Editorial Board
Repairing Social Security’s Finances Can’t Wait
The system needs reform — not to replenish its illusory assets, but to help curb government borrowing and align the system with its goals.
Not the right answer.
Photographer: Araya Doheny/Getty Images North AmericaSocial Security is at the center of the fiscal emergency that threatens the US. Yet Washington is always reluctant to grapple with it honestly, partly because the issue is misunderstood.
Although the system’s looming “insolvency,” now penciled in for 2035, has long been agonized over, this threat disguises the real problem. It suggests that for the next 10 years, the government still has a fund with assets to draw down, and time to put things right. In truth, the fiscal danger is here and now.