The next President and Congress will face daunting fiscal issues. In the shadow of historic levels of national debt, lawmakers will be bargaining over trillions of dollars of taxes and spending as they deal with expiration of the Trump tax cuts. On top of that loom major Social Security financing gaps. Paying promised benefits will require the government to raise more than $2 trillion in cash over the next eight years and more than $24 trillion to achieve long-run solvency.
This paper presents policy options – some favored by conservatives, others by progressives – as a framework for negotiating a solution. Taken together, the changes could generate more than twice as much in savings and revenue than needed to balance Social Security’s books.