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social security
Rep. John Larson vs. the Billionaires: A Battle for Social Security’s Future
Why is a hedge fund billionaire who claims to align with the Democratic Party trying to take out one of the most fierce defenders of Social Security now serving in Congress?
May 15, 2026
Rep. John Larson is the #1 champion of Social Security in the US House of Representatives. Over the last 15 years, he has played a pivotal role in uniting the Democratic caucus against any cuts to Social Security’s modest benefits. Thanks to Larson’s leadership, the vast majority of House Democrats support legislation that protects and expands Social Security, and pays for it by making the wealthy pay their fair share.
That makes him a threat to Wall Street billionaires like Stephen Mandel. Mandel, a hedge fund manager with a net worth of nearly $4 billion, is the main backer of a new group called The Bench. This group, along with the associated Majority Democrats PAC, is pouring millions into electing corporate-friendly Democrats.
Nearly all of the candidates that Mandel’s front groups back are running for either open seats or for seats currently held by Republicans. Often, these candidates are facing off against more progressive Democrats in a primary.
Luckily, the voters who will ultimately decide are looking for a relentless champion to take on Donald Trump and deliver results for Connecticut—not a corporate-funded centrist beholden to billionaire interests.
Of all the candidates endorsed by The Bench, Luke Bronin is the only one to primary an incumbent Democrat. The Democrat that Bronin is challenging? John Larson.
Bronin is a former corporate lawyer and the product of elite institutions like Phillips Exeter Academy. He’s the polar opposite of Larson, who grew up in a public housing project and worked as a High School history teacher before running for office.
Bronin has longstanding ties to the Mandels, which are well known in Connecticut political circles.
Now, the Mandels and other billionaires are backing Bronin’s US House campaign, in hopes of taking out Larson. They know that Larson is working closely with Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. If Democrats win control of the US House in November, Larson will bring a bill to protect and expand Social Security to the House floor.
If it becomes law, the Mandels and other billionaires will have to pay their fair share into Social Security, just like the rest of us—instead of only paying in on the first $184,500. That’s what they are most afraid of.
In Connecticut, political parties hold conventions months before the primary, where a small number of party insiders vote on who to endorse. At the recent Connecticut Democratic Party convention, Bronin was able to capitalize on this undemocratic process, which means he will have a higher ballot position in the August primary.
If Democrats win control of the US House in November, Larson will bring a bill to protect and expand Social Security to the House floor.
Luckily, the voters who will ultimately decide are looking for a relentless champion to take on Donald Trump and deliver results for Connecticut—not a corporate-funded centrist beholden to billionaire interests. And, a growing movement of labor, progressives, and local leaders has propelled John Larson to a decisive lead as he prepares for the upcoming August primary.
John Larson is a fighter. He is never more fierce than when he is fighting for the working class against the billionaire class. He will win the Democratic primary, and then the general election, and he will finish his fight to protect and expand Social Security for generations to come.
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Ted Cruz Admits Trump Accounts Are Designed to Privatize Social Security Over Time
One advocate said the Texas Republican laid bare the "two-pronged strategy to push Social Security privatization: Creating the Trump accounts with one hand and gutting the Social Security Administration with the other."
May 08, 2026
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said during a public conference this week that the so-called Trump Accounts established under the GOP's 2025 budget law represent a viable path toward Social Security privatization—something the Texas lawmaker described as a "dirty little secret."
During a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in California, Cruz said that "conservatives in America, for 50 years... have been trying to do Social Security personal accounts." Cruz, who lamented the failure of Bush-era efforts to privatize Social Security, described such personal accounts as vehicles into which the payroll taxes that finance current Social Security benefits could be diverted.
In the not-too-distant future, Cruz envisioned, "we're going to be able to go to parents and say, 'Hey, you know that Trump Account your kid has? ... Wouldn't you like to be able to keep a portion of your tax payments that you're paying already and, instead of sending it to Uncle Sam, wouldn't you like to have a Trump Account just like your kid does?'''
"My prediction is, within five years, that is going to have a really compelling constituency," the Texas Republican added.
🚨🚨🚨
Ted Cruz says the quiet part out loud…
Trump Accounts are a scheme to privatize Social Security.
