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In swing states, both parties agree on ideas to save Social Security
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Social Security Still Works, but Its Future Is Up to Us
Dec 29, 2025
Like many people over 60 and thinking seriously about retirement, I’ve been paying closer attention to Social Security, and recent changes have made me concerned.
Since its creation during the Great Depression, Social Security has been one of the most successful federal programs in U.S. history. It has survived wars, recessions, demographic change, and repeated ideological attacks, yet it continues to do what it was designed to do: provide a basic floor of income security for older Americans. Before Social Security, old age often meant poverty, dependence on family, or institutionalization. After its adoption, a decent retirement became achievable for millions.
The data tells a clear story about poverty reduction. In 1959, more than one in three seniors lived below the poverty line. Today, that figure is closer to one in ten, largely because of Social Security. Remove the program from the equation, and senior poverty would surge to levels not seen in generations. This is not a marginal safety net. It is the central pillar of retirement security for a large share of older Americans, including roughly 40 percent of retirees who rely on it for at least half of their income.
International comparisons reinforce the point. Many peer democracies, including Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, rely more heavily on public pensions than the United States, but the underlying logic is the same: predictable, universal retirement income reduces elder poverty. Higher senior poverty rates in the U.S. reflect the thinness of the broader retirement system, not a failure of Social Security itself. In practice, the program often compensates for gaps elsewhere in the American welfare state.
That record makes Social Security’s trajectory under President Trump more concerning. Recent changes do not amount to sweeping benefit cuts, but they do alter how the program is funded, administered, and accessed. Social Security is not a failed program in need of radical reinvention. It is a successful one under strain, increasingly asked to absorb rising health care costs, disappearing pensions, and widening inequality. The question is not whether Social Security works. It plainly does. The question is whether policymakers will strengthen it or quietly undermine it through incremental changes that shift risk back onto seniors.
The First Wave of Changes
The changes that come next emerge less from headline legislation than from a steady accumulation of administrative decisions that reshape how the program functions day to day. They also fit squarely within the administration’s broader Department of Government Efficiency agenda, which emphasizes cost containment, automation, and workforce reduction across federal agencies.
This year, the Trump administration began altering Social Security through administrative and operational moves rather than major legislation. Cast as efficiency and modernization measures, these changes nonetheless carry real consequences for beneficiaries.
First, the administration ended Biden-era limits on overpayment recovery, allowing the Social Security Administration to recoup funds more aggressively. Because overpayments often result from agency error, the shift exposes retirees on fixed incomes to sudden benefit reductions with little ability to absorb the loss.
Second, the administration eliminated paper checks, requiring beneficiaries to receive payments electronically. While routine for most retirees, the change creates barriers for very elderly Americans and those without stable banking access, turning a technical adjustment into an access problem.
Third, the administration tightened identity verification requirements in the name of fraud prevention. Protecting the system is a legitimate goal, but heightened ID checks often function as gatekeeping devices, particularly for seniors with disabilities, outdated documents, or limited digital literacy.
Taken together, these steps point to a quiet but consequential shift, with the heaviest effects falling on low-income seniors, people with disabilities, and others who rely most heavily on in-person assistance and predictable benefits. Rather than cutting benefits outright, the administration is making Social Security leaner, more automated, and less forgiving. These changes attract little attention, but they shape how millions of Americans experience the program.
The Next Phase: Tax Relief, Reduced Access, and a Shift of Risk
The next round of changes, scheduled for 2026, extends this pattern. Instead of addressing Social Security’s long-term financing challenges directly, the administration has favored measures with short-term political appeal that defer hard choices and shift risk onto beneficiaries.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to eliminate federal taxes on Social Security benefits. That pledge never became law, largely because doing so would have accelerated the program’s insolvency. Instead, Congress enacted an enhanced tax deduction for Americans aged 65 and older. Beginning in 2026, some retirees will owe less federal tax on their benefits, and some will owe none at all. The relief is temporary, set to expire in 2028, and does little to stabilize the trust fund.
At the same time, the Social Security Administration plans to sharply reduce in-person services. Internal targets call for cutting field office visits roughly in half, accelerating the shift to online and phone-based systems. Field offices have long served as the program’s front door, providing hands-on help with retirement claims, disability applications, and benefit disputes. For seniors with limited digital access or complex cases, digital access is not a convenience but a necessity.
Seen together, these changes reveal a consistent governing approach, one enabled by congressional acquiescence and defined by administrative retrenchment and risk shifting rather than overt benefit cuts. Benefits are not being slashed outright, but access is narrowing, administrative burdens are rising, and fiscal pressures are being postponed. The result is a quieter form of retrenchment that preserves the appearance of stability while shifting real consequences onto millions of seniors, especially those least equipped to absorb new administrative and financial burdens.
