Sanders Wants Bigger Social Security Checks. The Program Needs Saving First

Sen. Bernie Sanders has a new job in mind for the new Congress, and a new promise to go with it. The Vermont independent said he expects to become the next chair of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Social Security, and he is proposing a $2,400 boost in Social Security benefits, Newsweek reported Friday. The Daily Mail reported that Sanders wants America's wealthiest households to contribute more to the program, both to strengthen it and to raise payments to retirees.

That works out to about $200 more a month, and it is an easy pitch to make. Seniors on fixed incomes feel every price increase, and many of them depend on that monthly check to get by. Scripture tells us to honor our fathers and mothers, and a nation that keeps faith with its elders is doing something right.

But keeping faith with today's retirees and tomorrow's starts with a harder question than how big the check should be. It starts with whether the promise already made can be kept.

Supporters of a bigger Social Security have a fair point to make. AARP found that the share of the U.S. economy subject to Social Security payroll taxes has declined substantially, Newsweek reported. That is a real trend, and it deserves a real debate.

Look closely at what the same reporting found, though. According to the report Newsweek highlighted, higher payroll taxes could keep Social Security safe until 2059. In other words, even a significant tax increase on its own buys time. It does not buy a permanent fix, and that is before anyone adds new benefits on top.

Here is the common-sense problem with the Sanders approach. A dollar of new tax revenue can only be spent once. If it goes toward making every check bigger, it is not going toward closing the gap that already threatens the checks people are counting on. Promising more while the existing promise is not secure is not generosity. It is pushing the bill onto the young workers who will be paying in for the next 40 years.

Social Security is not the only program on Sanders' expansion list. Earlier this month he urged the new Congress to lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55 as a first step toward universal coverage, and to add dental, vision and hearing benefits to Medicare, Newsweek reported. He argued those changes could pass with a simple 51-vote Senate majority through budget reconciliation.

Medicare's own trustees have already sounded the alarm. In June they projected that Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which pays for hospital stays, nursing facility care and hospice, will be insolvent in 2033, and they called for "timely and effective action". For his fuller Medicare for All plan, the House Budget Committee put the deficit increase at about $47.4 trillion from 2027 through 2036, according to Newsweek.

Add it up, and the agenda takes two programs that seniors cannot do without, both facing funding shortfalls, and loads more promises onto each. The plan to pay for it leans heavily on taxing the top. But wealthy taxpayers can move their income and their homes. Retirees in a small town in Ohio cannot move their Social Security check.

Voters have already shown the limits of the tax-the-rich pitch, even in the most Democratic state in the country. Californians rejected a Sanders-backed tax on billionaires' wealth, with results showing 53% voting against it when the Associated Press called the race, The Daily Wire reported.

Sanders does not speak for his whole party, either. Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have neither endorsed nor sponsored Medicare for All, and President Trump vowed before the election to veto Democratic bills if the party won Congress, though he has signaled openness to deals, Newsweek reported.

The Constitution sets the path from here. Under Article I, Section 7, bills raising revenue must start in the House. A Senate subcommittee chairman can hold hearings and draw attention, but any payroll tax increase would have to begin in the House, pass the Senate and win the president's signature or survive a veto. Democrats take control of both chambers in January, so the debate is coming.

When it does, the right first question is not how much more Washington can promise. It is how to keep the promise it has already made to people who worked and paid in all their lives. Secure Social Security first, protect the seniors who rely on it, and be honest with younger Americans about what it will cost. Expansion talk can wait until the math works.