Markus Andrews

President-elect Donald Trump will nominate former Missouri congressman Billy Long to lead the IRS.
The announcement signals plans to fire the current IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel before his term ends in 2027, which is permitted by law.
Responses have been mixed in Washington and the tax community.

Former Representative Billy Long, a Republican from Missouri, speaks during a campaign event for former US President Donald Trump at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, US, on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. 
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped former Missouri congressman Billy Long to lead the IRS, which has triggered mixed reactions from Washington and the tax community.
If confirmed, Long could mean a shift for the agency, which has embarked on a multibillion-dollar revamp, including upgrades to customer service, technology and a free filing program. The agency has also expanded enforcement to collect unpaid taxes from wealthy individuals, large corporations and complex partnerships.

In 2022, Congress approved nearly $80 billion in IRS funding, which has been targeted by Republicans and could be at risk under the Trump administration.
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“Since leaving Congress, Billy has worked as a business and tax advisor, helping small businesses navigate the complexities of complying with the IRS Rules and Regulations,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Wednesday. “Taxpayers and the wonderful employees of the IRS will love having Billy at the helm.”
Long worked as an auctioneer before serving six terms in the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2023.
Trump’s announcement signals plans to fire the current IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel before his term ends in 2027, which is permitted by law. Werfel was appointed by President Joe Biden and has led the agency since 2023.

Long is ‘an unconventional pick’

Former IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, who served under Trump and Biden from 2018 to 2022, said he doesn’t know Long, or whether Long and Werfel have discussed the transition.
If confirmed to succeed Werfel, “I’m hopeful Billy Long will quickly grasp the importance of the IRS and of the IRS employees to the overall success of our country,” he told CNBC in an email.
Mark Everson, who served as IRS commissioner from 2003 to 2007, described Long as “an unconventional pick,” compared with the experience profiles of previous IRS leaders. 
But Long’s years in Congress will provide “credibility up on the Hill with the people who matter, which will be important,” said Everson, who is currently vice chairman at Alliant, a management consulting company.
Long may be in a “better position than others to argue for the appropriate independence of the agency,” he said.

But some Democrats expressed concerns over Trump’s nominee.
“There are a lot of reasons why former Congressman Billy Long is a bizarre choice for this role,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement Wednesday.
“What’s most concerning is that Mr. Long left office and jumped into the scam-plagued industry involving the Employee Retention Tax Credit,” he said.
The employee retention credit was a pandemic-era tax break designed to support small businesses impacted by shutdowns. However, the IRS has denied billions in improper filings after companies pressured businesses to amend payroll returns to claim the tax break.
The Trump transition team didn’t respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, lead Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, on Thursday voiced support for Long.
“The IRS has experienced myriad problems in recent years,” including privacy and security of taxpayer information, inefficiency and “an oversized emphasis” on enforcement, he said in a statement.
“Protecting taxpayers and addressing an ever-encroaching IRS is a top priority, and I look forward to learning more about Mr. Long’s vision for the agency,” Crapo said.

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The Pantone Color Institute named “Mocha Mousse” the new color of the year, describing it as “a warming, brown hue imbued with richness.”
Ever since the outfits Gwyneth Paltrow wore during her 2023 ski accident trial drew attention to “quiet luxury,” the trend has been hard to shake.
In 2025, that feeling of comfort and harmony in what Pantone calls “an ever-changing world” may be just what consumers are looking for.

PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse, Color of the Year 2025.
Courtesy: Pantone

“Mocha Mousse” was dubbed 2025’s color of the year by the Pantone Color Institute, which described the shade as “a warming, brown hue imbued with richness.”
Leatrice Eiseman, Pantone’s executive director, said the color is “sophisticated and lush, yet at the same time an unpretentious classic.”