Conclusion: A Program That Works, If Congress and the Administration Choose to Protect It
Social Security’s great strength has always been its reliability. It does not promise wealth, but it has delivered something more important: dignity and security in old age. That achievement was not accidental. It reflects deliberate political choices to pool risk broadly, administer benefits simply, and treat retirement security as a collective responsibility.
What is happening now is not the sudden dismantling of Social Security, but something subtler.
Rather than relying on piecemeal administrative changes, Congress and the president should work together on durable reforms that preserve the program’s legacy and strengthen its long-term foundations. An important step Congress could take is to bolster Social Security’s finances through permanent revenue measures, such as raising or eliminating the payroll tax cap so high earners contribute at the same rate as everyone else. Administrative efficiency should not come at the expense of access for millions, so lawmakers should also require a baseline level of in-person service at Social Security field offices. Finally, Congress should assert stronger oversight of Social Security Administration decisions, including reporting requirements and clear guardrails to prevent misguided cost-cutting efforts from undermining benefit delivery.
The danger is not that Social Security will fail overnight, but that it will be slowly hollowed out. A program that still works remarkably well could become harder to navigate, less predictable, and less protective, especially for the seniors who depend on it most. That outcome is not inevitable; it is the result of political decisions. The question now is whether policymakers will honor that legacy by acting decisively to pass sensible, lasting reforms that strengthen the program rather than allowing it to erode.
Robert Cropf is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University.
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How Texas’ Housing Changes Betray Its Most Vulnerable Communities
Dec 27, 2025
While we celebrate the Christmas season, hardworking Texans, who we all depend on to teach our children, respond to emergencies, and staff our hospitals, are fretting about where they will live when a recently passed housing bill takes effect in 2026.
Born out of a surge in NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) politics and fueled by a self-interested landlord lawmaker, HB21 threatens to deepen the state’s housing crisis by restricting housing options—targeting affordable developments and the families who depend on them.
The drastic changes in housing policy will have particularly devastating consequences for underserved communities across the state. Texas’s Latino community is a prime example. State data shows that a substantial portion of Texans who rely on income-restricted housing are Latino, and many of the neighborhoods where these developments are located are historically Latino areas already grappling with rising rents and stagnant wages.
In particular, a retroactive tax that is part of the law threatens to wipe out the affordability that has allowed these families to stay rooted in their communities, pushing them toward displacement at a scale not seen in years.
HB21 was pitched as a needed reform to deliver clarity and accountability to Texas’s affordable housing framework. The bill gained popularity among legislators, who bought into the narrative that it would close an alleged tax loophole for developers in the affordable housing space who partnered with government entities known as housing finance corporations (HFCs).
Yet in practice, HB21 reflects lawmakers' willingness to rush housing policy in response to political pressure rather than economic reality.
In places like San Antonio, El Paso, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley, where affordable housing is already scarce, HB21 all but guarantees deeper housing insecurity, longer commutes for service-sector workers, and the erosion of cultural and economic anchors that have defined these communities for generations. Instead of expanding opportunity, HB21 effectively targets the very families who contribute so much to Texas’s workforce and cultural identity, making it harder for people to live where they work, raise their children, and build long-term wealth.
The bill was meant to overhaul the process through which affordable housing developers in qualify for tax exemptions from the state. But the legislation that passed went even further, applying retroactively to hundreds of completed affordable housing projects. That means buildings currently renting to working-class Texans at affordable rates stand to lose their tax exemptions and face huge bills that could force them to reconsider their ability to rent at those lower rates.
Thus, the law will destabilize public-private partnerships, deliberately unraveling of the very agreements that enabled the private sector to invest in affordable housing in the first place.
Developers are already warning that mass evictions and foreclosures could follow.
Even worse, the bill’s chief architect, Representative Gary Gates (R-28), has previously drawn scrutiny for potential conflicts of interest, as critics note that the restructuring of tax incentives and appraisal rules is likely to benefit his sprawling real estate portfolio directly.
Those effects justifiably raise serious concerns about whether HB21 was designed to serve Texans or to serve Gates. In fact, Rep. Gates recently set up an entity to serve as a front for his own properties and to intervene in a lawsuit challenging HB21 as unconstitutional. Critics argue that the maneuver is effectively an admission by Gates that his businesses will benefit from HB21 and would be hurt by the lawsuit challenging the law.
Housing advocates are fighting back to prevent HB21 from inflicting further damage. The Texas Workforce Housing Coalition recently filed suit, pointing out that HB21 is being used to retroactively strip tax exemptions from affordable housing projects that were legally established under prior law. The bill was set to go into full effect on Jan 1, 2027, but housing districts across the state are already stripping properties of previously granted approvals and exemptions.
