Every half well informed individual knows that SS needs some reforms. And every individual with half a quotient of common sense knows it’s a dumb ass move to discuss SS as a “Ponzi scheme” and a “monstrous lie”.
If Perry should be the nominee the Dims will run ads with those terms until election day. It’s dumb to give the Dims such easy fodder to use during the general election campaign, and it would cost some votes and might even cost a state or two. Not smart to keep this up.
One of the problems Social Security had from the beginning was that it was actuarially unsound. In 1940, if you were 65, you had an over 50% chance of living to see 1950; Most of the deaths that contributed to the low average life expectancy were of those under 5 years old (mostly to childhood diseases or bacterial infections).
Social security currently brings in nearly as much as it pays out this year. The system needs reform or within ten years it will start to eat the rest of the federal budget. I am not sure we even have the ability to wait ten years any more before the changes proposed take effect.
Medicare requires immediate systemic reform, or it will collapse in less than ten years, I guesstimate 5.
The problem is that any attempt to make even the most modest change to these programs that does not have the support of AARP and other leftish to communist groups will result in horrific demagoguery of whoever proposes and supports those changes.