Rooted in “quiet luxury,” the mellow hue “extends our perceptions of the browns from being humble and grounded to embrace aspirational and luxe,” she said in a statement.
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The quiet luxury trend, marked by such muted tones, first caught on in a big way after the outfits Gwyneth Paltrow wore during her 2023 ski accident trial drew attention, but it has stood the test of time.
The trend hit on a formula that works and is easily replicated with neutral colors or completely monochromatic looks, according to Thomaï Serdari, professor of marketing and director of the fashion and luxury program at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow enters the courtroom for her trial in Park City, Utah, March 24, 2023.
Rick Bowmer | Getty Images

‘Inherent richness’ and ‘comforting warmth’

“I am not surprised at all about the staying power of quiet luxury as it has given consumers a new pathway to identifying new neutrals that work with a variety of lifestyles,” Serdari said.

It is also fitting, heading into a new year with a new administration, that the color of the moment is seemingly benign, she added.
“If ‘Mocha Mousse’ could express feelings, these would be cautiousness, safety and a permanent state of suspense,” she said.
Feeling comfort and harmony in “an ever-changing world” and indulging in “me moments,” as Pantone says, may be just what consumers are looking for.
Mocha Mousse’s “inherent richness and sensorial and comforting warmth extends further into our desire for comfort,” Laurie Pressman, vice president of the Pantone Color Institute, also said in a statement.

Ellyn Briggs, a brands analyst at Morning Consult, forecasts a heightened “self-care” prioritization among shoppers in 2025.
“The mood right now is, overwhelmingly, fatigue,” said Briggs. In the pandemic years, the idea of self-care was closely tied to physical health and “curating your own space” during the lockdown, she said.
Next year, self-care will come in the form of connecting with others and be more “mental-health focused,” Briggs said.
“A lot of women, especially, are feeling disconcerted with the outcome of the election,” she said. “As women drive so much consumption trends, whether they’re online or offline, brands will definitely want to have to speak to that feeling.” More

Helped by consistent savings efforts and market gains, average retirement account balances reached fresh highs in the third quarter, according to Fidelity, the largest 401(k) plan provider in the U.S.
The number of 401(k) and IRA millionaires also hit all-time highs and, for the first time, millennials joined the group.

As the markets tested record highs, retirement savers reaped the benefits.
The average 401(k) plan balance ended the third quarter up 23% from a year earlier, at $132,300 — the highest average on record, according to a new report by Fidelity, the nation’s largest provider of 401(k) plans. The financial services firm handles more than 49 million retirement accounts altogether.

The average individual retirement account balance also rose 18% year over year to $129,200 in the third quarter of 2024.

Number of 401(k) millionaires jumps 9.5%

The number of 401(k) accounts with a balance of $1 million or more jumped to a record 497,000 as of Sept. 30, up 9.5% from the second quarter, according to Fidelity.
Similarly, the number of IRA-created millionaires increased by nearly 5% to a record 418,111.
“We are continuing to observe a dedication to saving for retirement, with contributions to these vehicles holding steady if not increasing,” Sharon Brovelli, president of workplace investing at Fidelity Investments, said in a statement.
Overall, the average 401(k) contribution rate, including employer and employee contributions, now stands at 14.1%, just below Fidelity’s suggested savings rate of 15%.

“These all-time highs are probably more attributable to market appreciation than anything else, but if contributions remain robust, that’s a good thing,” said Douglas Boneparth, a certified financial planner and president and founder of Bone Fide Wealth, a wealth management firm based in New York.
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Positive savings behaviors were key to improved outcomes, said Mike Shamrell, Fidelity’s vice president of thought leadership.
A great year for the major indexes also helped. The Nasdaq is up 31% year to date, while the S&P 500 notched a 27% gain and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 16%.
However, there’s no secret or “hot stock” which helped savers achieve millionaire status, Shamrell said. “Taking a long-term view of savings has shown benefits.”
Although most savers who have reached that threshold are at, or near, retirement age, “we did see some millennials crack into this group,” Shamrell said.

