Yesterday the United States Senate Budget Committee held a hearing on Social Security solvency. And one of the most interesting things about it is that it didn’t make the news. At all.
It’s crazy. Every single senator on that committee acknowledged that Social Security will run out of money in roughly six years.
The Senate Budget Committee— one of the most powerful committees in Congress— convened what could almost be described as an emergency hearing to figure out how to fix it.
And nobody cares.
No media coverage. No headlines. No cable news panels. Nothing.
This is a program that roughly 50 to 60 million Americans depend on. It’s one of the largest programs in the entire federal budget— on par with national defense spending.
Just imagine if the Pentagon were about to run out of money. That would be front-page news around the world. There would be Congressional hearings, press conferences, emergency sessions.
But Social Security running out of money in just six years? Apparently that five-alarm fire doesn’t even warrant a mention.
If there’s one positive takeaway, it’s that everyone on the Senate committee agreed they need to do something. There was genuine, bipartisan consensus that the problem is real, it’s urgent, and it requires action.
Then they went and debated solutions… and that’s when the session became utterly hilarious.
For example, one senator proposed that the federal government create a brand new investment fund— “pre-funded” with $1.5 TRILLION. He believes that the government will invest this money so brilliantly, so skillfully, that it will save Social Security forever.
This is just classic Washington thinking. The solution to every problem is always more government control. More committees. More agencies. More trillions.
But the most hilarious part— and you can actually see this on the video— is that while the Senator was laying out his new plan, a camera operator in the background, who probably works for C-SPAN, started visibly shaking his head in disgust.
The average working guy understands what apparently United States Senators do not: handing politicians a $1.5 trillion permanent investment fund is not a solution. It’s a problem.
And not just a problem— it’s a fraud magnet.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already estimated that roughly 10% of the federal budget, around $600 billion per year, is lost to outright fraud. That’s the existing level of fraud, with existing programs. Now imagine layering a $1.5 trillion investment fund on top of that— managed by the same people, overseen by the same bureaucrats, with the same lack of accountability.
Social Security is hurtling toward insolvency, and the big idea from a senior United States Senator is to let politicians manage a $1.5 trillion investment fund.
Because that worked out so well the last time they tried it.
Remember when Pete Buttigieg, as Secretary of Transportation, was handed $1.2 trillion to spend on American infrastructure? His stated goal was to “deliver $1.2 trillion worth of value.” In other words, his best-case scenario was a 0% return on investment.
And he couldn’t even manage that. The $7.5 billion electric vehicle charging program, which promised 500,000 stations by 2030, has built fewer than 100 after nearly four years.
In Baltimore, where the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in March 2024, the city initially said reconstruction would cost $1.7 billion and be complete by 2028. Nine months later they revised the cost estimate to $5.2 billion, and completion to 2030.
And where, exactly, would this $1.5 trillion in “pre-funding” come from? The government is already running a deficit of $2 trillion a year. The national debt is approaching $40 trillion. They don’t have $1.5 trillion lying around.
So they’d borrow it. Which means more debt. More pressure on interest rates. More inflation. More printing. And ultimately, more waste, more corruption, and more scandals.
Everyone knows this. Even the guy in the background operating the camera.
The good news is that there does appear to be at least some political will to address the problem.
And there are relatively straightforward fixes available, and the committee at least recognizes that the longer they wait, the more painful the fixes become.
We’ll see what happens. But this hearing perfectly illustrates what always seems to happen in Washington: in trying to “solve” a crisis, their good idea factory creates even more problems, more waste, and more fraud than what they started with.
