Dancing on the Third Rail of Politics
The Trump administration's heartless slash-and-burn mentality around Social Security is poised to damage every American’s life.
For generations, Social Security has been referred to as the “third rail of American politics.” Politicians have seemed to know — sometimes instinctively, sometimes through lost battles — that if they tamper with it, their political careers would flounder or fail completely. Most politicians have understood that if you damage Social Security, your political career gets zapped.
The current administration has ignored that conventional wisdom. They’ve been planning drastic cuts to Social Security while simultaneously denying that they were planning any cuts. They seemed poised to pursue those cuts, none of which would be necessary if taxation in the U.S. were handled equitably and the cap on Social Security earnings1 were eliminated. That single change would go a long way toward addressing Social Security’s long-term solvency issue.
With billionaires taking advantage of tax loopholes and corporations earning billions while paying $0 in taxes, the middle class and the poor are already subsidizing the rich. If the proposed cuts to Social Security go into effect — cuts which would literally take food out of the mouths of the elderly — those subsidies to the uber-wealthy will become even more extreme.
Trump has 13 billionaires among his inner circle, with a combined net worth of roughly $400 billion. Trump arrived at his electoral victory due in part to the hundreds of millions of dollars provided by his donors, with Elon Musk having sunk more than $200 million into Trump’s campaign. So it’s not even a little bit surprising that proposals to cut Social Security have gained favor among those who have likely never had to worry about such things.
We can’t talk about the proposed cuts to Social Security without acknowledging Project 2025’s role. The Heritage Foundation provided Trump with a turnkey set of ghost-written policy proposals in exchange for their support in the election.
Trump’s idea of policy development is basically whatever pops into his brain and comes out his mouth at any given moment, so he was ripe for the transactional picking by the Heritage folks. Trump opted for what to him must have seemed like a cohesive set of policies for his second term, despite how flawed and draconian they were, in exchange for support for his campaign. (Hmmm. Isn’t that what’s known as quid pro quo?)
For decades, those on the far right have been characterizing cuts to Social Security as the panacea for all the nation’s ills. In policy-challenged Trump, the folks at the Heritage Foundation at last found a willing conduit for their social and religious aims.
Social Security has provided a safety net for citizens since its establishment in 1935. The Great Depression had exacerbated the plights of many Americans, especially the elderly who no longer had the ability or stamina to work to provide for themselves. Social Security was a way of mitigating those plights. The Social Security Administration has a storehouse of information about how and why Social Security came into being (at least until the Trumpsters scrub that website of any useful information, the way they have with so many others).
We sometimes hear talk of “universal basic income” — the idea that everyone should have enough money to cover the basic necessities of life — as if it were a relatively new concept. But that was almost the same concept behind Social Security.
In the 90 years since Social Security was first introduced, the concept has been gradually watered down by politicians and has been rendered less able to achieve its original intent by changes in the nation’s economy. But most politicians have realized that their own political fates are tied to keeping Social Security solvent and functioning, because Social Security has been successful. It has been embraced by those who have contributed to Social Security throughout their work lives and then receive its benefits in their retirement.
Every Senator and Representative has constituents who receive Social Security benefits and, similarly, they all have constituents who are future beneficiaries of Social Security. But that fact doesn’t prevent many right-leaning politicians from characterizing Social Security as a handout. They’ve turned “entitlement” into a scare word and, as a result, have demonized their own constituents.
IRAs for people without employer-provided pensions started in 1974. They were intended to fill the financial void by enabling workers to make tax deferred contributions to their own retirement funds, not to replace Social Security. In 1974, it was still possible for a single earner in the U.S. to provide for a family; it’s common now for two-parent households to have both parents working, sometimes with multiple jobs, and still not be able to make ends meet. With ever rising costs, one in seven Americans are food insecure and struggle to put food on the table.
It’s increasingly unlikely that workers can make contributions to IRAs when they’re worried if they’ll be able to pay their rent or if their kids will have enough to eat.
The original premise that IRAs would lessen the burden on retirees and, by extension, on Social Security is flawed or, rather, it was rendered flawed by the changes in the expectations placed on working people. That premise was somewhat questionable from its inception, but is even more flawed given today’s economy.
The rising cost of living — drastic increases in healthcare costs, lack of affordable housing (either renting or buying), and skyrocketing inflation — makes it virtually impossible for working people to put money aside for the future.
In 2025, we are in an economic environment in which more and more people are struggling just to pay their monthly living expenses, even while employed:
Housing is less affordable now than it has ever been in the U.S., with fewer and fewer people being able to afford to own a home.
In homes with two adults, it’s much more likely that both adults are working, unlike a couple of generations ago, and often are still unable to make ends meet.
The federal minimum wage is completely stagnant, having gotten stuck at $7.25/hour since 2009. A full-time 40 hour per week job would provide a measly $290 per week, before taxes — a mere $15,080 per year. The federal measure of poverty for a single person is $15,600.
Even in higher paying jobs, pensions are fewer and farther between. In 2023, only 15% of private sector jobs in the U.S. were eligible for a pension, as compared to as many as 60% in the past.
It’s very hard to make the case that people should somehow magically be able to avoid poverty in retirement by investing in IRAs, when so many are already struggling to make present day ends meet.
But what about those who would currently be able to get by in their retirement years on whatever savings and IRAs they’ve managed to scrape together, in combination with their monthly Social Security allotments? What happens when these folks’ monthly income is reduced by a quarter or a third or a half? If Social Security is cut, we’ll find a whole new segment of the population living in poverty.
There’s also a right-wing talking point about raising the retirement age to solve what some believe will be a shortfall in Social Security coffers. While that might be OK for some whose jobs don’t involve much physical labor, what about those who do? Construction workers being forced to climb on ladders until they’re 70 or older? Factory workers who may already have repetitive motion injuries being required to exacerbate their injuries?
And what does raising the retirement age do to J.D. Vance’s dimwitted idea about grandparents picking up the slack for child care? They won’t be able to care for the grandkids if they’re still on the assembly line.
Deferred maintenance almost invariably means that, when you get around to fixing something, it’s worse and it therefore costs more to fix. If your car is chronically leaking oil, you can get it repaired, you can sell it “as is,” or you can ignore the leaks and continue driving it. If you choose the latter, it’s not going to heal itself and it’s going to get worse and worse. If your car loses all its oil, it can destroy the engine.
In the case of Social Security, if the government lowers the amount paid or if it raises the retirement age, they’re only deferring maintenance on the lives of U.S. citizens. They may be addressing a present-day budgetary issue (although even the validity of that is highly doubtful). But what happens to those whose lives get worse and worse? Health care costs increase. Homelessness increases. The suicide rate is likely to increase. Generational wealth doesn’t get passed along to heirs and it becomes harder for children and grandchildren to survive.
It’s not just kicking the can down the road. It’s kicking the can down the road at the cost of human lives.
If the Trump/Musk/DOGE/Project 2025 machine continues on the trajectory it’s been on, we’re about to learn if that conventional wisdom about the third rail of politics will sustain.
There is a cap on earnings, above which no Social Security tax is deducted. That cap is currently $176,100 per year. That means that people earning millions of dollars per year skate by without paying an equitable amount, leaving working stiffs to pick up the slack. For example, it’s been reported that Elon Musk’s Social Security obligation for 2025 was fulfilled 15 minutes after the New Year’s Eve ball dropped in Times Square. He may be the extreme example, but he’s far from the only example.