My thinking was, cutting taxes via budget reconciliation (which is the only process the currently paralyzed legislature can do) requires some hand waving deference to the notion of being revenue neutral by the Byrd rule, so cuts to social programs or rollbacks of government spending have been increasingly included as a way to get tax cuts. Tax cuts fund your donors who fund your reelection campaign.

But, I just looked it up again for this comment and that same rule says "No changes to social security" in reconciliation. It is specifically called out as forbidden to touch via reconciliation unlike almost every other program. So, maybe you are right, it will just be ignored because it doesn't seem possible to quietly change.

Where is the political incentive not to do this ever? If you reduce spending on social safety nets, you can reduce taxes on the wealthy, and as a bonus the poor die. win/win.

Not sure about the US, but from what I have seen in Europe the questionnaires show that older people are actually for these policies more so than young people, especially when they are already retired and thus not affected. In Germany, two thirds of retirees answered for abandoning a public holiday while everyone else was by majority obviously against it.

Trump is priming to con the Republicans into touching the third rail, and they'll all lose their seats. They're already warming up by chopping Medicaid. It's stupid, unnecessary, and cruel.

that's easily "solved" by setting the cutoff date to benefit the older generation. I believe that kind of ladder kicking is exactly what's happening in the article on Denmark, and how several other European countries squared that circle.