More retirement savers tap their 401(k)

Still, savers also tapped their accounts to free up cash. The percentage of workers who took a loan from their 401(k), including for hardship reasons, ticked up to 18.7%, from 17.6% a year earlier. 
“These are the types of numbers we would love to see go down to zero,” Shamrell said.
Federal law allows workers to borrow up to 50% of their account balance, or $50,000, whichever is less. However many financial experts similarly advise against tapping a 401(k) before exhausting all other alternatives since you’ll also be forfeiting the power of compound interest. 
“From a planner’s point of view, this is one of those areas of last resort,” said Boneparth, who is also a member of CNBC’s Advisor Council.
At the same time, many households are also leaning heavily on credit cards to make ends meet, other research shows.

Americans now owe a record $1.17 trillion on their cards, 8.1% higher than a year ago, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
During times of financial stress, it may make sense to borrow from a retirement account, rather than rely on such high-interest debt, according to Fidelity’s Shamrell.
Unlike credit card and other debt, savers who borrow from their 401(k) pay themselves back with interest. Interest rates are also generally much lower than those of credit cards, which are currently more than 20% today — near an all-time high.
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With just a little more than a month and a half left in office, President Joe Biden is under pressure to forgive more student loan debt.
Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates are asking Biden to focus on defrauded student loan borrowers and those over age 50 in his final weeks in office.

President Joe Biden is joined by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, left, as he announces new actions to protect borrowers after the Supreme Court struck down his student loan forgiveness plan, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, Washington, D.C., June 30, 2023.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images

With less than two months left in office, President Joe Biden is under pressure to forgive more student loan debt.
On Wednesday, dozens of Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, urging the Department of Education to forgive the debt of borrowers who have applied for relief after being defrauded by their colleges.

Among its requests, the lawmakers asked the Education Department to process the pending borrower defense applications of an estimated 400,000 borrowers. Borrowers can be eligible for that discharge if their schools suddenly closed or they were cheated by their colleges.
“These borrowers completed an onerous application to demonstrate that they were victims of fraud, but the Department has yet to act,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter.
While Biden has been in office, the Education Department has forgiven more than $28 billion in student debt for more than 1.6 million borrowers who were misled by their schools or whose colleges closed.
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But the lawmakers said the Education Department needed to act for the remaining borrowers before it’s too late.

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance are vocal critics of student loan forgiveness.
“Under the previous Trump Administration, borrowers’ applications were allowed to languish for years,” the lawmakers said in their letter. “If their application was reviewed, borrowers often were denied and granted no relief.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., echoed that message in a post on X on Monday.
“I’m on the Senate floor warning against predatory for-profit colleges and shining a light on borrower defense discharges through the Department of Education,” Durbin wrote. “We must continue to process these claims before the next administration comes into office.”
Trump himself once ran a for-profit school, called Trump University, in which attendees said they were duped with false advertising and high-pressure sales tactics. The school was open from 2005 to 2010. A federal court approved a $25 million settlement in 2018 with former Trump University students.
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Meanwhile, The Debt Collective, an organization that advocates for debt cancellation, launched its “Last 50 Days” campaign in November, to put pressure on the Biden administration to forgive the debt of student loan borrowers over the age of 50.
“Student debtors are going to get wrecked by the Trump administration, and that’s going to be the most painful for older Americans,” said Braxton Brewington, a spokesperson for the Debt Collective.
“The least Biden can do is help the borrowers who are quite literally running out of time, can’t wait for a more sympathetic administration in 2029,” Brewington said.
Around 9 million Americans over the age of 50 have student loans, with an average balance of over $45,000, according to an estimate by higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
Biden has forgiven more student debt than any other president, touching nearly 5 million people. But his attempts to deliver widescale debt cancellation have all been stymied by Republican-led legal challenges. More

For many Americans, finding affordable long-term care is a challenge.
Still, around 7 in 10 individuals will need that care at some point.
One congressman wants to create a federal program to help families cope with those costs.

