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Prevent automatic benefit cuts through progressive wage contributions, a modest shared rate increase, stronger minimum and caregiver benefits, and a permanent solvency guardrail.
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Jul 9, 2026
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The Innovation Party supports a scored Social Security Shared Repair with four financing and adequacy components: apply OASDI contributions to wages above an indexed $400,000 threshold with a 2 percent secondary benefit factor; raise employer and employee rates by 0.05 percentage point each per year from 2028 through 2045; offset the employee increase for the lowest 40 percent of earners through a general-revenue tax credit; and phase in a minimum benefit, caregiver credits, and a low-income survivor floor.
Current beneficiaries and workers age 55 or older at enactment receive scheduled benefits. The package does not raise the retirement age. A four-year actuarial valuation and capped automatic contribution corridor reduce the chance that demographic or economic changes recreate a last-minute crisis. Final rates and benefit parameters must be certified by the Chief Actuary to achieve sustainable 75-year solvency with a reserve margin.
Social Security is reciprocal insurance across a lifetime and across generations. Workers contribute while able; the program protects retirement, disability, survivors, spouses, and children when earnings stop. That structure creates a moral claim stronger than an ordinary benefit preference and a duty to finance what is promised.
Fairness is not satisfied by charging one group everything or cutting another group after it can no longer adjust. High earners should carry most of the repair because a shrinking share of total wages is captured below the taxable maximum and their capacity is greater. A gradual shared rate increase recognizes that the insurance has broad value. Progressive benefit improvements direct new protection where reliance is greatest.
The guardrail expresses institutional humility. Legislators cannot know the 2090 economy, but they can create a bounded correction rule, publish the evidence, and retain authority to substitute a better plan.
Primary - Inclusive Growth and Economic Development. Retirement, disability, and survivor security let households absorb risk without destitution and support demand in every community.
Secondary - Technology for Human Welfare and Sustainability. Modern administration should reduce errors and burden while preserving human service, due process, and durable financing.
Secondary - Access to Information and Connectivity. Workers deserve clear, current statements about earnings, contributions, benefits, trust-fund status, and correction rights.
The 2024 Republican platform promises no Social Security benefit cuts and no retirement-age change. That protects a popular earned benefit but does not identify enough financing to avoid the automatic cut projected under current law. General economic growth may improve the balance; it is not a complete solvency mechanism.
Democratic proposals generally protect benefits, add taxes above $400,000, and improve minimum, caregiver, or cost-of-living benefits. Their strength is progressive financing and benefit adequacy. Their exposure is implying that one high-income provision can indefinitely finance both the entire updated shortfall and every expansion, or leaving action dependent on another future deadline.
The Innovation Party adopts progressive high-wage financing and targeted adequacy, then adds a modest shared contribution because durable insurance requires enough recurring revenue. It protects low earners through an external credit, rejects a blanket retirement-age increase, and installs a solvency corridor so elected officials cannot make delay the default again.
The strongest objection is that this is a payroll-tax increase that raises the cost of work, hits self-employed people twice, and may reduce wages or hiring. The $400,000 provision creates an odd tax gap and weakens the connection between contributions and benefits. Automatic rate adjustments delegate a politically central decision. Benefit improvements consume money needed for solvency.
Those costs are material. The increase is phased over 18 years so contracts and wages can adjust. The low-earner credit protects take-home pay at the bottom, though taxpayers finance that protection. A small secondary benefit factor preserves the earned link on high wages. The gap closes as the normal cap rises and avoids an immediate marginal-rate jump for upper-middle earnings. Congress can override every trigger with an equally solvent alternative, and the trigger itself is capped.
Removing the minimum and caregiver improvements would improve the score. The party keeps them because solvency that preserves poverty and penalizes unpaid family care is an incomplete success. It therefore requires the Chief Actuary to price those commitments and adjust the financing before enactment.
Workers and employers bear the phased 0.9 percentage-point increase on each side. High-wage workers and their employers bear the full rate above $400,000. Self-employed workers bear both shares subject to the existing employer-share deduction and the proposed low-earner credit. High-income taxpayers finance that credit from general revenue. Some of the employer cost may reach workers through slower wage growth, consumers through prices, or owners through lower returns.
People age 55 and older are insulated from scheduled-benefit changes under this package, which places more adjustment on younger cohorts. Younger workers receive the value of avoiding a sudden 22 percent OASI reduction and gain stronger minimum and caregiver protection, but they still pay more. Government bears administrative and fraud-control costs. The policy names these transfers because intergenerational trust cannot be built on a claim that solvency is free.
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