Why aren’t Trump and Harris talking about the slow demise of Social Security? | Column

The discussion of Social Security has once again drifted to the sidelines of politics. With checks going out month to month, few voters and fewer candidates are paying attention to the deterioration of the program’s finances as the election draws near.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone because the program as a national political priority has pulled a vanishing act every election year over the last decade. Social Security is the Ferris Bueller of politics.

“Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?”

At this point, nearly 70 million people collect benefits, and another 30 million sit on the cusp of retirement. Given the latest data, the average 80-year old expects to outlive the program’s ability to pay scheduled benefits. No one knows when the program might touch down in insolvency, nor how the sequences of that event might filter through to millions who depend upon the system.

These people should be looking to this election cycle for answers, but the details just aren’t there. It is not a one person problem, one party problem, one electoral race problem. Across the nation, politicians regardless of party offer little more than the hackneyed clichés of concern assuring voters that they will “protect Social Security!”

Donald Trump has promised to do nothing. Moreover, he has vaguely committed to repealing the taxation of Social Security benefits. According to the Social Security Administration, the cost of this change is roughly $11 trillion, which presumably would come from future retirees. Without knowing how Congress would pay for this trinket, it is just a-chicken-in-every-pot politics.

This change would mean that someone in a high income bracket would get to keep an extra $20,000. In exchange, the number of Social Security beneficiaries who live in poverty would start to swell in 2031.

In response, Trump’s campaign said a second Trump administration would shore up Social Security funding by “unleashing a new economic boom.” This response sounds eerily similar to the campaign promise of the first Trump administration which watched from the sidelines as Social Security finances unraveled during his term in office..

The program has been around for nearly a 100 years, and roughly a third of the program’s shortfall emerged during the 4 years that Trump served in the Oval Office.

On the other side of the ballot, Kamala Harris has promised “to strengthen Social Security and Medicare for the long haul by making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.” That is not a plan. It is a sentence designed to allow voters to hear what he or she wants to hear.

This theme is similar to what Joe Biden promised in his last campaign, when he wanted to increase payroll taxes on people who earned more than $400,000. That promise delivered nothing. While wages have increased about 32% since that time, the definition of super-rich hasn’t moved a dime. If the rich had kept pace with everyone else, the threshold would be closer to $550,000 this time around.

Why do politicians respond to these alarming prospects with empty rhetoric? The reason is the Social Security Trust Fund. Originally Congress established the reserve to generate interest income for the program. Since 2010, the reserve has served as a cushion between politicians and the consequences of legislative neglect.

With the Trust Fund in place, checks go out on time and in full every month. Every year since 2021, politicians have depended a little more on the bump coming from the Trust Fund. That continuity ensures that nothing wakes the slumbering voter.

The empty rhetoric flowing through this campaign creates more of a problem that most voters realize. The exchange of soundbites creates an illusion for voters that the program has the attention of Washington. In this way, the politics of the status quo comes across to voters as a heated and active debate where sides are fighting for every inch of ground before finalizing an agreement. In reality Congress is simply burning down the Trust Fund to avoid doing its job.

The problem with Social Security is the ticking of the clock, and the willingness of voters to wait for politicians to stop twiddling thumbs.

Brenton Smith writes on the issue of Social Security reform in Barron’s, Forbes, MarketWatch, TheHill, USAToday and more. Contact him at BrentonCSmith@yahoo.com.