A bipartisan group of eight senators introduced a bill on July 14 that does something almost unheard of in Washington: it forces Congress to vote on Social Security’s finances instead of talking about them. The PROMISE Act, sponsored by senators from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to Dick Durbin (D-IL), would hand an independent advisory board the job of drafting a solvency plan and guarantee it an up-or-down floor vote. That a bill guaranteeing a vote counts as bold legislation tells you what the actual scandal is. Congress has known the numbers for over a decade. It just hasn’t been willing to act on them.
I’ve spent 30 years in institutional investment management, and I’ve built a career on a simple premise: markets, not politicians, are usually the more honest actuary. A private pension trustee who ran a fund the way Congress has run Social Security’s trust funds, aware of the shortfall for decades and doing nothing, would be sued into oblivion. Congress gets reelected.
