Hi Friend, Social Security. There might be no more frustrating – or important – issue on which the excessive power of the extremes so thwarts good policy. We saw a series of frustratingly familiar scenes play out this week during and around President Biden’s State of the Union address, with both parties playing their usual dreadful roles. You don’t need an advanced degree in accounting to know that the Social Security trust funds are going to bust in less than 20 years, at which point the program so many seniors rely on will be imperiled. You don’t need to be a math whiz to know the ways to shore up the program, which include adding more revenue or scaling back benefits. And you don’t need to have a PhD in political science to know that politicians in both parties are afraid of the voters on this one. Before we review the week’s depressing action, let’s acknowledge the bottom line: The Social Security system needs a two-party solution to make it solvent in order to give current and future beneficiaries the peace of mind and financial support they deserve. Given voters’ complicated views on all this and the complexity of coming up with something that will work substantively and politically, a solution would be hard enough. But factor in the tyranny of the extremes on both sides and it can become a gridlocked impossibility. Democrats, pressured by the far left and led by President Biden, are cherry-picking old Republican quotes to scare voters for political gain by claiming the GOP wants to cripple Social Security. Meanwhile too many Republicans are taking off the table some of the options they know are required to make the system solvent. The result: the White House this week successfully baited the Republicans into doing exactly what should not be done, saying nothing will happen to change the program, when we all know the program must be changed to survive. As I said, saving Social Security is going to take a two-party solution. The politicians think voters are not mature enough to get that, so they sit on their legislative hands, while the clock ticks towards insolvency in just a few years, which would likely lead, ironically to massive benefit cuts, effectively gutting the system so many rely on. Anyone who claims to think they are “saving” Social Security by not “touching” it is showing political cowardice. Help us send a message to Washington that our citizenry is mature enough and strong enough to understand that we need to make some smart choices now in order to have the program around in the future. That’s what the politicians of both parties need to do – together. | 
