Actuarial Thoughts on Social Security Reform: Looking at Many (but not all) Options

While the state of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s health (and potential “is he alive/dead?” Schrodinger’s cat-like situation) plays out right now, I look at the real issue: there is no way to deal with incapacitated members of Congress. I look at prior situations in the Senate itself, and then I do go off on some tangents: historical situations where leaders’ deaths were covered up and more recent situations where a bad health situation was allowed to linger before the plug was finally pulled. Episode Links and Text On Congressional Incapacitation 26 Mar 2020, Bipartisan Policy Center: What If a Member of Congress Is Severely Incapacitated and Cannot Perform the Duties of the Job? Presidential incapacitation, either anticipated and short term or unexpected and longer term, can be handled by a transfer of power to the Vice President under the procedures of the 25th amendment. But if a member of Congress becomes incapacitated, there is no legal avenue to replace that person. Recently, many in Congress have been trying to deal with the issue of members unable to come to Congress, either due to sickness or quarantine, or because hygiene recommendations or logistical issues makes showing up at Congress difficult or impossible. A separate issue, however, is what to do if a member is so sick or severely incapacitated that they could not perform the duties of the job (either remotely or in person). Congressional history is filled with examples of members who have had severe, debilitating illnesses. Senator Karl Mundt of North Dakota suffered a stroke and was absent from the Senate for the final three years of his term. Illness forced Senator Carter Glass of Virginia to be absent from the Senate for nearly two years. In the case of Glass, citizens of Virginia petitioned courts to remove Glass from his seat, as it was effectively vacant. The court refused to take action. Never has a sitting member of Congress been removed from office due to incapacitation. Karl Mundt U.S. Senate Biography From 1948 until his retirement in 1973, South Dakota senator Karl Mundt was known as a fierce opponent of communism. As a member—and eventually ranking member—of the Committee on Government Operations and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Mundt worked to expose communists in the government. In 1954 he chaired the Subcommittee on Investigations for the Army-McCarthy hearings, remaining loyal to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Mundt gained prominence with two major investigations into bribery allegations against officials at the Agriculture Department and the Pentagon. Mundt voted for cloture to end debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after striking a deal with Republican Leader Everett Dirksen. Mundt also became one of the leading conservationists in the Senate, which earned him an award from The World Wildlife Fund in 1969. After he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1969, Senate leaders took the unprecedented step of removing Mundt from his committee assignments. Wikipedia: Illness On November 23, 1969, Mundt suffered a severe stroke and was subsequently unable to attend sessions of Congress, although he received extensive speech and physical therapy. His wife, Mary, led his staff in Mundt's place and refused calls for the crippled Senator to resign. Mundt was stripped of his committee assignments by the Senate Republican Conference in 1972, but he remained in office through the end of his term on January 3, 1973.[3] He did not seek reelection in 1972, and was succeeded in the Senate by Democrat James G. Abourezk. Carter Glass Wikipedia: Family, decline, death Carter Glass was a Methodist.[18] When he was twenty-eight, Glass married Aurelia McDearmon Caldwell, a school teacher. They had four children. She died of a heart ailment in 1937.[19] Glass remarried in 1940 at the age of 82. His second wife, Mary Scott, was his constant companion as his health began to fail over the next few years. They lived at the Mayflower Hotel Apartments in Washington, D.

April is the cruelest month in dropping all sorts of awareness topics on our heads: Autism, Cancer (various types - I covered testicular cancer earlier this month), financial literacy, and poetry… suppose we become “aware” of all this? What are we supposed to do with all this awareness and knowledge?

March is Problem Gambling Awareness Month (were you aware?) — and many people are becoming aware of an increasing problem with all sorts of gambling and betting being available 24/7, in easy reach, on our phones. People wrestling with gambling debts and gambling addiction are not a new phenomenon, as these have featured as major items in literature (which I mention)… and unfortunately, too many politicians have pointed to people’s attraction to gambling via lotteries in supposedly helping to fund governmental functions.

Paul Ehrlich died recently at the age of 93, best known as a Malthusian in a modern age of growth and then population decline…with no famines, except man-made ones. His best-known book was The Population Bomb, published in 1968, which was already wrong when it was published. It’s fine to attack the man’s ideas, as they were just plain wrong, he was told this when alive, and he had never admitted this. While not the only person with his ideas, he contributed to the suicide of expertise, by claiming authority in the face of his own falsity.

I used someone else’s podcast on “resounding gongs or clashing cymbals” as a jumping-off point of where one should be focusing one’s efforts in the world… with a shift into some Lenten themes. Yes, there’s a heavy Christian flavor to this one, but it’s also a sneaky way for me to encourage you to consume Dickens in the form of excellent miniseries production (yes, really). And a finish up with saying if we must have Daylight Saving Time, why not use that “extra” hour of daylight in the evening to build community? Nudge nudge. Episode Links Pillar Podcast Bonus episode for paying subscribers: Resounding gongs or clashing cymbals Mrs. Jellyby Quoting from the 2025 post: Mrs. Jellyby is one of a network of charitable do-gooders, under the heading of Christian missionary work bother one of the main characters, Mr. Jarndyce. She and the others were a thinly veiled critique of various members of the charitable societies who had bothered Dickens once he was rich and famous. Mrs. Jellyby focused on an African tribe, and her mission is described thusly, from Chapter 4, “Telescopic Philanthropy”: We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when we arrived in his room, at Mrs. Jellyby’s; and then he turned to me and said he took it for granted I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was. “I really don’t, sir,” I returned. “Perhaps Mr. Carstone—or Miss Clare—” But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby. “In-deed! Mrs. Jellyby,” said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs. Jellyby’s biography, “is a lady of very remarkable strength of character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry—AND the natives—and the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr. Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely to be a good work and who is much sought after by philanthropists, has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby.” Note, the concept was they would take some of the “superabundant home population” — aka that “excess population” Scrooge notes in “A Christmas Carol” — ship them over to Africa, and then have those poor people work in African missions. …. That is, she wants to ship off 50 — 200 poor families from England to Africa, supposedly to make their living by growing coffee (and Mrs. Jellyby herself consumes a great deal of coffee to power her letter-writing campaigns). They are also supposed to evangelize the people already living there to Christianity. Other “charitable” people appear, whether they are involved in the Africa scheme or not. Similarly, they abuse the responsibilities they have to their families and neighbors to supposedly do good to a larger sphere. In general, they engender resentment in their children and sometimes despair in their spouses (though, in some cases, the spouses are on board and completely smug about it all.) …. The African king wanted to sell all the missionaries (all who survived the tropical diseases) into slavery for his personal benefit. After Mrs. Jellyby sighs, she moves on to women’s suffrage as her next cause, which wouldn’t be successful in the UK until well after her death. In the meantime, she has a disabled granddaughter she could have done much to help… but no, she has decided that it’s better to keep on writing letters. …. But that is not nearly as grand as the “telescopic philanthropy” that is completely futile, as Mrs. Jellyby does not understand anything whatsoever about the people in Africa, what they want or need. Mrs. Jellyby could have been more effective by helping both her family and the poor who surrounded her in London, where she lived. What Esther Summerson was able to accomplish among different people directly