Stops and Starts

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | Jan. 10, 2026

Maybe 2026 will bring some changes, things we need to stop doing and things we should start doing.

Let’s start with a message for our MAGA friends: Do yourselves a favor and let go of your 2020 delusions. You’ve had five full years to expose the “widespread fraud” you claimed existed, but no such evidence has yet been revealed since there was no such fraud. The 2020 presidential election was the most recounted, reviewed, and audited in our country’s history, and all of it found a literal handful of improperly cast ballots. Nearly all the liars and cheats who tried to change reality, and the thugs who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have all been pardoned or had their sentences commuted so it’s time to move on. Joe Biden won in 2020; nothing will ever change that.

Meanwhile, it would be nice if Congress would get busy rescuing the Social Security system. We have known for years and years there was an end date for full benefit payments from the Social Security Trust Fund. Without changes, that fund will be sufficiently depleted by 2034 benefits will be reduced by 25 to 30 percent. It’s not as if we haven’t had a chance to fix the problem.

The Social Security system was enacted in 1935. A retirement system that paid full benefits at 65 was a safe enough idea at the time since the average life expectancy for men was 59.9 years and 63.9 years for women. Many people died before they became eligible to collect, and there were many, many more people paying into the system than accessing the benefits. Plus, the population would, in little more than a decade, experience a huge baby boom that generated more and more folks to pay into the system.

Fast-forward to 2026 and we live in a completely different world. Our young society has seriously aged and is living ever longer. Life expectancy for men in the U.S. is now 75.8 years for men and 81.1 years for women. Additionally, our birth rates are down, so we have an aging population drawing retirement for longer and longer periods but fewer and fewer babies who will grow up to pay into the Social Security system.

Congress has been dawdling on this, but if they think voters are restless now, wait a few years until seniors, the demographic most likely to vote, start seeing substantial reductions in their Social Security checks. Whether they have the courage to establish a dedicated tax or take money from elsewhere, Congress has to shore up the finances of the Social Security system or they should look for work elsewhere.

Our elected class needs to stop their distraction games regarding the economy. We are told everything is just great as they spew out multiple macro statistics to try to prove their point. Why, the gross domestic product (GDP) is increasing at an impressive 4.6 percent! Those increases in unemployment? It’s because they eliminated all those government jobs. But private sector job growth has been spotty at best according to the ADP Employment Report. The last quarter of 2025 saw actual job losses in the manufacturing, construction, and professional services employment.

The problem here is that bragging about macro economic accomplishments while the public is still suffering at the micro level isn’t going to convince many of us. We know the billionaire class, as always, is doing just fine, but they don’t much worry about prices at their local grocery store where everything feels more expensive. One real example? According to NewsNation, a pound of ground beef, already 60 percent more expensive than it was just five years ago, is up another 13 percent from 2024.

Politicians’ control of the economy is limited, but their lack of honesty about it is not.

We need to start getting far more serious about the environment and climate change, which is not a hoax. The evidence is all around us all over the globe, and many countries are trying to respond by restricting the pollutants causing the biggest problems. Not us.

For example, water levels in Lake Mead, which produces potable water for about 25 million people according to the Fact Retriever, continue to get lower and lower. But tides in low lying Florida coastal areas keep getting higher and higher, flooding streets and leaking saltwater into their fresh water aquifers.

We are discouraging renewable energy and going full speed ahead with more fossil fuels. (Don’t be deceived by our attack on Venezuela, which had nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with their oil reserves, the largest in the world.)

We have real issues that need addressing like Social Security or the environment, and a Trump war might be a useful distraction for Congress, but the public is not likely to be fooled much longer.