In just 10 years, Social Security will be insolvent. Some politicians think we can ignore the problem or grow our way out of it — but that’s a recipe for disaster.

Without action, the law calls for an immediate 23% across-the-board benefit cut upon insolvency. That’s a $17,400 cut for a typical 67-year-old couple retiring in 2033 and an even more devastating cut for current low-income retirees.

Politicians would be clamoring to avoid this cut in a more normal world. Democrats would be focused on how to get more revenue into the system. Republicans would advocate for bringing cost growth under control. And both would demand we act soon to stave off this potential crisis.

Sadly, the real world is far more dystopian. In the State of the Union address earlier this year, President Biden declared Social Security should be “off the books” for discussion. Former president Donald Trump has similarly promised not to touch Social Security.

In a recent Republican presidential campaign, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida declared that achieving 3% annual economic growth would solve Social Security’s woes. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy claimed we could get between 3% and 5% economic growth.

This is all wishful thinking, and it won’t solve the problem.

Don’t get us wrong, economic growth is great — and the more, the better. Faster growth means higher incomes, it means more retirement savings, and it means a stronger Social Security system.

But the idea we’re going to achieve this level of growth is pure fantasy. And even if we did, it wouldn’t save Social Security.

Every prominent economic forecaster — from the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve to the Blue Chip survey and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget — projects long-term sustained growth over the next decade will average around 2%. How on earth are we going to double it?

And even if we did somehow achieve dramatic improvements in economic growth, it would be unlikely to save Social Security. Faster growth means more taxes coming in. But because benefits are indexed to wages, it also means more benefits going out. The Social Security Trustees estimate that boosting real wage growth by 50% would only delay trust fund exhaustion by one year.

At the end of the day, the only way we are going to fix Social Security is by actually fixing Social Security. That means boosting Social Security taxes and slowing the growth of benefits.

To their credit, two GOP candidates — Ambassador Nikki Haley and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie — proposed to do just that when they endorsed raising the Social Security retirement age. An age increase would improve solvency and help grow the economy by boosting labor force participation.

The focus should be on real solutions, not magical fixes or ignoring the problem. If we don’t make these choices today, all beneficiaries will face a deep benefit cut within a decade.

Marc Goldwein is the senior vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.  Chris Towner is the policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget/InsideSources