For years, developers partnered with local housing finance corporations (HFCs) to produce units reserved for working families, relying on contractual tax exemptions that made these deals viable. HB21 requires rewriting these contracts after the fact, resulting in chaos: agreements are being questioned, financing structures disrupted, and long-term commitments disrupted.
Given the sweeping consequences HB21 is already producing, and the fact that tens of thousands of Texans stand to be affected, the Texas Legislature should immediately commission an independent, data-driven study examining the law’s economic, housing, and displacement impacts before they fully cascade across the state. Sound policymaking demands evidence, transparency, and deliberation, not rushed legislation that upends communities after the fact.
At the same time, the controversy surrounding HB21 underscores a deeper structural problem in Texas governance: the absence of an independent ethics commission with real enforcement authority. Texas lawmakers should move without delay to establish an ethics body empowered to investigate and sanction conflicts of interest, including cases like the one alleged against Rep. Gary Gates. Legislation that directly benefits—or even appears to benefit—a lawmaker’s private financial holdings erodes public trust. Without oversight and enforcement mechanisms, that erosion accelerates. Texans need politicians and policies that work for them, not against them.
The consequences of failing to uphold that standard are already clear. Texans have seen what happens when housing instability spreads unchecked: employers struggle to retain workers, schools lose students, and families who have invested years in their communities are pushed out. HB21 risks accelerating all of those harms. If Texas is serious about affordability, growth, and fairness, lawmakers must pause, study the damage, and act decisively. not just to fix a flawed housing law, but to reform the ethical safeguards that failed to prevent it.
Mario H. Lopez is the president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a public policy advocacy organization that promotes liberty, opportunity, and prosperity for all.
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Puerto Rico with US Flag
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Let America Vote to Welcome Its 51st Star
Dec 27, 2025
I’m an American who wants Puerto Rico to become America’s 51st state—and I want the entire country to be able to say “yes” at the ballot box. A national, good-faith, vote would not change the mechanics of admission; it would change the mood. It would turn a very important procedural step into a shared act of welcome—millions of Americans from all 50 states affirming to 3.2 million residents of Puerto Rico that they belong in full.
Across the map, commentators are already making that case. Georgia GOP chair Josh McKoon put it bluntly: “Unlike Canadians, Puerto Ricans actually want to become a state.” Jacksonville Journal-Courier
From Florida, Erika Benfield argues that supporting statehood is “not just fair—it’s now in the interest of Republican voters,” urging both parties to back it. Arizona’s Jaime Molera tells fellow conservatives, “In the recent election, Puerto Ricans made it explicitly clear that they are ready to vote for Republicans, and they are ready for statehood.” The Floridianazcapitoltimes.com
New York voices are in the mix, too. Writing in City Limits, veteran Tony Mele reminded readers that “in the past eight years, Puerto Rico residents have repeatedly voted against continuing under the current territory status.” City Limits
These writers aren’t debating legal fine print; they’re talking about dignity, clarity, and momentum. A national vote would spotlight facts, sweep aside myths (“they don’t pay taxes”) and let communities take down barriers and openly talk about culture and language. Most of all, it would give residents of Puerto Rico something priceless: proof that their fellow Americans chose them on purpose, not by default.
Critics like the Albuquerque Journal want Congress to slow down until every doubt is settled—the paper even warned that Senator Heinrich’s Puerto Rico statehood bill “could cost New Mexico one of its three U.S. House seats.” Heinrich’s Puerto Rican statehood bill could cost NM 1 of its 3 US House seats I want America to speed up how we settle those doubts: in public, together, with a Welcome Vote that replaces rumor with record and hesitation with a handshake.
So let’s pair congressional action with a public gesture on purpose. Call it a National Welcome Vote. Wrap it in a year of town halls, classroom lessons, service projects, and televised forums linking mainland communities with Puerto Rico. Then—ballot cast, message sent—move straight into the work of integration: tax alignment, full program parity, education systems that serve all Americans, infrastructure upgrades, and regulatory harmony. No more years of “should we have done this?”—just “let’s do this right.”
We say democracy is not a spectator sport. Let’s stop treating Puerto Rico’s future like a closed-door event. Congress can admit Puerto Rico. The rest of us can stand and cheer—in the clearest civic voice we have: a vote cast in hope. Let’s add a star—and let America say so.
Javier Ortiz has over 37 years of experience in technology, business, and the public sector, leads investment technical due diligence and innovation at Falcon Cyber Investments. www.falconcyber.com
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Making America’s Children Healthy Requires Addressing Deep-Rooted Health Disparities
Dec 23, 2025
In early September, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission released a 19-page strategy to improve children’s health and reverse the epidemic of chronic diseases. The document, a follow-up to MAHA’s first report in May, paints a dire picture of American children’s health: poor diets, toxic chemical exposures, chronic stress, and overmedicalization are some of the key drivers now affecting millions of young people.