HANDS OFF OUR EARNED BENEFITS! pic.twitter.com/Oo3owRF7bM
— Social Security Works ❌👑 (@SSWorks) May 8, 2026
Linda Benesch, vice president of communications at the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams that Cruz's comments laid bare the "two-pronged strategy to push Social Security privatization: Creating the Trump Accounts with one hand and gutting the Social Security Administration with the other."
Benesch pointed to the remarks of an anonymous Social Security Administration (SSA) worker, who warned in comments to The New Yorker earlier this week that privatization advocates plan to point to the decimated agency and declare, "Look how Social Security sucks."
"They’ve been trying to privatize it for decades," said the SSA worker. "Now this will give them the excuse.”
Benesch said Friday that Cruz is "giving away the other half" of the Republican scheme by promoting the eventual expansion of Trump Accounts, investment vehicles under which children born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028 are eligible for $1,000 in "seed money" from the federal government. Parents of eligible children can contribute up to $5,000 per year to the accounts.
Cruz's comments are not the first time a Republican official has openly characterized Trump Accounts as a potential avenue for Social Security privatization.
"In a way, it is a backdoor for privatizing Social Security," US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last summer. "Social Security is a defined benefit plan paid out that—to the extent that if all of a sudden these accounts grow, and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement—then that's a game changer, too."
It’s been twenty years since Bush tried to do Social Security private accounts and they still haven’t realized workers’ Social Security taxes pay for *current retiree* benefits and not future benefits so you can’t do this without cutting current retiree benefits. https://t.co/eq9OnuhXVr pic.twitter.com/vguJN6pfuO
— Brendan Duke (@Brendan_Duke) May 8, 2026
Axios reported Friday that "the idea that Trump Accounts could replace or augment Social Security is something that has been talked about behind closed doors with lawmakers."
"But no one has wanted to touch that third rail, at least publicly," the outlet added, citing a person familiar with the private conversations.
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, noted in a Friday statement that polling has found little support for privatizing Social Security, with a 2022 survey finding that just 15% of American voters back the idea.
"Turning over Americans’ hard-earned benefits to Wall Street would expose future retirees to unnecessary risk while lining the pockets of the financial elites who donate to Republicans," said Richtman. "Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and their Republican allies should realize that the people will not stand for privatization of their hard-earned benefits, and we in the advocacy community will continue to ensure that it never happens."
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The Fertility Panic Is a Racist, Sexist Tool to Push More Austerity
Reporting that covers birth rate decline without the critical contexts of immigration policy, gender norms, and economic inequality masks the regressive ideologies behind the purported solutions.
May 05, 2026
If you haven’t heard the argument that civilization is about to collapse because women aren’t having enough babies, you haven’t been consuming much media.
“The Birth-Rate Crisis Isn’t as Bad as You’ve Heard—It’s Worse,” announced The Atlantic (6/30/25). Business Insider (8/21/25) ran a piece titled “America’s Great People Shortage,” which opened, “America is about to tumble off the edge of a massive demographic cliff.” And NPR‘s Brian Mann warned on PBS (4/10/26) that, as a result of the birth rate decline, “many people say” that the US soon “will be unrecognizable.”
It’s repeatedly in the news in part because it’s a priority of the “pronatalist” right, which has prominent backers in the Trump administration. Vice President JD Vance has called the US birth rate decline a “civilizational crisis.” He said people with children should have “more power” at the polls, and “more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic” than those without.
Elon Musk, who regularly posts on the subject and has fathered at least 14 children, has claimed that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.” “There will be no West if this continues,” he said. And President Donald Trump has called for a new “baby boom.”
It’s instructive to recall, as Vogue (5/3/25) does, that fertility was likewise central to the Nazis, who also offered medals to (Aryan) women who bore many children.
The story generally goes like this: Fewer babies being born in the US leads to fewer working-age adults relative to retired adults, which means—as The Atlantic piece put it—”higher taxes, higher debt, or later retirement—or all three.”
But there’s a lot more to the story, and ignoring it masks the white nationalism, regressive gender ideals, and economic inequality driving the narrative.
Hidden Xenophobia
The numbers might look striking on the surface: As news reports pointed out (e.g., CNN, 4/9/26), the number of births and the fertility rate (births per 1,000 women) in the US have dropped to record lows. Both decreased by 1% from 2024 to 2025; the fertility rate has fallen by about 20% over the past 20 years.
