Is Congress finally about to get serious about fixing the barely solvent safety net that is Social Security?

If history is any indication, probably not. Despite knowing for decades that a wave of retiring baby boomers was set to swamp the system, politicians on both sides of the aisle have been loath to touch the third rail of American politics and suggest changes to a program that provided retirement and disability benefits to some 74 million people at a cost of $1.2 trillion in 2022.

The Congressional Budget Office this week revised its earlier assessments of the long-term viability of the Social Security system and now projects that it will be insolvent 10 years from now, in 2033. The 2022 report by the Social Security Trustees is only slightly rosier, suggesting that the program has until 2036 before it goes belly-up. Both agencies warn that unless Congress acts to prevent that insolvency, benefits will be automatically cut across the board by 23 percent. 

When several influential Republicans last summer floated the idea of reforms to the program — raising the age for eligibility to 70 from 67, say, or reducing benefits for some higher-earning retirees — Democrats on the campaign trail immediately turned their proposals into attack ads. President Obama, campaigning in Wisconsin, accused Senator Johnson of favoring “tax breaks for private planes” over retirees who had worked “long hours and sore backs and bad knees to get that Social Security.”

The ads had an impact. Instead of coasting to majorities in both the House and Senate, Republicans failed to recapture the upper chamber and barely managed to eke out a majority in the House. Many were surprised, then, that the issue resurfaced this week in the increasingly fraught debate over the debt ceiling.

Conservatives in the House who want a balanced budget, or at least to trim federal spending, reportedly have been eyeing major entitlement programs like Social Security as part of those efforts. Senator Manchin of West Virginia, though, told reporters Wednesday that Speaker McCarthy has privately informed other lawmakers that cuts to Social Security are off the table in the debt ceiling discussion.

Yet it hasn’t tamped down the speculation. GOP lawmakers reportedly want to create a number of panels to study changes to the program that could lead to cuts in benefits for many Social Security recipients in the coming years. The leader of the Republican Study Committee, Kevin Hern, told the Washington Post that “everybody has to look at everything.”

“We have no choice but to make hard decisions,” he added.

Initially, such efforts in the House were said to be unwelcome in the Senate. That may be changing: Last week, reports surfaced that two senators, independent Angus King of Maine and Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, have been meeting behind closed doors to map out potential ways to shore up the program. Among the ideas, according to Semafor, is the creation of something akin to a sovereign wealth fund as a backstop to the existing Social Security Trust Fund.

Among Democrats in the Senate, the idea getting the most traction is one described by Mr. Manchin as the “quickest and easiest” for Congress in the short term — raising the cap on the payroll taxes currently used to fund Social Security. Currently, only wages up to $160,200 a year are subject to the taxes.

Senator Sanders of Vermont said he would be introducing a bill doing just that, one that he insists would simultaneously extend the program’s solvency by 75 years and increase benefits. “Today, a billionaire pays the same amount into Social Security as someone making $160,000 a year,” Mr. Sanders said on Twitter. “Let’s end that absurdity.”