Former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has a message for anyone eyeing the White House or a Senate seat: don't paint yourself into a corner on Social Security.

Speaking Thursday on CNBC's "The Exchange," Lew said the program will run out of enough current income to fully pay current benefits during the term of the next president. That's not a distant hypothetical. It's a deadline sitting inside the next administration's window.

Why Waiting Makes It Worse

"There are solutions, but the solutions get harder and harder as you get closer to the exhaustion date. So it's not too soon to start thinking and talking about it," Lew said.

His advice to candidates is blunt: leave yourself room to negotiate.

"I would certainly caution anyone running for president the next time or running for the Senate to keep their options open, because it's going to take something along the lines of a 1983 approach where you do something serious to address solvency."

The 1983 Playbook

Lew described the 1983 effort as bipartisan, built on an indirect negotiation between the "president and the Congress," with Congress controlled by a different party. In other words, the kind of deal that requires both sides to give something up and neither side to get everything.

"There's going to have to be some process is going to have to be an openness to ideas," Lew said. "It doesn't seem like now is the moment that that's likely to happen. But reality kind of imposes," he added.

The Wage Cap Fight

Recent debate has focused on the taxable wage cap, with some lawmakers considering higher Social Security taxes or changes to the amount of income subject to the payroll tax. Proposals to raise or eliminate the cap have also prompted discussion of potential economic effects, including estimates of job and GDP impacts from certain changes.

The retirement trust fund is projected to run out in the fourth quarter of 2032, when 78% of scheduled benefits would be payable, according to the 2026 Social Security trustees report.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by MarketDash editors.