Something’s got to give.

Social Security paid out about $1 trillion in benefits to some 63 million people last year. Within a decade though, the number of recipients is projected to surge to 80 million. Recipients are also living longer. And yet slowing population growth means fewer younger workers are available to pay into the system—Social Security is based on payroll taxes, after all. This problem—not enough new workers—could be made worse by ongoing efforts by the Trump administration to curb even legal immigration.

Like I said, something’s got to give. It could be your future benefits: The administration warned last year that Social Security checks could be slashed 21% by 2034.

Read: Why retirees should feel very worried right now

The fixes are painful. Republicans have long squawked about keeping taxes low—but cutting benefits. Democrats have taken the opposite tack: Preserving benefits—but raising taxes to pay for them. Pick your pain, folks.

Democrats have introduced legislation—the Social Security 2100 Act—in both the House and Senate to preserve the social insurance program. It proposes the biggest changes to Social Security in nearly four decades, when the program—wobbly even then—was propped up by tax hikes and a raising of eligibility ages.

Even though Social Security is under financial pressure now, the bill proposes an average benefit increase of about 2%. It would raise the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to reflect the fact that older Americans tend to use more of some services like health care. It would also raise the minimum benefit (now capped at $10,185 annually) to help workers who spent the bulk of their career in low-wage jobs. The bill would also cut federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for about 12 million middle-income people.

Read: Why the latest warnings about Social Security and Medicare are a reason to worry

Now the painful part. To pay for all this new gravy, the payroll tax—divided between workers and employer—would rise from its current 12.4% to 14.8% over the next 24 years. It would also be imposed on workers earning more than $400,000 a year.

All of this will be fought over, of course, including this: right now, the maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax is $132,900. Since the bill proposes to also tax earnings beyond $400,000, it would leave a gap—commonly known as a “doughnut hole”—between those figures.

The principal author of the legislation, Connecticut Representative John B. Larson, claims he has the support of more than 200 members of the House. But Republican support appears scant, meaning chances of his bill passing both chambers of Congress are slim. Still, says Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan, nonprofit organization, it’s essential that Washington politicians begin a conversation about a topic that absolutely had to be addressed.

“I give Congressman Larson a lot of credit,” she says. “He’s been working on this issue for a long time. We need to focus on this right now.”

But “fixing” Social Security is easier said than done. Why? Because for years our kick-the-can-down-the-road Washington politicians have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars from the Social Security trust fund—when it had a surplus—and spent it on things like education, defense and what not. But now the trust funds are running out of money, and that borrowed money has to be paid back. But with what? MacGuineas estimated that it’ll cost $900 billion for the government to pay back what it has borrowed from the trust funds—at a time when the overall federal deficit is spiraling out of control. For this reason, MacGuineas wonders if it makes sense to raise benefits at a time of increasing fiscal strain.

“I have hesitancies about expanding benefits,” she says.

Speaking of fiscal strain, economist Bruce Bartlett, who served in both the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, says if the government’s going to be helping anyone, it shouldn’t be seniors, who, he says, are generally are pretty well taken care of, but “non-retirees, the working class and people loaded down with student debt.”

Most of Washington and much of the media is focused on day-to-day dramas about walls, shutdowns, and politicians tweeting at all hours. But there really aren’t many issues bigger than entitlements and the many growing demands on increasingly scarce government resources.

Let’s hope that it becomes a major issue in the 2020 campaign.