Hinterhaus Productions | Getty Images

As a historic wave of baby boomers reaches retirement age, finding affordable long-term care is a challenge.
“We’re going to have a major storm coming in our country with all these folks that can’t take care of themselves,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-New York, said Thursday at the Employee Benefit Research Institute policy forum in Washington, D.C.

When Suozzi was growing up, all four of his grandparents lived with his family, who took care of them.
That experience inspired Suozzi’s parents to buy long-term care insurance. Both of his parents lived into their 90s and were able to stay at home, thanks to those policies, he said.
Now, that same insurance coverage is out of reach for many Americans.
“People can’t afford long-term care insurance anymore,” Suozzi said. “The insurance companies, when they made a bet on this the first time around, they lost a lot of money because they didn’t take into account that a lot of people live much longer than their actuarial tables.”
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Meanwhile, nursing homes and Medicaid are not equipped to handle the issue, he said.
To address that, Suozzi said he plans to reintroduce a bill called the Well-Being Insurance for Seniors to be at Home, or WISH, Act. The proposal calls for the federal government to create a fund for catastrophic long-term care to help older Americans age at home.
Suozzi last introduced the bill in 2021. That version of the proposal called for long-term care benefits to be available to individuals who have reached retirement age and who are disabled, have severe cognitive impairment or who are unable to perform at least two activities of daily living.

Like Social Security and Medicare, Americans would also need to contribute to the program through a payroll tax to receive the benefits.
The amount of benefits received would be around $3,600 to $4,000 per month, Suozzi said on Thursday. Per the 2021 proposal, that is based on the median cost paid personal assistance for six hours per day.
Waiting periods for care would be based on income, with longer delays for coverage for higher income individuals.

A ‘tough sell’ to raise taxes

Admittedly, the proposal could face hurdles to gaining support.
“The challenge is nobody wants to raise taxes for anything,” Suozzi said on Thursday.
It is a “tough sell” to tell people that there’s a mandatory tax for long-term care, particularly since not everyone will need those benefits, Ben Veghte, director of the WA Cares Fund, said Thursday during a separate long-term care discussion at the EBRI conference.
The WA Cares Fund is a public long-term care insurance program provided to workers in the state of Washington. It is funded by a 0.58% tax on employee’s gross wages.

An estimated 7 in 10 people will need long-term care in their lifetimes, according to Veghte. But that often prompts people to wonder about the other 3 in 10, and why those people have to pay taxes for benefits they may never receive.
In the next decade, at least two or three states will attempt to create long-term care programs like Washington’s, Veghte said. Among the states exploring the idea include California, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, he said.
Once that happens, the private insurance industry will likely start to offer supplemental products, Veghte said.
“It’s going to take all of us to address the costs associated with long term care and the crisis ahead of us,” Veghte said. “It’s private industry, it’s government, it’s employers, it’s family caregivers, because we know the cost is more than just financial.” More

The U.S. Labor Department issued a retirement security rule in April. Two Texas courts seem inclined to overturn it.
The administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has signaled his intent to pursue a deregulatory agenda, may decline to keep defending the “fiduciary” rule in court, attorneys said.
The same thing happened during Trump’s first term, with respect to a similar Obama-era DOL fiduciary rule.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images News | Getty Images

A Labor Department rule that shields retirement savers from getting harmful investment advice is at risk of being overturned during President-elect Donald Trump’s second term — an outcome that would have an element of déjà vu, said legal experts.
The Biden-era regulation, issued in April, aims to rein in conflicts of interest that may taint investment recommendations from unscrupulous advisors, brokers or insurance agents.

Officials worry such conflicts might lead an agent to profit at the consumer’s expense, such as when investors are advised to roll money from workplace retirement plans like a 401(k) to an individual retirement account.