In terms of births per woman, that’s about 1.6—well below the “replacement” rate of 2.1, which would be required to maintain a population without migration.
But that last detail is key. If you believe we need a certain number of working-age adults to support an aging population of retirees, there are—or at least were, until Trump’s brutal immigration regime—millions of people willing and eager to come to this country and help make up that deficit. Even with the declining birth rate, the US population grew by more in 2023-24 than it did in 2003-04.
Even so, immigration was conspicuously missing from too much of the birth rate coverage. For instance, in a long piece on Trump contemplating a “baby bonus,” CBS (4/25/25) reported:
A declining birth rate can spell long-term economic problems, including a shrinking labor force that’s financially strapped to pay for medical services and retirement benefits for an aging population.
It managed to go in depth on why the birth rate might be declining, what a baby bonus might look like, how much it would cost, and whether it could work. But it never mentioned immigration policy.
On CNN (4/18/26), anchor Michael Smerconish explored the falling birth rate with economist Melissa Kearney, who told him:
We’re now looking at, you know, being a society that’s aging, with fewer young people going to school, entering the workforce. This poses demographic headwinds for our economic growth and dynamism going forward.
They discussed the “threat posed in terms of the sustainability of Social Security” and ways to address the problem, but neither ever raised the impact of immigration.
When news outlets ignore that obvious facet of the issue, they hide the xenophobic assumptions underlying the claims of “crisis.”
‘To Save Civilization, Reject Feminism’
And then there’s the misogyny. Right-wing media are quick to blame women for this impending “crisis.”
A New York Post column (9/9/25) by Rikki Schlott, for instance, drummed up the “fear of a baby bust,” blaming it in particular on Gen Z (which is having fewer kids than previous generations at the same age) lacking “positive, empowering messaging that teaches you can prioritize marriage, family, and children while also valuing independence, career, and financial stability”:
“I don’t need a spouse” (or, for that matter, children) feminism has told left-leaning young women that pretty much everything else is more important than family.
That’s a very sad development.
Columnist Victor Joecks, syndicated from the Las Vegas Review-Journal (8/2/25; reposted in Daily Signal, 8/10/25), took things even further in a piece headlined “To Save Civilization, Reject Feminism and Honor Mother.” He opened by declaring, “The triumph of modern feminism has put society on the path to demographic collapse.”
Joecks further opined:
Society applauds women for becoming executives, not moms with kids. Reports on the mythical [sic] gender pay gap describe motherhood with the word “penalty.”… Modern feminism has left many women lonely and depressed. It has put the globe into a demographic downward spiral that’s going to be hard to reverse.
‘National Motherhood Medal’
Women-blaming in right-wing media is no surprise, particularly given the surge of pronatalism on the right. But centrist media coverage of that movement also sometimes boosts it.
The New York Times (4/21/25) ran an article on the pronatalist groups pushing the Trump administration on increasing birth rates, noting that “advocates expressed confidence that fertility issues will become a prominent piece of the agenda.” Among their ideas: a “National Motherhood Medal” awarded to women with six or more children, and tax credits to married—but not unmarried—couples with children that increase with successive children.
The gradually shifting worker-retiree ratio does start to become a bigger problem if productivity gains are siphoned off to only accrue to the rich. Which, as it turns out, they increasingly do.
It’s instructive to recall, as Vogue (5/3/25) does, that fertility was likewise central to the Nazis, who also offered medals to (Aryan) women who bore many children.
While the misogyny embedded in the pronatalist movement generally comes through loud and clear in the Times article, the paper insisted on normalizing it, calling the coalition “broad and diverse,” including both “Christian conservatives” who see a “cultural crisis” in need of more marriage and gender inequality, as well as those who “are interested in exploring a variety of methods, including new reproductive technologies, to reach their goal of more babies.”
‘Collapse of our civilization’
The New York Times repeated the economic collapse narrative in its description of the pronatalist movement’s
warning of a future in which a smaller work force cannot support an aging population and the social safety net. If the birth rate is not turned around, they fear, the country’s economy could collapse and, ultimately, human civilization could be at risk.
By making no effort to analyze that narrative, the Times lent it legitimacy.
