Trump has said he would close Social Security’s long-term shortfall by increasing oil and gas drilling and growing the economy, rather than by raising taxes or making direct benefit cuts.
He has also said we can fix Social Security by doing nothing except kick off the people collecting fraudulent payments especially to the 115 and 125 year olds.
Sadly, many Americans believe him.
The man is a complete…
Over and underpayments occur, other errors are made. There is no mass fraud creating overpayments or depleting the trust fund. Errors are regularly found and fixed. That is what inspectors general do…until Trump fired many of them.,
Data file errors are not payment errors.
None of what Trump claims or suggests will fix social security…
but what he has done with his tax legislation to date has made the situation worse.
His anti-immigration obsession is not helping either as we need to build a younger workforce over the next many years and immigrants are an important source.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
The only reason to delay until September 2028 is because Trump can take all the blame (and claim all the success) without negatively impacting any other Republican, even those running for reelection, because they need to approve something, and need to approve it now, to avoid a federal government shutdown right before the presidential/congressional 2028 elections.
Given the D’s approval, there may be many republicans who could duck the vote and it would still pass because the D’s would love to stick it to Trump as his tax increase, and because voters wouldn’t see any increase in their taxation because it would all be loaded on the employer side, and only in the future.
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I know Trump could take control of the Social Security question and ask for legislation to deal with it. He is apparently not going to do it. George W is the last who tried for a week or two to gather interest in a reform that didn’t fly. I don’t think he had any real grasp of what he was trying to sell. Anyway, my point is that the real legislation needs to bubble up from the House and Senate and be slapped down onto the desk of the President. It won’t be an easy sell because it will require tax increases and other tweaks that will get pushback. That’s when we find out who has the backbone to get the job done.
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You forget. When Bush II tried to address the situation, adding sidecar accounts for investments (at the election of the participant, no cuts in benefits), the AARP mobilized and ran political ads – like nothing anyone had ever seen before.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112977326560074008
“Mr. Novelli (AARP CEO) and policy director John Rother unveiled plans to denounce the accounts in AARP’s costliest-ever campaign of media ads and grass-roots activities. One nationally televised ad showed a house being bulldozed to fix a broken sink, as a voice asked, “Why dismantle Social Security when it can be fixed with just a few moderate changes?”
Republicans who went home a few weeks later for constituents’ meetings were confronted by protestors from AARP and liberal groups such as MoveOn.org.
On Feb. 22, Mr. Rove and Mr. Hubbard invited Mr. Novelli to lunch at the White House. They charged that AARP had broken its word to work with the White House, and now it was scaring seniors. A second meeting March 7 was also fruitless. Tensions grew. When Mr. Bush in April visited a Social Security facility in West Virginia and dismissed the system’s Treasury bonds stored there as worthless IOUs, Mr. Novelli says he called Mr. Hubbard and asked: “Who’s scaring seniors now?” …”
And, just a few years later, when Paul Ryan focused on Medicare funding woes, they ran ads about pushing a grandma in a wheelchair over a cliff.
Dick, where have you been? Amazing that you pin this issue on the idiot ass Trump.
Where are your criticisms of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump 1, and Biden – all who knew of the fundin challenge and no one made any serious proposal to improve the solvency other than W. You also forget that some signed legislation that made it worse, especially Obama (who changed the dynamic regarding annual deficits, blowing out the national debt by nearly $10 Trillion and Biden who signed into law the so-called Social Security Fairness Act, to buy votes from public employees.
If Trump Got Smart
The only solution Trump SHOULD pursue is to ask Congress to raise the FICA Tax rate from 12.4% to 16.65% (per the 2026 Trustees report), or as I have previously suggested here, increase it September 2028 – effective January 1, 2030, allocated 6.2% to workers and 10.45% to employers, holding the Congress and the federal government budgeting process hostage with vetoes until Congress provides legislation authorizing that change. The better alternative would include a Constitutional Amendment that Social Security’s benefit formula would never be changed, and that funding would be prospectively adjusted as needed to maintain solvency of the existing program, where solvency is measured in the current year, and after 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, and 75 years and indefinitely (for all lives in being) – to freeze existing and to minimize future intergenerational wealth transfers from current workers to current retirees.
He could point to the Trustee’s reports, other countries (Australia, 12% etc.).
Democrats would love to see Trump raise taxes. Republicans would avoid the fallout. Trump would claim “savior” status as he left the scene – and suffer no downside given the 2030 effective date.
Just as important, future changes to enhance Social Security, Congressional/Administration vote buying would not be permitted without amending the constitution – Congress would have to address any enhancement through stuff like Supplemental Security Income, etc.
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Thanks for the deep dive on the Bush proposal. I had forgotten the details but the same groups are around ready to push back on anything they don’t like as far as tax increases etc.
Your suggestion that Trump push tax increases effective a few years from now would be a good move but he would get a lot of pushback from all the Republicans involved in elections between now and then.It is going to be hard to get anything passed from now on.
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Never pinned the issue on Trump. I said before Trump didn’t cause the problem and that it’s the fault of all administrations going back 30 years. Every past admin failed to seriously act or act at all.
But now is now and that’s what matters. Trump had four years before and now and still uses rhetoric about protecting SS when in fact he couldn’t care less. If he was serious there would be a focused effort, an honest discussion with America.
As it is now, as you have said many times, people want all they can get using others people money. Likely fixes will ignore that a generation, including my own, paid too little for what we receive in benefits and the burden will fall on today’s workers.
playing metooism with what others did or didn’t do is a child’s game and irrelevant
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Nope. The Baby Boomers, as a generation, paid more, much more into Social Security, and had it been properly invested, they are the one generation where their taxes may have been sufficient to fund their benefits. That will increasingly be the result for Gen X and all generations to follow.
The problem isn’t so much the Boomers, it was Congress buying votes among the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generatoin – where most of their employment (with modest tax rates insufficient to fund their benefits) occurred prior to the 1977 benefit improvements and 1983 increased taxes.
For example, my father was born in 1916, turning age 21 in 1937, the first year of the Social Security tax. In 1937, the SS FICA tax was 2% on the first $3,000 of wages, or $60 (employer and employee). Had my father paid in the maximum from 1937 until 1971 (35 years, his wages were only at the maximum for a few of those years), the total FICA taxes he would have paid would have been $7,843.80. He died in 1969.
My mom’s Social Security surviving spouse benefit (off of his record), even with the 2/3rds GPO offset, was a couple hundred a month. My memory is that she claimed from her Social Security Full Retirement Age of 65 (1989 until her death in 2001) 12 years.
Had both not died prematurely, because of the 1977 changes, their benefits would have dramatically exceeded the FICA taxes, even had the monies been properly invested.
When I look at my aunts and uncles, almost all of the greatest generation, they all received outsized benefits compared to the FICA taxes they paid – due to Congressional vote buying, starting with the 1939 Amendments.
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I’m talking about current working generation paying to make SS sustainable in the future. If demographics don’t change there will be fewer of them to pay for the fix to keep payments going and build the reserve back once it is depleted.
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“… playing metooism with what others did or didn’t do is a child’s game and irrelevant …”
It isn’t mee tooism if the ultimate decision is to cut benefits for the Baby Boomer generation – if, in fact, as I believe, they contributed far in excess of what would have been necessary to fund their benefits.
OK Boomer is the derisive term many use assuming they didn’t “pay their fair share”.
Someone needs to confirm who failed here, besides Congress.
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