Few would dispute that children should spend less time online, exercise more, and eat fewer ultra-processed foods. But child experts say that the strategy reduces a systemic crisis to personal action and fails to confront the structural inequities that shape which children can realistically adopt healthier behaviors. After all, in 2024, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine updated Unequal Treatment, a report that clearly highlights the major drivers of health disparities.
Debbie Gross, a child psychiatric nurse and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, welcomes the administration’s stated focus on children’s health but notes the gap between ideas and implementation. “The ideas in it are good, but it’s all about how this is going to be executed,” she said in an interview with The Fulcrum. “The devil is in the details. The change this MAHA strategy seeks is at the community level. Who are the people you are bringing to the table?”
So far, the people sitting at the table endorse the ideological views of the U.S. Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr—notably vaccine skepticism and regulatory rollbacks——rather than a cross-section of representatives from communities with the highest disease burdens.
The MAHA commission, created by President Trump in February 2025, is dominated by officials who toe the party line, from National Institutes for Health Director Jay Bhattacharya to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, founder of the America First Policy Institute. This conservative think tank promotes a vision of America based on pronatalist, anti-immigration, and free speech policies. Gross hopes representation will broaden during implementation.
But experts warn that the administration’s rhetoric about improving children’s health often runs counter to its policy choices. In a press release that accompanied the report, Secretary Kennedy framed MAHA as a sweeping, cabinet-wide mobilization. “This strategy represents the most sweeping reform agenda in modern history,” he said. “We are ending the corporate capture of public health… and putting gold-standard science—not special interests—at the center of every decision.”
Yet the strategy largely sidesteps the social determinants of health, the conditions in which people live, work, and learn that drive health outcomes far more powerfully than personal choice. Speaking with The Fulcrum, Aviva Musicus, Science Director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, notes that the report focuses heavily on individual responsibility while ignoring the systemic barriers that shape those daily decisions.
“Notably absent from the MAHA strategy report are strategies to address inequities and health disparities,” says Musicus. “The idea is that if we educate people, they will have the resources to take action and become healthier. The reality is that structures and systems affect our health far more than the individual decisions we make daily. Those individual decisions are a direct result of structures and systems. If you don't change the structure, you're not going to change overall health.”
Even where the MAHA strategy acknowledges environmental and behavioral harms—chemical pollutants, the role of technology—it proposes no corporate regulatory oversight. Deregulation only applies to what is perceived as government “interference.” Meanwhile, experts point out that many actions taken by the administration actively undermine the strategy’s stated goals, undermining some of the objectives laid out in the strategy. Cutting food assistance that low-income families rely on, loosening rules on pesticides linked to health risks and advancing policies that restrict access to nutritious foods.
“This administration's actions are making America hungrier and sicker,” says Musicus. “The negative impacts will be disproportionately felt by those with the lowest incomes. Stripping millions of Americans from their health insurance coverage and cutting SNAP will increase health inequities.”
The Administration’s recent decision to eliminate more than 3,800 research grants—totaling roughly $3 billion—for studies on cancer, health disparities, neuroscience, and other areas essential to children’s health further complicates MAHA’s ambitions.
In July, Gross wrote to Secretary Kennedy, urging the establishment of a dedicated agency for children within the NIH, analogous to the National Institute on Aging. She never received a response, despite the alignment with the administration’s stated priorities.
“We spend so much more money on adults than we do on children, but prevention in children costs a lot less,” says Gross. Many unhealthy behaviors, she noted, stem from corporate incentives that discourage improving food quality. “We've got a Secretary of Health who says we must prioritize healthy foods and children in schools. Meanwhile, we've got a Congress that wants to cut those programs financially. So, the question to Secretary Kennedy is how are you going to lead this in this environment?”
Gross also emphasized the essential role of nurses, often the frontline professionals, helping families build healthier lives. Yet the administration has moved to classify nursing as a non-professional degree, limiting financial support for students despite a national nursing shortage.
To meet the MAHA moment, Musicus says her organization is focusing on three priorities: holding leaders accountable for actions that undermine public health, mitigating the damage through litigation and by opposing key appointments, and articulating a proactive vision for an equitable food system. “It’s not enough to play defense,” she said. “We need to provide policymakers with an evidence-based roadmap for what true food system transformation would look like.”
The question is whether those in charge are willing to listen.
Beatrice Spadacini is a freelance journalist for the Fulcrum. Spadacini writes about social justice and public health.
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