Ohio U.S. Senate candidates discuss how to fix Social Security
By Marty Schladen
Ohio Capital Journal
With Social Security facing insolvency, tens of millions of retired Americans will face cuts to benefits in late 2032 unless Congress takes action first. Whoever wins the Ohio U.S. Senate race this year will be faced with big decisions over the future of Social Security.
Only one of Ohio’s U.S. Senate candidates offered a specific fix. Experts say it’s popular, but by itself, inadequate.
The American Association of Retired Persons on Tuesday released its voter guide for the Nov. 3 midterm election.
As part of it, the group published video of U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, a Republican, and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, answering questions about issues of importance.
Social Security ranks among them.
In June, the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees said that by 2032, the Social Security “fund’s reserves will become depleted and continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 78% of total scheduled benefits.”
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that such a reduction would mean that more than 2 million Ohioans will lose an average of $487 a month, and cost the state $12.1 billion starting in 2032.
AARP Ohio reports that the program keeps more than 700,000 Ohio seniors out of poverty. With the average Social Security recipient in Ohio getting about $1,900 a month — or $23,000 a year — in benefits, the loss of a quarter of his or her income would leave a huge number destitute.
In his segment, Brown touted the Social Security Fairness Act, of which he was lead sponsor and which then-president Joe Biden signed into law just before he was forced from office in January 2025. The law ended prohibitions against 2.8 million Americans receiving Social Security benefits.
“It restored full benefits to 250,000 Ohioans, including teachers, firefighters and police officers and other public employees,” Brown said, adding, “I’ll always oppose Wall Street’s efforts to privatize Social Security.”
That last statement was an apparent reference to President George W. Bush’s 2005 attempt to begin privatization of the benefit system. It turned out to be highly unpopular, and failed.
The law Brown championed was criticized by some because it further drained the trust fund and it added benefits mostly to workers with government pensions they paid into instead of Social Security.
Husted also expressed his commitment to protect Social Security, which he described as “a sacred promise to our seniors, and I am fully committed to protecting the benefits they have earned through a lifetime of hard work.”
As an example of that commitment, Husted said he “was proud to support the $6,000 tax deduction in the Working Family Tax Cut Act for seniors receiving Social Security.”
The Working Family Tax Cut Act is another name for President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. While it did provide the tax deduction Husted mentioned, it also provided $1 trillion in tax cuts to the richest 1% of Americans over 10 years.
The bill added an estimated $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years. At the same time, it cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years and it cut $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
About 260,000 Ohio seniors were on Medicaid in 2025, and 256,000 on SNAP in 2022.
When it comes to what Ohio’s U.S. Senate candidates will do to make Social Security sound, Brown was the more specific.
“To ensure that Social Security benefits are there for future generations, we need to ensure that billionaires are paying their fair share by raising the tax cap so we can extend the life of the program,” he said.
It’s true that wage earners pay a 6.2% Social Security tax only on their first $184,000 of income, and that tax is matched by employers. So applying the tax all the way up the income scale will raise a lot more money.
A lot more, but not enough, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Mark Goldwein, the group’s senior vice president, in June called the measure “raising the tax max” and called it “the most popular, most commonly discussed plan out there for raising revenue.” But, he told the Capital Journal, getting rid of the cap would close the solvency gap by only 50% and delay insolvency by 22 years if benefit rules stay the same.
Instead, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget advocates creating a bipartisan committee that would work quickly to come up with a variety of approaches to shore up Social Security long term.
Measures could also include capping benefits for the wealthiest recipients, using a different system for cost-of-living adjustments and replacing employer Social Security and Medicare contributions with a flat tax on all compensation — including massive CEO pay and their gold-plated benefits.
That last proposal is projected to raise even more than raising the tax max as Brown proposed. Together, they appear to be more than sufficient to shore up the system.
For his part, Husted didn’t mention any specific fix.
“I stand ready to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work to ensure that Social Security remains strong and reliable for all Ohioans,” he said.
Asked what her group thinks should happen, AARP Ohio State Director Jenny Carlson said benefits need to be protected.
“AARP Ohio’s role is to make sure members of Congress understand that the solvency fight on Social Security is about money people have earned – and that they understand just how high the stakes are if Congress doesn’t deliver for the American people,” she said in an email.