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A battle over Social Security is brewing on the right, pitting lawmakers wary about the political realities of older Americans staunchly opposed to any benefit reductions against fiscal hawks who argue the system unfairly disadvantages younger people.
That debate bubbled up as Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) joined forces with progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a New York Times op-ed last week to call for lifting the cap on payroll taxes — meaning that those who earn more than $184,500 per year would pay more to fund Social Security. They proposed doing so without cutting benefits or raising the retirement age, as other Republicans have floated.
The proposal from the two senators comes as discussion is starting to ramp up about how to address the Social Security trust fund being significantly depleted by 2032, resulting in benefit cuts of more than 20 percent unless Congress acts.
But it shocked traditional fiscal hawks, who argued that the tax increases for those higher earners would result in shrinking the economy by a percentage point and in 1.3 million fewer full-time jobs, citing a Tax Foundation analysis. The foundation also noted that the Social Security Administration has found lifting the cap would result in surpluses for just three years.
“The proposed tax hike would be a hammer blow to small businesses. No thank you,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) wrote on social media.
In another social media post, Grover Norquist, president of the anti-tax organization Americans for Tax Reform, called it a "more radical, costly tax hike than Bernie Sanders or Kamala Harris campaigned on."
Moreno’s communications director, Reagan McCarthy, in a statement brushed off the criticism from the established D.C.-world groups.
“Career politicians in DC prioritized enriching themselves over taking care of hardworking Americans for decades. Senator Moreno promised Ohioans he would fight for them in DC and that’s exactly why he’s leading this effort,” she said in a statement.
The unconventional bipartisan partnership, though, speaks to the trend of populist thinking gaining ground in the Republican Party under President Trump, and a new openness to raising taxes on the wealthy to fund certain priorities.
But unlike typical fights between populists and free-marketers, the debate about what to do with Social Security can get complicated for the populists as it veers into generational frustrations.
Russ Greene, the executive director of the Prime Mover Institute, coined the term “Total Boomer Luxury Communism” — such as special property tax breaks or government programs that primarily benefit older, wealthier generations.
It’s “a humorous way of referring to the way the American system of government at all levels is biased towards senior citizens and against younger people,” Greene told me. And Social Security is part of that.
A survey published in December by the libertarian Cato Institute, Greene recently noted on social media, found that a whopping 89 percent of Americans 65 and older supported raising taxes on younger workers to maintain benefits for current retirees. Meanwhile, 47 percent of younger Americans ages 18-29 supported cutting benefits to solve Social Security problems, and younger Americans are more open to means testing the program so that benefits only go to those in financial need.
At the same time, various surveys show that Americans over the age of 55 make up the majority of the electorate, and that proportion is even higher in primaries.
Those dynamics have long made talk of Social Security reform politically untenable.
Trump has promised to "protect" Social Security and other entitlement programs, repeatedly saying he will not "touch" it or cut benefits.
But with the realities of trust fund depletion just a few years away, that political calculus might soon be changing.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a radio interview earlier this month that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid need to be “adjusted and fixed,” and that Republicans have a plan to do that in 2027.
“Every dollar we spend on senior citizens could have gone somewhere else, right? But people basically just pretended like that wasn't the case, because they weren't treated the same way most of the rest of the budget was,” Greene said. “That's not going to be an option anymore. It's going to become very clear as we approach these trust fund depletion dates that we're going to have to make very clear.”
Greene argued that even populists can see the downsides of defending current Social Security benefits without any costs or reforms.
“Unless you're the AARP, you have something at stake here,” Greene said of the Social Security debate. “I don't care what your priority is. Your priority might be industrial policy, you're on the right, family policy, defense spending, you might want to keep taxes low, whatever you want from DC — allowing senior benefits to keep going up on their current trajectory is in conflict with your goal, and it's standing in your way.”
