Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is on the warpath again, this time over Social Security. She wants people to pay Social Security taxes on all of their income, rather than capping the income subject to that tax. It’s currently set at $184,500 for 2026, and any earnings above that are exempt from the tax. This, Warren claims, is unfair. In her world, people should pay Social Security tax on 100 percent of their earnings because she wants to make sure that “everyone paid their fair share."
Most politicians say things occasionally that make one wonder whether they’re ignorant or deceptive. And while we cannot look into the heart of Warren or any other politician and know for sure, her recent remarks, the facts, and history suggest the latter more than the former.
It’s possible that, after only 13 years in the United States Senate, Warren is unaware that Social Security benefits are paid in proportion to a person’s lifetime earnings, more specifically to their 35 top-earning years. People who earn more during their working lives pay more in Social Security tax than those who earn less, so high-earners receive a larger benefit upon retirement. This makes sense.
But just as there is a cap on earnings subject to Social Security tax, there is a cap on benefits as well, which is currently $5,181 per month. That is the maximum benefit paid to a person who earned more than the income cap for 35 years and waited until age 70 to begin drawing benefits. It’s all very formulaic; the reason there is a cap on benefits is that there’s a cap on taxable earnings. One cannot be properly calculated without the other.
Warren’s talking points are larded with leftist class-envy slogans, yet mysteriously missing from her most recent pronouncements is anything about changing the benefit cap. Were the current tax-to-benefit index to remain unchanged, imagine the size of the Social Security check a wealthy person might receive upon retirement. People earning mid-six-figure and seven-figure incomes would receive enormous benefits, which might well propel the system into deeper insolvency even faster.
Perhaps the reason Warren doesn’t mention the benefit cap is that she doesn’t want it to change commensurate with tax withholding. If that’s so, what she’s proposing is simple theft to bail out a compulsory retirement system that has all the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. Financier Bernie Madoff died in prison before serving out his 150-year sentence for the same type of fraud, and he is credited with running the largest Ponzi scheme in history. The primary difference between Madoff and Social Security is that one grift was done on the sly while the other is executed under force of law. In truth, credit for the "largest Ponzi scheme in history" rightly belongs to Franklin Roosevelt.
Also missing from Warren’s proposal is any mention of means testing, in which more affluent retirees receive a smaller Social Security benefit, regardless of how much tax they paid into it, and which is akin to another form of theft. Should means testing percolate to the surface as an issue, it’s an even money bet the threshold will be above Warren’s net worth, reckoned to be as high as $13 million. Similarly, it’s not likely she’ll demand Social Security withholding on book advances and royalties paid to authors, like the estimated $4.6 million Warren has made selling books since 2013.
While Warren wants to take more money away from the affluent, she’s pretty tight-fisted with her own, especially when it comes to charity. Her 2024 tax returns show her benevolence amounted to less than 3 percent of her income, with much of that donated in the form of used clothing and old books.
It’s also fair to question the veracity of someone whose entire career was launched on the basis of a lie. Warren falsely claimed to be a member of the Cherokee tribe beginning in the mid-1980s, and got away with it until 2019, when she picked up the phone and apologized to Cherokee Principal Chief Bill John Baker. And just like that, her decades-long deceit was dispatched with a quick phone call. Given the depravity of lying about her race for financial and professional gain, what are the odds Warren is being honest today about her intentions for Social Security?
I don’t begrudge Warren or anyone else for legitimately accumulating a small fortune. That’s what hard work, disciplined saving, and prudent investing yields over the long haul. It’s part of what makes America the greatest nation in the history of the world. But what we should all begrudge is the naked class warfare of Warren and like-minded colleagues as they toil to agitate uninformed Americans from their lofty perches of great wealth, robed in decades of deception.