ICYMI: The Moreno-Warren Nonstarter for Social Security: David McIntosh and Ken Blackwell

Washington, D.C. – In case you missed it, Club for Growth President David McIntosh and former Ohio State Treasurer and Secretary of State Ken Blackwell published an op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, criticizing Senators Bernie Moreno and Elizabeth Warren over their proposal to lift the payroll tax cap on Social Security. Moreno and Warren’s plan would turn the program into an income-tax-funded welfare scheme with no guarantee that benefits are returned to contributors. Instead, McIntosh and Blackwell propose that creating personal retirement accounts would result in higher returns without imposing a massive tax.

Click here to read the full piece from David McIntosh and Ken Blackwell.

FULL OP-ED TEXT:

U.S. Sens. Bernie Moreno and Elizabeth Warren want you to believe that lifting Social Security’s payroll-tax cap is about fairness and would save Social Security. But neither is true.

Removing the cap severs that link and turns an insurance program into a welfare scheme, reducing a worker’s contributions to just another tax on income, with no guarantee anything comes back.

Worse, it would not even keep the promise its authors claim to be rescuing. Social Security’s own actuaries are clear that removing the cap does not make the program solvent over the long run. It buys a few years before the system slides back into deficit, while abandoning the contributory principle that gave Social Security its legitimacy.

This new tax hits hardest the people who power Ohio’s economy. By stacking the uncapped payroll tax on top of the top income-tax rate, many small-business owners will be crushed by Bernie’s new tax. These individuals pay both halves of that payroll tax themselves and will face effective federal rates over 56%. These are the employers on Main Streets from Cleveland to Cincinnati. Punishing their success isn’t fairness; it’s a drag on the wages and jobs Ohioans depend on.

It also claws back the relief Americans were just promised. The 2025 Working Families Tax Cuts, which Sen. Moreno himself voted for, held the top rate at 37% and stopped the scheduled climb back to 39.6%. Families and business owners were told their taxes would stay down. Bernie Moreno took the Taxpayer Protection Pledge to never raise taxes. Now Moreno wants to break that word.

Of all the Republicans who might lend their name to an Elizabeth Warren tax crusade, Bernie Moreno is the most surprising.

Moreno built his political identity on a story Ohioans know well. He came to America from Colombia and ran, in his own words, as someone who left “to escape what happens in most South American countries, which is socialism and the absolute prison of those ideas.” That message — opportunity over redistribution, ownership over dependence — helped send him to the Senate. His new partnership with Sen. Warren signals Sen. Moreno may be headed towards South American socialism.

Social Security does need reform. The math is unforgiving, and pretending otherwise only hurts younger workers. But the goal should be to give Americans more control over their own retirement, not to hand Washington a bigger check and hope that this time is different.

There is a better path, one that keeps Social Security’s promise: Let workers own their retirement. Personal accounts let workers invest part of their contributions in the broad market. Over a lifetime, those returns far exceed what Social Security pays. The balance belongs to the worker. It can’t be redirected by a future Congress, means-tested away, or spent on something else. It is inheritable wealth, especially powerful for the lower- and middle-income families who today retire with little beyond a monthly benefit check.

This is the freedom approach, and it honors exactly what Moreno once pledged to his constituents. He warned Ohio about the road that begins with redistribution and ends in dependence. Instead of joining forces with far-left Elizabeth Warren’s plan to grow Washington, he should remember his own experience — and keep his promise to the Buckeye State voters.

David McIntosh is the president of Club for Growth in Washington, D.C., and a former member of Congress from Indiana. Ken Blackwell serves on the Club for Growth’s Board of Directors and is a former Ohio Secretary of State and State Treasurer.