Senators elected in this year’s midterms will be the first whose new term in office will include a long-delayed reckoning: act on Social Security or stand by while 71 million retirees and survivors are hit with a punishing 22% cut in benefits in 2032.

Yet few candidates for the job have had much to say about it on the campaign trail. Even when asked, many offer no more than gauzy platitudes.

With the Baby Boomer population bulge in its retirement years, the moment demographers and actuaries have been warning about for decades will come near the end of those senators’ six-year terms.

In 2032, the Social Security trust fund is projected to run out of money. That triggers an automatic and draconian response under current law: an across-the-board benefits cut to make up the entire shortfall.

The alternative is as simple as it is painful, a trade-off among benefits cuts, tax increases and granting the Social Security system authority to add further to the federal government’s swelling budget deficit.

There are myriad ways to strike the balance. And some ways to dress up the hit — re-branding a benefits cut as a later retirement age, for example. But waiting only makes the eventual pain worse. Politicians don’t like to talk about that.

“It’s no surer way to have the other side demonize you than to take any kind of specific position on it,” said Senator John Hickenlooper, a Democrat running for reelection in Colorado, who declined to weigh in on concrete changes to the program. “But everything’s on the table.”Republican Senator Jon Husted, locked in a fierce fight for reelection in Ohio, said Congress must “strengthen” and “save” Social Security but also refused to endorse any definite steps.

“I’m not going to go any further than that,” Husted responded, when pressed. On Wednesday, the Social Security Administration will announce its cost of living adjustment for next year’s payments.

For many of the roughly 64 million Americans currently receiving retirement and survivor benefits through the program, it may be the most financially consequential information they receive all year.

Retirees on Social Security on average receive 40% of their household income from the program, according to 2024 data. Among low-income recipients, the benefit on average makes up about 80% of income.

The importance of Social Security payments is only projected to grow in the coming decades as fewer retirees receive private pension benefits.

"Since defined benefit pensions have virtually disappeared in the private sector, Social Security has become the only source of guaranteed retirement income for most workers," said Alicia Munnell, senior adviser at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Any political candidate who backs a benefit cut risks enraging an active and engaged cohort of voters. Americans 65 and older vote in disproportionately large numbers, particularly in midterm congressional elections, according to the Census Bureau. In 2022, they accounted for 30% of all votes cast — a portion likely to swell as more Baby Boomers enter the age bracket.

And middle-age voters approaching retirement who have paid into the system for decades are no more eager to hear of a plan to pare back their payout.

So candidates have mastered ways of skirting a clear position on difficult trade-offs to ensure the program’s longevity, said Bill Sweeney, senior vice president of global affairs, AARP.

“Politicians spend lot of time and energy figuring out how to say what they need to say on Social Security in order to not draw too much analysis or to draw an attack,” Sweeney said.

Republicans, in particular, face intense cross-pressures. The party is ideologically opposed to tax increases. And President Donald Trump has promised not to cut benefits.

That’s left Republicans with little room to maneuver. Of 25 Republican senators and Senate candidates Bloomberg News contacted seeking their plans on how to address Social Security’s fiscal trajectory, three responded with statements voicing support for the program. None returned answers to questions about the specific solutions the candidate supports.

Many Democrats, though not all, publicly back raising taxes on high earners to shore up the program.

The 12.4% payroll tax that funds Social Security, half of it paid by workers and the other half by employers, only applies to the first $184,500 in annual wages. Democrats have increasingly coalesced around raising or eliminating the cap. A handful of Republicans agree the payroll tax should apply to more wages.

The most aggressive version of that policy would buy Social Security an extra 26 years, extending the trust fund’s solvency until 2058, according to the Social Security Administration. Still, that alone would not permanently prevent a shortfall.

There’s also little sign of a comprehensive plan to shore up the program that could win sufficient bipartisan support to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.

“We know the basic parameters of this issue,” said Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee. “The Republican side is worried it’ll raise premiums. The Democratic side is worried it’ll raise the retirement age. We already understand these factors, let’s just dive into it.”Every year Congress waits, the ultimate shortfall grows larger and so does the size of benefit cuts or tax increases needed to fill the gap.

Simply changing the law so that the Social Security system can borrow its way out of the coming shortfall is risky at a time global bond markets are already showing concern about the nation’s fiscal path. As it is, federal debt held by the public is projected to hit 120% of gross domestic product by 2036, surpassing peak World War II debt, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“We’re dancing on the edge of a debt vortex that could do massive damage to our nation,” Merkley said.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both broached plans to address Social Security’s fiscal shortcomings. But both quickly backed off amid congressional opposition.

Bush proposed privatizing the program. Obama wanted to combine a benefit cut and tax increase: curtailing annual cost of living adjustments through a less generous formula and bringing in more revenue by modifying the Social Security tax’s earning cap so higher-paid workers would contribute more.

Trump so far hasn’t offered any plan. And the the bonus tax deduction for older Americans that he included in his signature tax law hastened the expected insolvency of the system. Federal income tax payments on Social Security benefits are earmarked for the trust funds supporting Social Security and Medicare.

“As someone who has watched the way Capitol Hill works for a long time, I don’t have any reason to believe that folks on the Hill are going to address the issues on Social Security much earlier than they need to,” AARP’s Sweeney said.

History bears him out. The Social Security trust fund was just three months away from insolvency when a compromise addressing that shortfall was signed into law in 1983.

That deal, forged between Republican President Ronald Reagan and congressional Democrats, gradually increased the retirement age and raised taxes, putting the system on track to avert a new crisis for 49 years.