Senator Warren has been in office for ten years and for all those ten years the Social Security Trustees have been urging Congress to act on assuring Social Security’s immediate and long-term solvency. What has happened? Nothing! It doesn’t help to simply say what should not be done.
The fact is that there are a number of relatively minor changes that in combination will sustain Social Security as originally conceived for at least the next 75-years. It may be actuarially valid, but not necessary to raise the FRA.
The fact our elected officials continue to play politics with this important program is reprehensible‼️
“We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.”–
President Roosevelt upon signing Social Security Act
Social insurance, as conceived by President Roosevelt, would address the permanent problem of economic security for the elderly by creating a work-related, contributory system in which workers would provide for their own future economic security through taxes paid while employed.
Trust Funds
After Social Security numbers were assigned, the first Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes were collected, beginning in January 1937. Special Trust Funds were created for these dedicated revenues. Benefits were then paid from the money in the Social Security Trust Funds. Over the years, more than $8.7 trillion has been paid into the Trust Funds, and more than $7.4 trillion has been paid out in benefits. The remainder is currently on reserve in the Trust Funds and will be used to pay future benefits.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
The Congress is going to wait until the very last minute to fix SS and Medicare. Because if they fix it now, they lose the issue to get reelected to fix SS and Medicare. Politicians love issues that do not need to be fixed today, to claim the problem is the other party. And most voters buy it hook, line, and sinker.
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FWIW, I thing the paragraph following the one quoted is just as important, or more so…
“This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.”
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Eventually there will be a break in the logjam over how to deal with the funding of the SSA. The hard left is holding to their position and I assume the far right has a position and there are some centrists. So I say eventually.
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Politics?
Only once in my life did I attempt to correct (what I considered) a major problem. It involved fall protection when working in aerial lifts. I spent countless hours, wrote articles in several trade magazines, traveled to several cities for committee meetings, spent thousands of dollars… For nothing? I wish. CalOSHA thanked me for my involvement and invited me to a regional meeting to announce the new rule. I took my best friend, for moral support, and, politely as I could, demanded that they take my name off any reference to the new rule. It was clearly worse than before I started.
That was twenty five years ago. I still check occasionally, and nothing has been corrected.
Politics. May be you have to be some kind of crazy to even try.
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Then the committee got back to work to improve the camel and came up with the duck billed platypus.
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Sure, but why criticize Warren specifically (and constantly)?
“It doesn’t help to simply say what should not be done.”
She, and others, have proposed plans to preserve Social Security. OK, so it involves taxing the wealthy, and some, not all, wealthy actually agree.
Taxing the poor is a non starter.
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Maybe Senator Warren should do some honest work just once!
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Warren and a few others like Sanders are constantly criticizing and misleading. Congress has been warned for over twenty years by the Trustees and still nothing but proposal and talk. What happened to Social Security 2100 that was a good start, but ignored? Warren has been around for half those years and Sanders and others for all of them. There is no excuse except nobody wants to tell the truth about the cost of the program or that every citizen should share the bill.
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The government doesn’t work any more. The Congress just sits and talks and does sound bites on TV for the folks back home, but nothing gets done. The main job of Congress is to get re-elected.
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“There is no excuse except nobody wants to tell the truth…”
Sure, but again, why the emphasis on Sanders and Warren? What about Bush or Ryan? We obviously have to either cut benefits or raise taxes and can’t get a majority either way. Why is that the fault of any one person?
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Reacting to Scott’s resurgent plan last week, McConnell dryly said that any effort to tweak Social Security or Medicare is “just a bad idea.
So, what is your good idea?
McConnell said that the Republican plan, were they to win back the Senate majority in last year’s midterms, included “no plans to raise taxes on half the American people or to sunset Medicare or Social Security.”
So, what does your plan include?
WTH?
Didn’t they just have the majority a few years ago? So, blame it on Warren? And why has she done nothing about comprehensive immigration reform?
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