Conservatives Rip Boomers for Backing Tax Hike to Protect Social Security
After a new poll found that an overwhelming majority of baby boomers support increasing taxes to help preserve Social Security, conservative pundits have been pushing back with sharp criticism of the demographic that has composed a significant portion of the Republican Party’s voter base.
In a survey from the Cato Institute, 89 percent of Americans over age 65 said Social Security benefits should be protected even if it meant higher taxes for younger workers.
This sparked conservative backlash on social media.
“Just as it isn’t boomers’s fault that politicians stole their social security — or that leftists of all generations voted for the pols who did it — it’s not the responsibility of the generations that follow to make up for it by giving up more of our incomes,” conservative radio host Dana Loesch wrote on X.
Political commentator Matt Walsh wrote: “Stealing from young families to pay much higher net worth Boomers is immoral and ridiculous. Young families already have to deal with an economy where everything is exponentially more expensive than it was for Boomers at the same age. Older people clamoring to raise taxes on the young, on top of it all, is just perverse.”
Why It Matters
The social media pushback reflects the larger growing generational divide over how to save Social Security.
While Democrats have often focused on tax increases as a way to preserve benefits, many conservatives are framing the debate as a form of intergenerational unfairness, essentially questioning whether younger Americans should bear higher costs to maintain benefits for a rapidly growing retiree population.
Congress already faces mounting pressure to address Social Security’s finances before automatic cuts are triggered, so these disagreements between boomers, Gen Xers, millennials and Gen Zers may become as politically significant as the traditional partisan divide.
What To Know
According to projections from the Congressional Budget Office and Social Security trustees, the program’s trust funds are expected to become depleted in the early 2030s unless lawmakers act.
Several ideas to fix the problem have been proposed, including:
- Raising the payroll tax rate.
- Lifting or eliminating the cap on earnings subject to Social Security taxes.
- Increasing the retirement age.
- Reducing benefits for higher earners.
- Combining tax increases and benefit reforms.
However, the debate of whether Americans should be willing to pay higher taxes to prevent benefit cuts is hotly contested by many conservatives, despite their historic support from baby boomers.
Chris Martz, a meteorologist known for his climate change skepticism, wrote on X: “That’s commie mentality. It is not my job (or any young American’s job for that matter) to fund your retirement. You ought to have saved for retirement yourself by setting an ‘x’ percentage of your paycheck aside every two weeks, and then invested it in a Roth IRA; 401(k); or in real estate, stocks, and/or precious metals. That’s what financially smart adults do.”
Also chiming in on the poll, Meghan McCain, conservative commentator and TV personality, wrote: “Horrible. Just dastardly.“
Higher Taxes on Working Americans
The criticism of raising taxes to save Social Security has long centered around the idea that America’s youngest and often most financially vulnerable shouldn’t pay for their elders’ retirement even though the government promised a certain payment amount to them based on their years of work.
“Younger generations are beginning to feel that the Boomer generation continually wants to stack higher taxes and higher prices on younger generations while receiving many of the benefits of the inflationary spending that helped get them to where they are today,” Kevin Thompson, CEO of 9i Capital Group and host of the 9innings podcast, told Newsweek.
Naturally, though, older Americans have long been among the strongest defenders of Social Security. For many retirees, monthly Social Security payments are a significant portion of household income.
“Social Security has always had an intergenerational bargain underneath it. And now the bill is getting harder to ignore,” Michael Ryan, finance expert and founder of MichaelRyanMoney.com, told Newsweek.
“Boomers understandably want to protect benefits they paid into for decades. Younger workers can reasonably ask, ‘So I pay more now to protect your benefits, while being told the system may not fully fund mine?’”
Conservatives and fiscally minded critics generally argue that simply raising taxes does not address the underlying demographic pressures facing the program. The ratio of workers paying into Social Security relative to beneficiaries has declined as the population ages and life expectancy has increased. And this all coming as younger workers are already facing housing affordability challenges, student debt burdens and slower wage growth than previous generations.
There is also likely a political strategy involved when conservatives push back against the boomer support for raising taxes on young workers, according to Thompson.
“Younger people vote, and many older individuals are stuck in their ways when it comes to party affiliation. There aren’t many undecided voters within that group. Most of the undecided voters and shifts in political thinking will come from younger voters,” Thompson said.
“The electorate knows that if you continue to saddle younger generations with debt, you risk losing them as a voting bloc forever. It is time to reconcile this and show some form of compassion toward younger generations, or risk never winning another election again.”
Forcing working-age Americans to pay even higher payroll taxes could place additional strain on younger households while delaying more comprehensive reform for Social Security. Instead of raising taxes, some believe increasing the retirement age or adjusting benefits for wealthier retirees could be suitable alternatives.
“The reality is this issue is far more complex that simply raising taxes on some to pay for benefits for others,” Alex Beene, financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek.
“In order for Social Security to survive as a benefit, there are more than likely going to have to be tax increases to cover some of the shortfall left from the trust fund’s depletion in the coming years.”
What Happens Next
Congress is expected to continue debating Social Security reform as we inch closer to the 2032 deadline. Any bipartisan solution will likely involve difficult tradeoffs between taxes and eligibility rules.
“The danger is that Social Security reform becomes a generational fight instead of a financing problem,” Ryan said. “If Boomers reject benefit changes and younger workers reject higher taxes, Congress does what it does best: waits. And waiting makes every eventual solution more painful.”
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jenni Fink, Edward T. Cummins