The 2016 presidential campaign hasn’t been regularly elevated by enlightened debate of the most important issues facing the country. As in past elections, the candidates’ policy prescriptions typically feature fuzzy commitments such as the familiar pledge to cut waste, fraud and abuse, along with unrealistic plans intended to sound bold rather than produce progress.

One candidate recently promised to pay off America’s $19 trillion debt in eight years by selling off government assets including buildings, land and natural resources. Would that it were so easy.

In reality, the government could sell everything it owns and maintains in stewardship, including our national parks, and every resource on those lands and in our coastal waters -- oil, gas, timber and minerals -- and the proceeds would still likely fall short of $19 trillion.

We aren’t suggesting debt reduction isn’t a worthwhile goal for an incoming administration. On the contrary, we believe a lower relative debt burden and a balanced federal budget are imperatives. Our point is to remind candidates they have a responsibility to put forward realistic plans to achieve those goals.

A sound plan to get the U.S. on a fiscally sustainable course will include making certain that Social Security is solvent and secure for future generations. It’s not our biggest challenge. It would only be a piece of a much more comprehensive plan that includes pro-growth tax reforms and rational reductions in spending. But it’s an important piece.

Social Security payments account for almost a quarter of the federal budget. The entitlement program affects the lives of every one of us. More than 160 million Americans and their employers are paying into the system. Nearly 60 million receive benefits.

Right now, Social Security can continue to pay full benefits until 2034. That’s enough time to design and implement reforms that will secure Social Security for generations to come, but not so much time that we can delay getting started. The longer we wait the more difficult and expensive are our choices.

Thus far, none of the remaining candidates for president is proposing much in the way of specific plans for keeping Social Security solvent. Some have offered a little more specificity than others, but no one has proposed a detailed and comprehensive plan. Some have suggested ideas that would ignore or exacerbate the problem.

At No Labels, we believe all candidates ought to explain to voters how they intend to keep the government’s promise that the Social Security Trust Fund will provide modest retirement security to all Americans who pay into the system.

Securing Social Security and Medicare for the next 75 years is one of the four main goals of our National Strategic Agenda, a comprehensive plan to address many of America’s most urgent challenges, which we prepared for the next administration and Congress to consider.

Each goal includes specific proposals to achieve them that are supported by a majority of Americans. But if a candidate doesn’t agree with all or any of our ideas, they still have a responsibility to propose their own, to show voters they are serious about addressing national priorities.

AARP, which in the past has opposed some entitlement reforms, has called on all candidates to take a stand on Social Security reform. It sponsored a national survey that found 80 percent of voters demand the same. They aren’t calling for one particular idea or ideas over others, just that presidential candidates have a specific plan to ensure Social Security is there for them and their children.

We know it can be done.

In 1983, the Reagan administration and congressional leaders established a commission to recommend a plan that would prevent Social Security’s then looming insolvency. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan chaired it. The president of the National Association of Manufacturers was a member. So was the president of the AFL-CIO, and other eminent business leaders, scholars and members of Congress.

Without action, the Social Security trust fund would have been unable to pay full benefits to tens of millions of retirees by mid-summer that year. The commissioners agreed on a plan that sustained Social Security for 50 years. It involved compromises by all sides.

It’s often recalled that President Reagan and Speaker Tip O’Neill set aside their differences to rescue Social Security. It wasn’t that simple, of course, and it wasn’t their accomplishment alone. Everyone worked together – Congress and the White House, business and labor, various interests groups -- to achieve a result that didn’t completely satisfy anyone, that wouldn’t last forever, but that got the job done for half a century.

There were loud and harsh partisan debates in those days, too, and divided government. But Washington managed to make progress on major national challenges – some of it bold, some more incremental, but all of it real. Today’s elected leaders owe Americans no less.