Chris Farrell of Marketplace Money made an interesting point about SS. The current SS rate is 12.4% per employee (half paid by employer if not self-employed). Raising that by 1.70% (.85% for employed individuals) to a total of 14.1% would keep the system solvent for 75 years. Much of this is due to immigrants who pay into the system but never collect on it...so we are not talking about a huge hit to the average worker.
However, Medicare is the big elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.
APM's Marketplace: My Two Cents: Thank You, Immigrants