The Senate Budget Committee held a hearing yesterday on Social Security: A Discussion on the Facts and the Path Forward. It doesn’t look as if there is anything interesting coming out of this.
It’s not this Committee or the witnesses at the hearing but I’m always surprised at the number of policymakers and commentators who think that Social Security’s long term, perhaps now medium term, funding problems are some riddle that can be solved by some brilliant person with no one feeling pain. The reality is that you can cut benefits significantly or you can raise taxes significantly or some combination of the two. Even then Treasury will probably need to lend money to the Social Security trust funds for at least a few years. At this point Republicans want benefit cuts but want to find a way to make Democrats politically responsible for the cuts while Democrats want higher taxes but are worried about the backlash. Few, if any, are interested in compromise. I predict no benefit cuts nor tax increases; just Treasury funding for well into the future.
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