Republican leaders have recently suggested that they would use a debt ceiling showdown to force cuts to the Social Security program. Democrats should get ahead of this by eliminating the debt ceiling right now. If Democrats don’t do that, then President Joe Biden should simply ignore the debt ceiling when the time comes. Neither counteraction seems likely to happen, so a debt ceiling showdown involving Social Security negotiations is quite likely to happen if the Democrats lose control of the House or Senate in the midterm elections.

The Social Security reform discourse frequently revolves around the idea of increasing the Social Security retirement age. But this discourse is a bit misleading in ways that tend to to obfuscate what proponents of that idea are actually proposing.

Social Security does not have one retirement age. It has ninety-six retirement ages, one for each month between age sixty-two and seventy. What people call the “full retirement age” (FRA) is just a placeholder in a formula that determines the benefit level at all ninety-six retirement ages.