The most immediate threat to President Joe Biden’s Retirement Security Rule is that the Trump administration declines to keep defending it in court, attorneys said.
The rule faces an uphill legal battle. Two Texas federal courts have already stalled its implementation and seem very likely to kill it, legal experts said.
“At that point, the Trump administration could walk away from the case, just abandon it,” said Fred Reish, a retirement law expert and partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP.

‘Here we go again’?

What the DOL fiduciary rule does

A primary goal of the Department of Labor rule is to raise the investment-advice standard tied to 401(k)-to-IRA rollovers, especially those for certain insurance products, experts said.
Rollovers are common for recent retirees. They are becoming more prevalent as baby boomers reach retirement age.
About 5.7 million people rolled over $618 billion into IRAs in 2020, according to the most recent IRS data. By 2022, that dollar amount had grown to $779 billion, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
The new Labor rule “makes it highly likely that rollover recommendations are subject to a fiduciary standard,” Reish said.

U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images

A fiduciary standard is a legal structure whereby financial professionals — brokers, advisors, insurance agents and others — must recommend investments that are in a client’s best interest instead of ones, for example, that generate more of a profit for the agent.  
However, relative to rollovers, many retirement investors may not get such fiduciary advice, attorneys said.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act stipulates that one-time advice to an investor — instead of an ongoing client relationship — generally doesn’t meet the fiduciary bar.
Since rollovers are often a one-off transaction, many aren’t covered by this heightened protection under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, attorneys said.
The Biden-era rule would likely have the largest impact on insurance agents that sell “non-securities” products, which include certain annuities like indexed annuities, attorneys said.

Such agents would likely be required to assess additional factors in their rollover analyses, including whether it’s in a consumer’s best interest to take money from their 401(k) plan and move it to an annuity, Reish said.
Investment advisors and brokers who sell securities products, such as mutual funds or exchange-traded funds, are already subject to a Securities and Exchange Commission rule issued in 2019 that is “in many ways like the DOL’s rule,” Reish said.

Texas courts likely to strike down DOL rule

Two federal district courts in Texas issued a national “stay” of the regulation, in separate rulings in July.
They indefinitely delayed the rule’s Sept. 23 start date while the courts conduct a more detailed review of the lawsuits, which were filed by several insurance industry groups.
Lawyers expect the courts to overturn the rule. Indeed, the judges hinted at that outcome.
“The Rule is almost certainly unlawful for a broad class of investment professionals in the industry — not just plaintiffs,” according to a July 26 order by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, in the lawsuit American Council of Life Insurers v. United States Department of Labor.
ACLI and other insurance industry groups lauded that decision, calling the regulation “DOL’s latest attempt to vastly expand its statutory authority by imposing fiduciary status on almost every financial professional who sells retirement products.”
The other Texas case is Federation of Americans for Consumer Choice v. Department of Labor.

If the case were appealed by either side, it would go to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals — the same one that killed a similar Obama-era fiduciary rule.
At either stage, the Trump administration could choose to stop defending the regulation, attorneys said.
Trump has signaled an intention to pursue a deregulatory agenda during his second term.
“None of that is certain,” Reish said. “President-elect Trump is both a Republican and a populist. We don’t know if conservative Republican philosophies will prevail on any given issue, or whether a populist approach would prevail.” More

As Social Security’s trust funds run low, new leadership in Washington will face the dilemma of how to fix the program.
This week, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah criticized the program, saying: “We were sold a dream, but received a nightmare,” and calling for “real reform.”
Lee’s social media posts renewed questions on how exactly the program is funded. Experts say the answers aren’t simple.

Richard Stephen | Istock | Getty Images

New leadership has yet to be sworn in, in Washington, D.C. Yet Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, ignited a debate this week on the future of Social Security with a series of posts on social media platform X.
The program, which provides monthly checks to more than 65 million beneficiaries, faces funding issues that may prevent the program from paying full benefits in as soon as nine years.

