Social Security has made the difference between poverty or peace of mind for millions of seniors, people with disabilities, and other beneficiaries. As President, I will protect and expand these bedrock programs.”
In the five minutes that it took her team to post that empty rhetoric, the program generated another $5 million in empty promises.
If anyone hopes to protect, much less expand, these programs, he or she has to understand the impact of time. Last year, Social Security generated roughly $800 billion in promises that it does not expect to keep purely as a matter of one year passing into the next.
For Democrats hoping to protect the program, nothing is more important than a vision for where the program is going. The party wants to “expand” the program, but is roughly $10 trillion apart on what the word “expand” might mean. They are sure that it should provide more benefits, but they have no idea how much or to whom the benefits might fall. Also, they have provided no details as to how these new benefits will be paid for.
Before Harris can protect Social Security, she needs to be able to herd the cats, and provide a vision for what problem the Democrats want to solve. Any promise to protect Social Security should have started at the DNC Convention, where she had both the platform and obligation to outline how specifically she would protect the program.
Sadly, her speech showed that she has no intent to herd cats. Indeed, she is not really even sure that there is a problem.
However, as all informed Americans are well aware, Social Security is running on fumes. The problem with Social Security is the ticking of the clock coupled with the apathy of voters who continue to wait for politicians to stop twiddling their thumbs while not holding their feet to the fire on this pressing issue.
Brenton Smith ([email protected]) is a policy advisor with The Heartland Institute
