The Republican debates highlighted one major policy rift among candidates, with all of the candidates buying into the Very Serious Person trope that Social Security and Medicare are in dire trouble, but one candidate doesn't see the solution in cutting benefits. Chris Wallace asked Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee to fight it out over "entitlement reform," since they have both taken firm positions on the issue.
Christie had no problem touting his austerity vision: a raised retirement age (justified by the old lie that "we're all living longer") and means testing, which would save the fund "roughly 0.6 percent of payout." Which is probably enough of a return to pay for the administrative costs of actually doing the means testing. So Christie's solutions are both unpopular and ineffective. (In the JV debate, Lindsey Graham seemed to endorse means testing, and he's also endorsed raising the retirement age.)
Huckabee, on the other hand, well, Huckabee was creative. He showed what was fundamentally a better understanding of the program—and certainly a better grasp of its popularity—but his remedy for the Very Serious Problem is questionable.
Well, you ask about how we fund it. One of the reasons that Social Security is in so much trouble is that the only funding stream comes from people who get a wage. The people who get wages is declining dramatically. Most of the income in this country is made by people at the top who get dividends and—and capital gains.
The [flat tax] transforms the process by which we fund Social Security and Medicare because the money paid in consumption is paid by everybody, including illegals, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, all the people that are freeloading off the system now.
That's a flat national sales tax he's advocating there, using it to replace the payroll tax system that's now used for Social Security and Medicare. So that whenever the pimps and prostitutes buy something, they're paying for your retirement. It's ... something. One might think that taxing the dividends on capital gains of those people at the top would be his first place to look for the money, but he can't do that. He's a Republican. A sales tax on poor people—that he can do.