“We were sold a dream, but received a nightmare,” Lee stated in the X thread on Monday. “It’s time for a wake-up call. We need real reform.”
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Experts on both sides of the aisle generally agree it’s better to address Social Security’s funding woes sooner rather than later.
“It’s a system that requires a fix,” said Charles Blahous, senior research strategist at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and former public trustee for Social Security. “Acting like everything is fine and that we can just ignore it for a few years would not serve the public well.”
Meanwhile, Lee’s post on Social Security — in which he said it is “almost fair to compare it to a Ponzi scheme that’s running out of new investors” — prompted mixed responses.

Elon Musk, who has been tasked with cutting government spending under President-elect Donald Trump, shared Lee’s post while calling it “interesting.” Yet Social Security advocacy groups were quick to defend the program they said has never missed a benefit payment in nearly 90 years.
Among the issues Lee identified is the mechanism for holding money used to pay benefits, commonly known as the “trust funds.”
“This money doesn’t sit in a nice, individual account with your name on it,” Lee stated in his X thread. “No, it goes into a huge account called the ‘Social Security Trust Fund.'”

What are Social Security’s trust funds?

Social Security mostly relies on payroll taxes paid by both workers and their employers for funding, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.
But the program also receives money from other sources, including federal income taxes some Social Security beneficiaries pay on their benefits, reimbursements from the Treasury’s general fund and interest income from investments held in its trust funds.
That latter source — the trust funds — hold money that is not needed in the current year to pay benefits and administrative costs, according to the Social Security Administration. The money in the trust funds is invested in special Treasury bonds that are guaranteed by the U.S. government.
The interest on those securities is tied to market rates. The trust fund’s bonds are redeemed when they either are needed to pay benefits or they expire.
“The trust funds basically keep track of what workers have paid into the system,” Blahous said.
Social Security’s trust funds prompt headlines each year when Social Security’s trustees release their annual report on the program’s financial outlook.

President George W. Bush is shown paper evidence of US Treasury Bonds in the Social Security trust funds by Susan Chapman, director of the Division of Federal Investments, during a tour of the Bureau of Public Debt in Parkersburg, West Virginia on April 5, 2005. 
Luke Frazza | Afp | Getty Images

The program’s two trust funds are legally distinct and generally do not have the authority to borrow from each other.
The trust fund used to pay benefits to retired workers — as well as their spouses, children and survivors, should they die — faces the soonest estimated depletion date of 2033, when just 79% of those benefits will be payable if Congress does not act before that.
Lee is not the first politician to question Social Security’s trust fund structure. In 2005, then President George W. Bush said the trust funds are the equivalent of government IOUs in a four-drawer filing cabinet. More recently, during a 2023 Budget Committee Senate hearing, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, held up a photo of a filing cabinet when discussing the program’s funding.
“This is the Social Security trust fund,” Johnson said. “It’s a four-drawer file in Parkersburg, West Virginia.”

In response, Stephen Goss, chief actuary at the Social Security Administration, said at the time that the funds are “all electronic.”
By pointing to filing cabinets, the politicians imply the trust funds aren’t real, said Andrew Biggs, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration. Yet if someone has a retirement account with Vanguard or a defined benefit pension, it would also be represented with a paper document, he said.
“These trust fund bonds are real,” Biggs said.

Experts say the trust funds are misunderstood

Social Security’s trust funds are legitimate, in the same way as Treasury bonds are issued to China, a pension fund or a grandmother on behalf of a grandchild, said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy organization.
“They all have the same legal status,” Altman said. “If Congress didn’t pay it, it would be a matter of default, so this is a matter of law.”
In his post on X, Lee said: “the government routinely raids” Social Security’s trust fund.
The general fund of the Treasury is allowed to borrow from the Social Security trust funds, according to the Congressional Research Service. When that happens, those funds are typically paid back with interest.
“This is standard accounting practice and not considered raiding in a legal sense,” said Jason Fichtner, chief economist at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who previously worked in several senior positions at the Social Security Administration.