Similarly, in a USA Today piece (3/10/26) on whether Trump’s effort to be known as the “fertilization president” was sparking a baby boom (“that question is complicated,” the paper concluded), reporter Madeline Mitchell quoted a pronatalist podcaster saying that the declining birth rate “is going to lead to the collapse of our civilization.”
That piece was part of a package that interviewed many women of varying ages to understand why they were or were not having children; those pieces included perspectives about the financial and existential struggles facing women who want to have children and feel they can’t afford to, or don’t feel the world is stable enough to bring children into.
It’s an important perspective, and interviewing women on this subject is something all outlets should be doing. But without addressing the question of whether a falling birth rate will, in fact, bring about imminent civilizational collapse, as the widely disseminated right-wing narrative claims, the framing pits women’s feelings and choices against the survival of civilization—hardly a fair contest.
Since birth rate is not a significant problem for the US in the foreseeable future unless you prevent immigration, the idea repeated in these pieces that “civilization” will collapse from a falling birth rate actually means “white civilization.” Pronatalists, you see, tend to share a lot in common with Christian white nationalists.
‘The Problem Is Teens’
Another New York Times article (2/27/26) headlined “The Birthrate Is Plunging. Why Some Say That’s a Good Thing,” pointed out that the drop in the US is mostly among teens and women in their early 20s, and reminded readers that
30 years ago, the growing number of teenage and single mothers was seen as a societal crisis, with poor economic and health outcomes for mother and baby. The most vociferous critics called these women “welfare queens” and said they were draining public coffers.
It is indeed whiplash-inducing to hear today’s right-wing mouthpieces, like Fox News‘ senior medical analyst Marc Seigel (4/10/26; Media Matters, 4/10/26), saying:
The problem is teens and young adults. From ages 15-19, the fertility rate is down 7%, and it’s down 70% over the last two decades, meaning we’re telling people that are young not to have babies, to wait until they’re in a more stable life situation.
In any case, despite its better gender framing, the Times still pushed the “not enough workers” economic narrative—and downplayed the administration’s xenophobia with euphemism:
If the birthrate drops too far for too long, it could eventually present problems, as the country needs workers to support an aging population. The population can grow through immigration too, but that issue has become politically sensitive, with numbers falling sharply under the Trump administration.
Vanishing Productivity
The economic doomsday argument being spread applies both in the US and globally. Declining fertility isn’t just happening in the US—it’s a worldwide phenomenon. In fact, the US’ “demographic cliff” is much less dramatic than in many countries. China, for instance, has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, and that nation’s population is already beginning to shrink.
While some might think this slowdown (and even potential reversal, many decades from now) in global human population growth could be a positive development, there are plenty of media outlets looking to fearmonger about it. “The demographic cliff will end us, unless we act quickly,” declared Forbes‘ Alexander Puutio (6/9/25).
The Atlantic‘s Marc Novicoff (6/30/25) presaged that within a few decades “rich countries will all have become like Japan, stagnant and aging.” After arguing that United Nations population growth projections are overly optimistic, he addressed those who remain skeptical of doomsday warnings:
If you’re not sure why this is all so alarming, consider Japan, the canonical example of the threat that low fertility poses to a country’s economic prospects. At its peak in 1994, the Japanese economy made up 18% of world GDP, but eventually, the country’s demographics caught up with it. Now Japan’s median age is 50 years old, and the country’s GDP makes up just 4% of the global economy. Measured per hours worked, Japan’s economic growth has always been strong, but at some point, you just don’t have enough workers.
Who cares what percentage of world GDP a country produces? If you’re a resident of Japan, what you care about is your quality of life. As Novicoff acknowledges, Japan’s productivity hasn’t weakened. And if you look at the human development index, which measures gross national income per capita, years of schooling, and life expectancy, Japan continues to improve over time. So it’s entirely unclear on what basis he makes his claim that Japan doesn’t “have enough workers.”
But it is clear what readers are being primed for: Governments and companies cutting retirement benefits. As The Atlantic piece concludes:
If the birth rate continues to drop around the world at its current pace, economic growth and workers’ retirement prospects will go the way of those projections: adjusting every few years to a smaller, sadder, poorer future.
