Partisan acrimony on Capitol Hill may be registering at all-time highs, but you wouldn’t know it hearing Rep. John Larson, D-CT, speak of Rep. Sam Johnson, R-TX, chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Social Security legislation.

“I think the world of Congressman Johnson,” Larson told BenefitsPro the week he reintroduced the latest version of the Social Security 2100 Act. “He’s an iconic American hero.”

Such praise is common for Rep. Johnson. Elected to Congress in 1991, the 86-year old retired Air Force officer flew combat missions in the Korean War and spent seven years as a prisoner of war after being shot down in North Vietnam in 1966. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-WI, has called Johnson “the greatest living man I know.”

But beyond appreciation for his immense sacrifices to country, Larson, the new ranking member on the Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, describes his working relationship with Johnson as “very strong,” despite the two residing at opposite ends of the political spectrum on fiscal policy. In 2010 the National Journal ranked Johnson the most conservative lawmaker in the House on budget issues, while Larson ranked as the 12^th most liberal.

For the roughly 62 million current beneficiaries of Social Security, and millions more that will swell its rolls as baby boomers retire en masse, a functional relationship between Johnson and Larson stands as the best hope to date for addressing the program’s solvency crisis.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects Social Security’s two trust funds will be exhausted by 2030, requiring an across-the-board 28 percent cut in benefits in 2031.

Those cuts would be catastrophic for most retirees. In 2014, 61 percent of beneficiaries received at least half of their income for Social Security.

Rep. Johnson’s Social Security Reform Act

“The country can’t afford to wait to fix this,” underscored Larson, whose sense of urgency is shared with Rep. Johnson. Both Congressmen have sponsored legislation that the Social Security Administration says would make the largest program in the federal budget solvent over 75 years.

The two bills have considerable common ground, and also fundamental ideological differences in how each avoids impending benefit cuts.

Johnson’s Social Security Reform Act would make the program more progressive by increasing benefits for lower-income earners and raising the minimum benefit for the lowest earners. It would also phase out existing taxes on Social Security income.

According to the Social Security Administration’s score of Johnson’s bill, about half of workers would get a higher benefit, and half would have a lower benefit, with the top 10 percent of wage earners seeing the largest cuts.

Johnson’s bill would do away with cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for households with more than $170,000 in income. For those eligible for COLA increases, the bill would apply the chain-weighted version of the Consumer Price Index. Together, the bill’s reductions in cost of living adjustments account for the largest savings in the program.

The second largest source of savings comes from phasing in a new retirement age, beginning in 2022, until the normal retirement age reaches age 69 by 2030.

For Republicans, Johnson’s plan may be most notable for the fact that it achieves solvency and avoids benefit cuts without implementing new taxes.

Rep. Larson’s Social Security 2100 Act

Rep. Larson’s Social Security 2100 Act has been introduced in the previous two Congressional sessions.

But this time around, the bill, which achieves solvency and avoids imminent benefit cuts while increasing payouts for all Americans, has amassed 156 Democrat co-sponsors in House, making it the party’s de facto policy position on Social Security reform.

In a rare act of bipartisanship, Johnson has promised Larson that the bill will get a hearing before the Social Security subcommittee. “We’ve never had a hearing on the bill before this,” said Larson. “That is vitally important and I’m very grateful—I credit Sam Johnson for that.”

Under Larson’s bill, the most vulnerable retirees would receive a minimum benefit of 125 percent of the federal poverty line. Everyone would see a 2 percent increase in benefits. And taxes on benefits received would be lowered by raising the existing threshold of $32,000 in income for couples to $100,000.

The bill also applies a more generous index for assessing COLAs. To pay for the new benefits, it phases in increases in the payroll tax until it hits 14.8 percent by 2041, and implements new increases down the road in 2080, until the payroll tax reaches 15.3 percent. The current payroll tax is 12.4 percent.

The new payroll taxes are the largest sources of revenue in Larson’s bill, which also applies the payroll tax on earnings above $400,000. The payroll tax is currently capped at $127,000. The SSA projects that cap will hit $400,000 by 2046, meaning that after that point all wages would be subject to the payroll tax.

