Blahous: “Rubio’s Retirement Security Vision.”

Over at e21, Chuck Blahous – a scholar at the Mercatus Center and one of Social Security’s public trustees – summarizes and discusses Sen. Marco Rubio’s recent proposals to increase retirement security and improve Social Security’s finances. Blahous writes:

Under current law, federal entitlement programs affecting seniors promise far more than they can deliver.  This unsustainable imbalance presents elected officials with a choice; they can either curry political favor with seniors’ groups by promising to defend benefit promises that they know cannot be honored, or they can accept the political risks associated with designing the changes required for these programs to benefit younger generations as well. Which choice an elected official makes can often be inferred by whether they speak primarily in terms of what they would not change about these programs, or in terms of the reforms they support.

Too few elected officials on both left and right make Senator Rubio’s choice to propose needed reforms, even though it is widely understood that continuing the status quo would lead to financial disaster. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Rubio speech is his decision to lead with specific proposals in this critical policy area. 

Check out the whole article here.