Productivity Swamps Demographics
That neoliberal push for austerity is the third ideological agenda that lurks behind many of these population crisis stories. Even those news outlets that acknowledged the role of immigration in a country’s economy often took it as further evidence that the economic outlook is bleak. NPR (4/9/26), for instance, told its audience that
many demographers and economists see the apparent shift toward smaller families and fewer children as a significant concern for the nation and its labor force, especially as immigration into the US has also plunged under the Trump administration.
What such economic warnings hide is that, just as population size isn’t solely dependent on the native fertility rate, economic growth isn’t solely dependent on the working-age population.
It’s true that increasing life expectancies mean that the ratio of the US working-age population to the retired population is slowly decreasing, even with a growing population. That can put pressure on things like Social Security, which operates like a social insurance program in which taxes from current workers go into a fund for current retirees. A shrinking, aging population does require some policy adjustments. But it doesn’t mean the sky is falling. Progressive economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 1/11/19) explains:
Even pulling out the impact of immigrants, the reality is that we have been seeing a fall in the ratio of workers to retirees pretty much forever. Life expectancies have been rising as people have better living standards and better healthcare. (Recent years have been an exception, where life expectancies have stagnated.) In 1950 there were 7.2 people between the ages of 20 and 65 for every person over the age of 65. This ratio now stands at just 3.6 to 1.
Over this 70-year period, we have seen huge increases in living standards for both workers and retirees. The key has been the growth in productivity, which allows workers to produce much more in each hour of work. (We also have a much higher rate of employment among workers between the ages of 20 and 65, as tens of millions of women have entered the labor force.) The impact of productivity growth swamps the impact of demographics.
Not enough babies? Too many billionaires
The US has experienced an average of over 2% annual productivity growth in the nonfarm business sector since World War II, and there’s no reason to expect that to end. The gradually shifting worker-retiree ratio does start to become a bigger problem if productivity gains are siphoned off to only accrue to the rich. Which, as it turns out, they increasingly do.
Look at Social Security, which is frequently pointed to as being in peril because of the aging population and decreasing birth rate. An op-ed in USA Today (8/21/25), advocating for “killing” Social Security, claimed that, “due to a collapse of the American birth rate, the program is expected to be unable to pay the full promised benefits to retirees within the decade.”
There are important policy conversations to be had about supporting people in having the size family they want to have.
An CNBC article (5/30/25) told readers that “fewer births mean fewer future workers to support programs like Social Security and Medicare, which rely on a healthy worker-to-retiree ratio.” (That idea was supported with a quote from the director of the “Get Married Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies”—a right-wing think tank that recently launched a “Pronatalism Initiative.”)
But none other than the Chief Actuary at the Social Security Administration, Karen Glenn, testified to Congress (3/25/26) that birth rate has nothing to do with impending shortfalls in the program. Instead, one of the biggest factors imperiling Social Security is the problem of greater-than-expected income inequality.
Since 1980, when income inequality began to increase sharply, the amount of wage income that exceeds the cap for Social Security tax has doubled. The vast majority of us—those who make up to $184,500 a year—pay Social Security tax on all of our income; those who make more pay nothing above that cap. Simply removing the cap would eliminate three-quarters of the Social Security fund’s long-term projected shortfall.
Economic Value Judgments
And, of course, there are all the other ways the rich avoid paying their fair share in our economy, whether it’s through low capital gains rates, or simply through the fancy accounting that lets the super rich—including those who own the news outlets reporting on such things—pay next to nothing in federal taxes. Jeff Bezos, for instance, owner of The Washington Post, paid an effective income tax rate of under 1% on the over $4 billion he amassed from 2014-18 (ProPublica, 6/8/21).
So when The New York Times (3/26/26) tells you in its reporting on US population change that “the country needs a population of young workers and taxpayers large enough to finance infrastructure like schools, hospitals, and healthcare for older residents,” understand that they’re making a value judgement about taxation. The more objective statement would be that the country needs an economic output large enough to finance these things, which is certainly true.
There are important policy conversations to be had about supporting people in having the size family they want to have. Many Americans have fewer children than they want because of financial limitations—like lack of affordable childcare or housing—or concerns about the state of the world or the environment. News outlets can and should be addressing these issues.
But reporting that covers birth rate decline without the critical contexts of immigration policy, gender norms, and economic inequality masks the regressive ideologies behind the purported solutions.
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