During a July 2023 Senate hearing on protecting Social Security, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, describes the program’s trust funds as a “four-drawer file.”
Source: U.S. Senate Floor

If Social Security has a surplus, they’re required to invest it with the federal government, according to Biggs. That means the federal government is required to borrow it, he said.
However, that borrowing mostly stopped 15 years ago, since Social Security no longer has surpluses, Biggs said.
In his X post, Lee also focused on the extra interest Social Security’s investments could earn if the money were invested more aggressively in stocks. Sen Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, has also called for investing in stocks on the program’s behalf.
But rather than talking about Social Security as an investment, we should be focusing on it as a social insurance program that’s funded by a payroll tax, said the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Fichtner.
The program provides both retirement and disability benefits and is designed to be progressive, so Americans with lower lifetime earnings get a higher income replacement rate. Focusing on the income replacement the program provides can help identify which reform proposals are helpful and necessary, Fichtner said.
“In general, we should be having an open, honest discussion about Social Security and the important role plays in the foundation of retirement security for Americans,” Fichtner said. More

The digital coin crossed the six-figure threshold Wednesday night and is now up more than 140% in 2024.
Bitcoin exchange-traded funds attracted tens of billions of dollars of inflows since their debut in January.
President-elect Donald Trump appears to be a converted fan of bitcoin and the crypto industry.

A novelty Bitcoin token arranged in front of the price of the cryptocurrency against the US dollar, reaching over $100,000, in Hong Kong, China, on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024. 
Paul Yeung | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Bitcoin’s long-awaited push above $100,000 comes during the culmination of a year in which the leading cryptocurrency was embraced by key Wall Street institutions and became a hot topic in the U.S. presidential election.
For years, bitcoin bulls predicted a rally to $100,000 as a way to show their optimism about crypto. But many on Wall Street dismissed them. The digital coin crossed the six-figure threshold Wednesday night and is now up more than 140% in 2024.

Stock chart icon

Bitcoin is up more than 140% in 2024.

Wall Street Institutions embrace

The start of 2024 is a fitting way to frame the latest leg of bitcoin’s journey, since the first bitcoin ETFs launched on Jan. 11. The funds attracted tens of billions of dollars of inflows since their debut, led by the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which now has $50 billion in assets.
While there are still a few notable holdouts among investment firms, the launch and rapid growth of these funds is the most visible example of the acceptance of bitcoin by the traditional financial system. After being seen for years as a speculative asset for retail traders, institutional buying has pushed bitcoin to another level.
“Institutions have net-bought 683,000 bitcoins YTD, via US spot ETFs and large purchases by MicroStrategy, a software company and Bitcoin proxy. A significant 245,000 of these inflows have occurred in the weeks since the US election … This has helped to propel BTC through the USD 100,000 level,” Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered Bank, said in a note to clients Thursday.

Trump’s conversion

Bitcoin has also been making inroads with the political institutions of the United States. The crypto lobby spent heavily during the 2024 election cycle, and President-elect Donald Trump appears to be a converted fan of bitcoin and the industry.

President-elect Donald Trump gestures at the Bitcoin 2024 event in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27, 2024.
Kevin Wurm | Reuters

Trump went to the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville as part of his campaign. His pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, Paul Atkins, is seen as friendly to the crypto industry — and a dramatic change from current SEC Chair Gary Gensler.

“This current administration has been hostile to crypto, very much so. We’ve been kind of a victim of that alongside the broader industry. So having people that come in, that understand it and embrace it, is very important for the industry,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said Thursday on “Squawk Box.” Robinhood offers crypto trading on its brokerage platform.
The price of bitcoin is up 49% since Nov. 4, the day before the presidential election.
Bitcoin may have even gotten a little boost from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to push it over the $100,000 milestone. Powell said Wednesday that bitcoin is a competitor to gold, not the U.S. dollar. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of cryptocurrency, but the world’s top central banker comparing bitcoin to one of the world’s oldest investment assets could be seen as a sign of legitimacy.

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