Delaying SNAP accountability makes it easier to abandon
In The Unseen and the Unsaid, Jack Salmon argues that the Farm Bill pairs a $1.4 trillion price tag with expanded subsidies and delayed SNAP accountability. He cites Boccia on the risk of backsliding:
As the Cato Institute’s Romina Boccia puts it, “Once Congress establishes a precedent for delaying accountability, it becomes easier to delay it again, or for a future Congress to abandon the measure altogether.” She further adds that backsliding “would effectively hand a future Democratic administration a window to repeal the requirements before they take effect.”
Social Security should focus on poverty prevention, not wage replacement
On Social Security’s 91st birthday, Boccia squared off against Brookings’ Wendell Primus in Concord Action’s “Social Security Smackdown”. Primus argued that solvency can be restored while keeping Social Security a wage-replacement program. Boccia countered that the program has drifted from insuring against old-age poverty into an expensive wage-replacement system — one running cash-flow deficits since 2010 and set to add some $5 trillion to the debt by 2032. Her fix: slow benefit growth by moving toward a flat benefit near 125 percent of the poverty line, raise and index the retirement age to longevity, and establish a BRAC-style independent commission to make reform politically possible.
Scrapping the payroll tax cap would break Social Security’s design
In MarketWatch, Alessandra Malito examines proposals to shore up Social Security by making high earners pay more, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Moreno’s call to “scrap the cap.” She quotes Boccia on why eliminating the cap could do more harm than good:
Breaking that link would “fundamentally change the nature of the program,” said Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “You undermine the earned benefit. The cap exists because it is an earnings-related program where you get credits.”
The proposal could do more harm than good, Boccia added. For example, eliminating the tax cap could increase marginal tax rates on labor income in high-tax states, including New York, California and Oregon, which could discourage workers from earning more. “If you look at who would be affected, it is highly productive professionals,” she said.
A BRAC-style commission forces action on Social Security reform
In The Columbian, the editorial board urges Congress to stop stalling on Social Security by using a BRAC-like commission:
Just last week, the Senate Finance Committee heard from Romina Boccia with the Cato Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that often promotes libertarian ideas. Boccia suggested taking the problem out of Congress’ hands, and thus away from politics, by following a process used a number of years ago to identify and close unneeded military bases. The idea behind the Base Realignment and Closure process was to rely on commissions of independent experts to analyze the situation and send recommendations to the government that would become law unless the president disagreed or both the Senate and House passed resolutions of disapproval. The process worked.
DOGE did not slow federal spending
In The Independent, Joe Sommerlad reports on the White House’s new “fraud tracker,” noting that DOGE’s cost-cutting claims have not held up:
Musk’s target was subsequently downsized to $1 trillion and DOGE’s final claim was that it had saved the federal bureaucracy $215 billion, although analysis from the Cato Institute and other think-tanks subsequently found that government spending actually went up under Trump, rather than being successfully reined-in.
Reimagining Social Security keeps shaping the reform debate
On WFRK’s Wake Up Carolina, Libertarian South Carolina Senate candidate Kasie Whitner highlighted Boccia’s Reimagining Social Security as the way to fix the program.
“[T]here’s a woman named Romina Boccia, who has dedicated her whole career to this. She wrote a book on how to fix Social Security. We can do it. We just have to have the political will to do it.”
Americans reject the tax increases needed to save Social Security
In WORLD, a “By the Numbers” item highlights Cato’s December survey:
77%
The share of respondents to a Cato Institute survey opposed to a $1,300 payroll tax increase. According to the libertarian think tank, even that wouldn’t fully close the funding gap. The same share of respondents opposed benefits cuts to save the program.