Larson says the tax increases are minimal, and justifies his bill by the fact that everyone “has skin in the game.” Workers earning $50,000 a year would see their taxes go up by 50 cents a week. The wealthiest Americans would pay another $4.00 a week in payroll taxes, or “about the price of a latte,” says Larson, who has taken to carrying a cup of Starbucks when presenting his bill to underscore that point.

“The way this issue has previously been presented is that it is a tax increase,” said Larson. “But it’s not. It’s a premium increase on an insurance policy. You get something directly back from it.”

The fact that Social Security is characterized as an entitlement program has skewed the debate on reform, thinks Larson.

“It was intended to be an insurance program backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government. But the premiums on the policies have not gone up since 1983,” noted Larson, who founded an insurance agency in Hartford prior to entering public life.

“Where else in the open market can you buy a retirement benefit, a disability policy, a death benefit and a survivors benefit in one policy? I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job explaining Social Security as an insurance policy, which is what it is,” he said.

“But the program needs to be made actuarially sound,” added Larson. “The problem is no more complicated than that.”

Policy experts’ calls for compromise

The considerable common ground, and vast differences in the Johnson and Larson bills begs the question as to whether Republicans and Democrats can find common ground between benefits cuts and new taxes that policy experts have been recommending for years.

At least for now, Larson remains insistent that raising the retirement age is an impractical solution for many Americans.

“It’s easy for economists to sit back and say we need to increase the retirement age,” said Larson. “But that won’t be an option for a lot of people. We have an economy that is based on risk and entrepreneurism. There are great rewards in our system, but also inequalities. Social Security is a social compact to insure against the risk. The government’s role is to be the referee.”

Recent data from the Employee Benefits Research Institute shows many of today’s retirees left the workforce before they had planned. Only 4 percent of retirees reported working to age 70, while more than two-thirds retired before 65, and 39 percent retired before age 60. The most common reason for early retirement was health reasons.

“There is a substantial percentage of the population that will have a hard time working past 65 or even 62, and in many cases these will be the most vulnerable workers,” said Craig Copeland, a research associate at the non-partisan EBRI.

“Increasing the retirement age without accounting for those who can't physically work past current retirement ages through an expanded disability benefits or something similar could potentially put strains on the federal budget,” added Copeland, who also noted the actuarial benefits of expanding the retirement age for those able to work.

Both parties showing symptoms of denial

Andrew Biggs, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former deputy commissioner at the SSA, says reforming Social Security without new tax increases is virtually impossible.

But he’s critical of Larson’s plan for the extent that it raises taxes. Low earners entering the workforce today will see their Social Security taxes increased by about 20 percent over their working life. And Larson’s new taxes would push the top marginal tax rate near 60 percent, after accounting for state and Medicare Taxes.

“That’s not going to happen,” said Biggs. “I don’t think the Larson plan holds together all that well.”

But the most striking aspect of Larson’s bill is that it memorializes the shift in the Democratic Party to a reform policy that expands benefits in the effort to keep Social Security solvent, thinks Biggs.

“The idea of expanding benefits has taken over the party in the past five years,” he said. “In the early 2000s, there were prominent Democrats willing to co-sponsors legislation that cut COLAs.”

That shift to the left will make a middle ground harder to find, and is one reason why Biggs expects this Congress to kick the can down the road on Social Security reform.

“We knew the program had to be fixed in the late 1980s, but it’s always been better for members of Congress to push this off,” said Biggs.

Whatever personal good faith exists between Rep. Johnson and Rep. Larson, it will have to be leveraged quickly. Rep. Johnson has announced his retirement at the end of this term.

But even good faith efforts may not be enough. Biggs thinks both parties are still showing symptoms of denial on reform.

That the Trump administration has not made Social Security reform a priority makes a near-term solution all the more unlikely.

“It’s tough enough to fix this when you have a President that is committed to solving the problem,” said Biggs. “What’s the chances of a realistic solution when you don’t have a President that’s engaged?”

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