“It’s a problem we have to address, the sooner the better.” True to form, the latest Social Security trustees report predicts there’ll only be enough money to pay 76 percent of scheduled benefits starting in 2033. That measure helped extend the program’s solvency to the 2030s, King said, which “as we know, that’s not far away now.” King said in taped remarks for a Thursday discussion hosted by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, that the idea would be reminiscent of the Social Security commission led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan that led to 1983 legislative fixes. King and Romney are lead sponsors of legislation that would create “rescue committees” tasked with coming up with proposals to fix Social Security and other trust funds in financial trouble. 2 Democrat Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., that ever-critical swing vote and Maine’s Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. That includes Republicans Mitt Romney of Utah and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, as well as Richard J.
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The prospects look brighter now in the Senate, where veterans of previous bipartisan “gangs” have begun talking about the need for fixes. But the spirit of compromise that animated discussions around last year’s bipartisan infrastructure package appears to be creeping into nascent talks about finally, really, this-time-we’re-not-joking doing something to stave off Social Security insolvency.
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Pronouncements like that have been made before only to die on the next election campaign’s vine. If Republicans take one or both chambers of Congress in November, don’t be surprised if shoring up Social Security’s finances becomes an area of bipartisan focus.