Congress has about six years to shore up the Social Security trust fund, which is expected to run out of reserves by the end of 2032.
Enacting a solution is liable to be a significant political battle, likely involving cutting benefits for some Americans or raising taxes on higher earners, or both.
And so far, congressional leaders haven't made it a top-tier issue.
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno proposed raising the payroll tax for some Americans. Revenues from the tax go into the trust fund. But that bipartisan effort was immediately panned by conservative groups, and little else has emerged as a serious solution.
This limited public discussion has created a separate concern, experts warn: that most Americans don't fully understand the problems Social Security faces — let alone be able to weigh in on solutions to the coming shortfall.
"There is a lot of misunderstanding about what all of this even means," Bill Sweeney, senior vice president for government affairs at AARP, told NPR.
Sweeney's group conducted a poll last year that found that just 34% of those surveyed correctly explained that when the trust fund runs out, Social Security will still be able to make payments, but just at a reduced rate.
"That's a failing grade," he said. "So, we've got a lot of work to do, even on just general education about what it means when the Social Security insolvency date happens."
Another 36% of respondents incorrectly believe that when the trust fund is depleted, Social Security would be unable to pay any benefits at all.
Kick the can
If Congress fails to act, payments are expected to be 22% lower, which could be devastating for the millions of seniors who rely on their Social Security benefits to pay for basic necessities.
Sweeney said getting Congress to focus on the Social Security trust fund will be tough because so much else demands their immediate attention.
"And so I'm not super confident that they're going to clear the decks and focus on something that's six years away," he said. "It's not very long for regular folks, but for Congress, it can be almost a lifetime."
Sweeney is also concerned that Social Security isn't coming up on the campaign trail, particularly among Senate candidates, who serve six-year terms.
"The people who we elect to the United States Senate in November are almost certainly going to be the ones in the Senate in 2032 deciding what to do with people's Social Security," he said. "And the fact that it's not coming up very often in the debates or in the questions I think is a serious failing. I think we've got to really work on that."
Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, said the key problem with Social Security reform is that Congress has the option to do nothing.
"There's no requirement that Congress act at any given time," he said. "They can always choose to kick the can down the road. So you get this cycle where the worse the problem gets, the less Congress wants to talk about it."
What voters don't know
Rich Thau, president of messaging firm Engagious, has been moderating focus groups with swing voters for years. And for the past three months he has asked these voters what they understand about the trust fund's insolvency issues.
Most know very little. He said both major parties need to start doing a better job of educating the public about what is on the table.
"It's impossible for there not to be buy-in from voters in order to get something done," Thau said. "Someone has to pay. And you can't cut benefits without people noticing. You can't increase … taxes without people noticing. So if there isn't buy-in and an acceptance of the looming crisis in Social Security, it's impossible to fix this."
Thau said most voters don't understand the basics of the financial challenges Social Security faces, or how the program works. And a lot of individuals, he said, conflate the coming insolvency issues related to the trust fund with longer-term — and long-running — fears that Social Security will not be there for them when they are ready to retire.
Margaret M., 58, participated in one of these focus groups in Pennsylvania. She, like all other participants, agreed to take part on the condition that her last name would not be used.
When asked what currently ails Social Security, she was among those who said she wasn't sure it would be available to her.
"I'm worried not only for myself, but for my son. Is there going to be anything there to help myself or, as I said, my son when it comes time for retirement?" Margaret said. "Luckily, I have some investments put aside, but not everybody does, and they count on that money to live."
Chuck Marr, vice president for federal tax policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said there's been a longstanding underestimation of the strength of Social Security that he said "has been instilled much too deeply than it deserves."
However, he said, if some of the insolvency issues are dealt with in the coming years, some longer-term anxieties among voters might also go away.
"This will be a way to show people the strength of Social Security," he said. "If you get the Congress on a bipartisan basis … to step up and face the issues."
Benefit cuts vs. eliminating the tax cap
But first, Marr said, voters will need to understand what solutions Congress is considering to address the program's insolvency.
For now, the main considerations are cutting benefits for wealthier Americans or eliminating the cap on Social Security's payroll tax. Currently, wages are only taxed up to $184,500. Eliminating the tax cap would require that all workers, regardless of their salary, pay the same tax rate across the board.
Marr said he thinks voters will eventually play a big role in making sure lawmakers don't choose benefit cuts over tax changes.
"I think the public awareness will be critical, and I think it will be there as far as pushing lawmakers not to accept across-the-board, huge cuts in benefits," he said.
AEI's Biggs said fixing a budget shortfall of hundreds of billions of dollars will be a shock to voters, no matter what path lawmakers take.
"To fix that fire, raising taxes would be the largest tax increase in peacetime in U.S. history," he told NPR. "To fix it by reducing benefits would cut benefits by over 20%. To address it by issuing new debt might be more debt than the financial markets are willing to swallow. That could trigger higher interest rates and inflation."
Voters are leaning toward raising taxes on higher earners
So far, AARP's Sweeney said, voters seem significantly more open to raising taxes on some Americans.
"It seems very unfair that somebody who makes, you know, $800,000 a year is paying a smaller percentage of their taxes to Social Security than someone who makes $60,000 or $75,000 a year," he said. "So, I think that that is, you know, without a doubt, the most popular of the options out there."
In his focus groups, Thau has explained proposed solutions to Social Security's insolvency to dozens of voters. Most were hearing the ideas for the first time.
And Thau has found consistent feedback from voters on various options.
When it comes to cutting benefits for upper-middle-class and wealthier retirees, Thau said he has found "close to a 50/50 split."
"Some people think it's reasonable because wealthy people can afford it," he said. "Other people think it's not reasonable because wealthy people paid in and they should just get the benefits back that they deserve."
When it comes to eliminating the tax cap, though, Thau said "nearly universally over the last three months, respondents have been in favor of eliminating that cap."
"For them, it's a matter of fairness," he added.
One of those voters was Eric V., a 51-year-old Republican living in Pennsylvania. He was among many voters who learned in the focus group how the payroll tax was structured.
"I always heard and got told growing up, the more you make, the more you get taxed," he told Thau. To "get taxed the same as somebody that's getting a tiny bit of what you make, that's just crazy."
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