Americans Want a BRAC-Style Commission to Fix Social Security

The results of Cato’s December Social Security survey are in

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The Cato Institute recently conducted a nationally representative Social Security survey of 2,000 Americans, exploring their attitudes toward the program, their understanding of how it works, and their openness to potential proposals aimed at addressing its long-term shortfalls.

Among all the ideas tested, one result stands out: Americans want to take politics out of Social Security. There is a strong bipartisan support for tasking a commission of independent experts with reform.

Americans Want a Fiscal Commission

Seventy-one percent (71 percent) of respondents favor creating a commission of independent experts to address Social Security’s funding shortfalls. Support is broad across age and income groups, with Democrats most supportive (78 percent), followed by Independents (72 percent), and Republicans (68 percent). The survey explicitly asked:

Would you favor or oppose Congress creating a National Commission, composed of independent, non-partisan experts, on Social Security reform and giving it the authority to solve Social Security budget problems?

This proposal is inspired by the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, which successfully closed obsolete military bases after the Cold War. The process was necessary because, even as members of Congress recognized the need for base closures, they tried to protect their districts from being affected and banded together to keep any base from closing.

The BRAC model overcame this barrier through two key design features.

First, it relied on commissions composed solely of independent experts that excluded members of Congress. This removed the decision from parochial concerns. The expert commissions drafted a package of recommendations, which was then sent to the president for approval, and if approved, sent to Congress for review.

Second, the recommendations automatically became law unless both the House and Senate passed a joint resolution of disapproval. Lawmakers couldn’t propose amendments and didn’t need to take affirmative votes: they could only reject the entire package, a much higher bar for blocking reform.

By excluding politicians from the recommendation-drafting stage and eliminating the need for lawmakers to actively vote on politically sensitive changes, the BRAC process shifted responsibility—and blame—to independent experts and made reform possible.

Boccia has written extensively on applying the BRAC model to fiscal policy. A BRAC-like fiscal commission could be tasked with addressing America’s alarming fiscal trajectory, including through Social Security reform. Its defining features, insulation from politics and fast-track authority, give it a far greater chance of succeeding where previous commissions with similar goals have failed.

Broad-based support for an expert commission likely reflects deep dissatisfaction with Congress’s handling of Social Security. Sixty-two percent (62 percent) of respondents believe Congress has mostly broken its promises to workers in managing the program, a view shared across age groups and party lines. This perception could stem from the common view that Congress “raided the trust fund” and used workers’ payroll taxes for purposes other than Social Security (this perception wasn’t tested in the survey).

Other Takeaways from the Survey

Beyond strong bipartisan support for a commission of independent experts, the survey reveals additional insights: younger adults are more open to benefit reforms, most Americans don’t want the payroll tax increases that would be required to avoid benefit reductions, and there is meaningful support for certain benefit reforms. Below is a brief summary of these key takeaways (for a more detailed breakdown of the results, see the analysis from Cato’s Emily Ekins and Hunter Johnson):

• Young Americans are more open to benefit reductions: While 77 percent of all adults oppose reducing benefits for current and future retirees to address Social Security’s funding shortfalls, young Americans (the 18-29 age cohort, or Gen Z) are much more supportive, with nearly half (47 percent) favoring this change (see chart below). Younger workers, who are already paying a significant share of their paychecks for significantly wealthier retirees’ benefits, are understandably reluctant to give up an even larger share of their earnings.

  

• Americans support higher taxes—until they learn the price: While many Americans initially say they would support raising payroll taxes “as much as necessary,” that support collapses once the question is framed in dollars (see chart below). Across age, income, and party lines, most Americans are unwilling to pay anywhere near what would be required to fix Social Security through higher payroll taxes alone (a payroll tax increase from 12.4 to 16.7 percent). For context, a median full-time earner would need to pay roughly $2,600 more per year if Congress raises the payroll tax rate to 16.7 percent. Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of Americans wouldn’t be willing to pay half that amount to shore up the program.

• Americans support meaningful benefit reforms: Nearly half of all adults (48 percent) favor replacing Social Security with a flat-benefit system that raises lower earners’ benefits and reduces those of higher earners, with younger cohorts significantly more likely to support this change (see chart below). Additionally, one of the most popular reform options is slowing the growth of Social Security benefits, with 58 percent of respondents favoring this approach, which could generate substantial long-term savings. Congress could switch to indexing initial benefits to inflation instead of wage growth, which would close 74 percent of the funding shortfall, without cutting anyone’s benefits, simply by slowing benefit growth.

  

Taken together, the survey shows that Americans are open to Social Security reforms that deliver meaningful savings while avoiding higher taxes and additional borrowing. But regardless of its merits, any reform path will create winners and losers, making it politically sensitive and difficult for Congress to advance. That reality makes the case for a BRAC-style commission compelling, especially given the strong public support for this idea. By delegating Social Security reform to independent experts and insulating the process from political pressures, Congress could finally break the political gridlock that has stalled action for decades and put the program on a sustainable path.

Many developed countries have relied on commissions to guide retirement reforms, including Germany, New Zealand, and Sweden. We explore their reform experiences and retirement systems in depth in our new book, Reimagining Social Security: Global Lessons for Retirement Policy Changes.