Not the Only Idea on the Table

The COLA cap isn’t the only proposal CRFB has floated to shore up Social Security’s finances. The organization has also proposed a “Six-Figure Limit,” which would cap the total combined benefit a couple retiring at full retirement age could receive at $100,000 a year, starting immediately.

That idea has already drawn pushback from other senior advocacy organizations. The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a nonpartisan group that closely tracks COLA and Social Security policy, has argued that capping benefits amounts to a benefit cut in all but name — something its own research finds the vast majority of seniors oppose.

TSCL has also criticized the Six-Figure Limit for not guaranteeing the cap would rise over time with the economy, potentially leaving it frozen for years. Instead of capping benefits on the back end, TSCL says most seniors it surveys would rather see Congress eliminate the payroll tax cap on the front end, so higher earners pay Social Security taxes on all of their income rather than just the first $184,500.

It’s worth noting that none of these proposals — the COLA cap, the Six-Figure Limit, or alternatives like switching to the chained CPI or means-testing COLAs for high-income years — are current law. They’re policy proposals being debated by think tanks and, in some cases, referenced by lawmakers, but none has been enacted. A separate, unrelated bill — the Social Security 2100 Act, which would calculate COLAs using the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) instead of the current CPI-W — has also been reintroduced in Congress, though advocacy groups tracking its progress describe its prospects as dim.