This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 16th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

There will come a time, perhaps sooner than anyone expects expects when fiscal reform simply won't be possible

and Social Security ought to be front and center in any current reform plan. To be clear,

serious reform will be painful now, just much worse later.

To give us a clearer sense of the stakes, Brian Reidel of the Manhattan Institute and Cato's

Romina Boccia. Brian, if you don't mind, I'd like to start with you.

We had some, what I thought at the time were pretty serious discussions about reforming Social Security,

a little bit in the late 90s and a little bit toward the end of the George W Bush administration in 2006, 2007.

All those discussions just stalled out.

And the problems that we see in Social Security as a component of our fiscal maladministration that has been

going on in Washington for so long, can you give us a sense of where Social Security fits into that picture?

Yeah, there was a lot of discussion about Social Security in the 90s and the 2000s,

not because any financial catastrophe was imminent, but because that was the point when the baby boomers were still in their 40s and had time to phase in and adjust their retirement strategies to the future insolvency of Social

Security.

We blew that opportunity.

Any attempts at reform were swept aside, they were demagogued. So now we're in a situation where the baby boomers have already retired in large numbers. In fact, almost two-thirds of the baby boomers have already retired.

And now Social Security reform is not a matter of, let's do this before the boomers retire so we can phase it in.

It's the boomers are retired. The

fictional trust fund hits zero within a decade and Social Security is already

running hundreds of billions of dollars in annual deficits

that are only getting larger.

...