Approaching the Cliff on Social Security and Medicare

 Many posts have discussed Social Security and Medicare.

Jessica Riedl at Brookings:

Social Security and Medicare finances are headed for a reckoning. Social Security has run an annual deficit since 2010, and its trust fund is projected to become insolvent by 2032.1 The Medicare Part A trust fund is projected to follow in 2033.2 Trust fund accounting may sound like a green eyeshade technicality, but it is only one symptom of the broader unsustainability of both programs.

Consider that:

• Far from paying for themselves through payroll taxes and premiums, Social Security and Medicare are running a combined $847 billion cash shortfall in 2026—comprising roughly half of the entire federal budget deficit. 
• Their combined shortfall is projected to reach $2.7 trillion a year within a decade, becoming the overwhelming driver of rising federal budget deficits.4
• Over the following three decades, the two programs are projected to run a cumulative cash shortfall of $157 trillion, with the annual gap reaching 12.4% of GDP by 2056.5
• All told, these shortfalls will account for nearly 80% of all federal budget deficits projected over the next three decades.

Clearly, something has to give—before these shortfalls drive the federal debt to a projected 240% of GDP within thirty years and push interest costs high enough to consume a majority of annual tax revenue.6 Both parties created this unsustainable path, repeatedly expanding Social Security and Medicare benefits well beyond available revenues while failing to account for longer lifespans, fewer workers per retiree, and rising health care costs.

Nor has either party offered a solution. Republican lawmakers take new taxes off the table, while President Trump opposes any benefit reductions. Democratic leaders take benefit changes off the table while pledging to limit new taxes to the wealthiest families and corporations. Neither side will admit that reining in these costs will require both reductions in scheduled benefits and new broad-based taxes.

This report aims to show that Social Security and Medicare sustainability reforms can be designed within progressive principles of protecting low-income seniors and promoting income redistribution down the income ladder. Specifically, it shows that:

A) While benefits for the poorest seniors must be protected, a growing share of today’s Social Security and Medicare spending redistributes income upward—from working families to millions of wealthier seniors whose benefits often far exceed their lifetime contributions to the system. This includes close to $5.6 trillion in benefits set to be paid over the next decade to seniors with pre-benefit incomes over $100,000 (in 2026 dollars), including $2.0 trillion to those above the $200,000 threshold.
B) The soaring cost of these benefits threatens to absorb every plausible tax increase on the wealthy, and even on the non-wealthy, leaving little or no room to fund other progressive priorities such as education, health care, climate, and childcare.
C) Because sharp tax increases face broad opposition, escalating Social Security and Medicare costs are already squeezing spending on other progressive programs—a trend likely to accelerate.

While the “just tax the rich” approach remains popular among progressives, the notion that it alone can close all or even most of a thirty-year, $157 trillion shortfall collapses under scrutiny. Mathematically, even seizing every dollar of billionaire wealth or taxing millionaires at 100% tax rates would fall short.7 Economically, marginal rates on top earners can rise only so far before the resulting economic and incentive effects begin to erode revenue. And politically, for nearly a century even unified Democratic governments have proven unable to enact substantial upper-income tax increases outside of major wars—a constraint likely to persist as Democrats increasingly represent the highest-earning regions, such as California and New York. Taxing the rich belongs in any sustainability plan, but it cannot spare middle-class taxpayers or other spending programs from bearing much of the cost.

Given these constraints, continuing to give retirement benefits for (often wealthy) seniors the first claim on federal revenue will force other priorities—poverty relief, education, health care, climate, childcare, family leave, and infrastructure—to compete for a shrinking pot of remaining tax dollars. Progressives can instead protect the poorest seniors, rein in benefits for wealthier ones, and reserve most new tax increases for those other priorities.

The Fiscal Picture Gets Worse

Many posts have discussed federal deficits and the federal debt. 

 James C. Capretta at AEI

The Treasury Department will release the official tally for fiscal year 2026 later this month, but the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has provided a useful early look that is likely to be close to where the more carefully scrubbed numbers eventually land. The bottom line is that the federal government’s fiscal position continues to deteriorate, with rapid spending increases on the main entitlements and net interest on past borrowing accounting for most of the growing fiscal pressure.

The final deficit figure for 2026 is $1.993 trillion, or $218 billion above what was recorded in 2025. Revenue was up 3 percent in 2026 relative to 2025, but spending grew even faster at 6 percent.

On the spending side, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid continue to dominate the outlook, with all three growing at rates exceeding the rate of increase for federal revenue. Social Security outlays rose by 5 percent in 2026, while Medicare and Medicaid were up 8 percent. Their combined spending increase in 2026 was $217 billion, which accounts for 80 percent of the entire increase in noninterest outlays recorded for the entire federal government.

...

What should be most worrisome to policymakers is the combination of rising entitlement obligations and newly emerging pressure on net interest costs. In 2026, net interest payments were $1.143 trillion, up $115 billion compared with 2025 payments. Servicing federal debt now accounts for 15 percent of all federal spending, up from 8.5 percent in 2006.

Violent Threats Against Elected Officials

Many posts have discussed political violence..

 Nick Corasaniti at NYT:

An investigation by The New York Times examining hundreds of records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents and law enforcement logs has found that, over a two-year period from 2024 to August of this year, thousands of violent threats inundated the lives of elected officials in unprecedented ways.

