Josh Patashnik thinks he’s made a very clever point:
It’s true that Social Security, viewed in isolation, doesn’t have a major solvency problem–but why would you view Social Security in isolation? Of course it nominally has its own revenue stream, but the whole point here is that there are tradeoffs: dedicating that money to Social Security (or defense, or infrastructure, or anything else) means there’s less to spend in other areas. Those who advocate no changes to Social Security have to do more than point out that there’s no funding crisis; they need to make an affirmative case for why sending Social Security checks to future affluent retirees is a better use of that money than funding more expensive-but-livesaving health treatments, or child anti-poverty programs, or keeping future marginal tax rates to manageable levels, or anything else.
The reason why we shouldn’t cut spending on Social Security is that it’s immensely popular and well-supported by an overwhelming majority of the population. The whole point of the Republican attempt to portray Social Security as in “crisis” is that hoodwinking people into believing the cost of the program is going to blow up the budget is the only way people might be persuaded to cut it.
People don’t need to make an affirmative case for spending on Social Security because it’s implicit in the general attitude toward the program. When you have a very popular program that’s existed for the better part of a century, I tend to think the presumption shifts to those who think we ought to be cutting it to make their case.