Some threats were vague; some were frighteningly specific. They promised torture, stabbing, rape and murder. They aimed at Republicans and Democrats alike, and at a range of officeholders from county clerks to United States senators. They targeted spouses, parents, siblings and children.

At least 44 governors, as well as their staff and families, have been subjected to violent threats over the past two years, The Times’s investigation found. That’s also true of at least 70 of the nation’s 100 senators, and at least 185 members of the House of Representatives — nearly half the body. More than half of the country’s secretaries of state, most of whom serve as their states’ chief election officers, have received threats of violence.

Do Polls Overlook Republican Voters?

 Many posts have discussed pollsters' challenges, including the plunge in response rates.

Erica Pandey, Russell Contreras andMarc Caputo at Axios:

Research suggests Republicans have become somewhat less likely than Democrats to participate in telephone surveys, and response rates overall have plummeted since the late 1990s, per Pew.

• "We definitely have more people answering surveys who voted for [former Vice President Kamala] Harris than who voted for President Trump," says Brent Buchanan, a Republican pollster and founder of Cygnal. "But if you're a good pollster, you still get the other people."
• Pollsters can compensate by giving greater weight to Trump voters or adjusting samples to better reflect the Republican electorate, which skews male, white and working class.
• Advanced statistical modeling tools can also take a poor sample and make it look like the true electorate, though results may be inaccurate for subgroups like young people or Hispanic voters, Pew's Keeter says.

But that has risks: "The adjustment assumes that the Republicans who respond to a poll are similar to the Republicans who don't respond to the poll," Rice University political science assistant professor Matthew Tyler tells Axios. Tyler said weighting GOP respondents more heavily can backfire if those willing to answer polls are also more willing to vote Democratic than the Republicans who never respond. That could inflate the apparent size of a Democratic wave.

Between the lines: Predicting who will actually vote can dramatically change the results. YouGov chief scientist Douglas Rivers found Democratic leads ranging from six to 16 points depending on how likely voters were identified in a September survey — and called the 16-point margin "almost certainly an overstatement."

The bottom line: Even with the questions about the accuracy of recent polls, most pollsters believe Democrats have the edge heading into Election Day. "I think it's telling that we're hanging our hopes on, 'The polls are wrong,'" Buchanan says. "That's not very strong."

October Surprises Have Changed

 AT WP, Dan Merica writes that the "October surprise" -- a last-minute story that changes the course of a campaign -- is not what it used to be.

“Unless you get a Cal Cunningham-level sex scandal,” Hunt said, “it is really hard to have anything cut through the clutter and the noise that is pumping into voters’ consciences this time of year.”

Instead, operatives said major stories that end campaigns are coming earlier in cycles, often ahead of primaries, so parties have time to replace candidates on the ballot.

There are three key reasons for this shift:

• Early voting: To expand access, many states are starting voting earlier. States like California, Maine and Montana began voting earlier this week, and Iowa, Kansas and North Carolina, among others, will begin next week.
• Changes in political communication: Now, campaigns can push their message earlier and without media involvement through social media and paid communication.
• Self-research: One operative working on House races this cycle said committees and campaigns “have gotten better at recognizing bad candidates early on before it is too late” and “know what to look out for before we fully embrace a candidate, before they become our nominee.”

The October Surprise is not dead. It has just changed.

House v. Senate

 In Federalist 51, Madison wrote:

In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.

An old saying in the House:  “The other party is the opposition; the Senate is the enemy."

 Hans Nichols at Axios:

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) is saying out loud what House Republicans have been grumbling about for much of the year: They're fed up with the Senate.

Why it matters: You won't ever hear Speaker Mike Johnson or Majority Leader Steve Scalise talk about their Senate counterparts like this."There are no Democrats. There are no Republicans. They are just senators," Emmer told donors last week at a closed-door fundraiser for Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.). We were in attendance.

Emmer said Senate Majority Leader John Thune "is doing the job that he thinks he's supposed to do. There's a certain fraternity sorority that is the U.S. Senate."

 The intrigue: Emmer had a blunt message for senators who repeatedly say they can't pass House GOP priorities: "Don't just keep telling me 'Don't have the votes. Don't have the votes.' You suck."

Emmer said he once thought as a House member that he should stay out of the filibuster debate.

Now, he thinks his colleagues should "get rid of the darn filibuster."

Perceptions of Media Freedom

 Many posts have dealt with media problems.

Benedict Vigers at Gallup:

Even though most Americans continue to say the U.S. media have a lot of freedom, the percentage saying so has reached a new low this year. Slightly more than two in three Americans (69%) surveyed in May and June say there is a lot of media freedom in the U.S., down six percentage points from the previous low of 75% in 2025.

...

For much of the past 15 years, perceptions of media freedom in the U.S. have outpaced those in other advanced economies. Across 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, median perceptions of media freedom have typically hovered around 80%, slightly lower than in the United States. Last year was the first time on record that the two were tied, both at 75%, despite similarities in 2023 and 2015, when the U.S. advantage was smaller. While Gallup has not yet completed data collection in all OECD countries this year, based on available data, the OECD median will be between 70% and 76%. This means that 2026 is the first year on record in which the U.S. ranks below the bloc's median.

Virtually every president has complained about the press. Trump says that reporters who irk him "should be arrested." Can't you see that his instincts are authoritarian? I know a lot of "anti-anti-Trumpers." Can't you see it, my friends? Doesn't it matter? https://t.co/qDyxSZxwfy

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) October 6, 2026