{"id":68804,"date":"2025-08-14T23:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T23:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/68804\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T23:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T23:22:08","slug":"social-securitys-go-broke-date-keep-creeping-up-its-lost-a-full-year-since-the-last-accounting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/68804\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Security’s ‘go-broke date’ keep creeping up\u2014it’s lost a full year since the last accounting"},"content":{"rendered":"

When\u00a0President Franklin D. Roosevelt<\/a>\u00a0signed the Social Security Act into law 90 years ago this week, he said it would provide economic stability to older people while giving the U.S. \u201can economic structure of vastly greater soundness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, the program provides benefits to almost 69 million Americans each month. It\u2019s a major source of income for people older than 65 and is popular across the country and political lines.<\/p>\n

It also looks more threatened than ever.<\/p>\n

Just as it has for decades, Social Security faces a looming shortfall in money to pay full benefits. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the program has faced more tumult. Agency staffing has been slashed.\u00a0Unions and advocacy<\/a>\u00a0groups concerned about sharing sensitive information have sued. Administration officials, including the president, have falsely\u00a0claimed that millions of dead people<\/a>\u00a0were receiving Social Security benefits. Former top adviser Elon Musk said the program was a potential \u201cPonzi scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n

At an Oval Office event Thursday commemorating the program\u2019s anniversary, Trump said that under his watch \u201cwe\u2019re strengthening it.\u201d But the president and Republicans who control Congress have not proposed a long-term solution to shore up the program.<\/p>\n

Social Security remains far from the sound economic system that Roosevelt envisioned, due to changes made \u2014 and not made \u2014 under both Democratic and Republican presidents.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at past and current challenges to Social Security, the proposed solutions and what it could take to shore up the program.<\/p>\n

The go-broke date has been moved up<\/p>\n

The so-called go-broke date \u2014 or the date at which Social Security will no longer have enough funds to pay full benefits \u2014 has been moved up to 2034, instead of last year\u2019s estimate of 2035. After that point, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits, according to\u00a0an annual report<\/a>\u00a0released in June. The earlier date came as new legislation affecting Social Security benefits have contributed to earlier projected depletion dates, the report concluded.<\/p>\n

The Social Security Fairness Act, signed into law by Democratic President Joe Biden and enacted in January, had an impact.\u00a0It repealed<\/a>\u00a0the Windfall Elimination and Government Pension Offset provisions, increasing Social Security benefit levels for former public workers.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0new tax law signed by Trump in July<\/a>\u00a0will accelerate the insolvency of Social Security, said Brendan Duke at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey haven\u2019t laid out an idea to fix it yet,\u201d he said. Trump on Thursday repeated the claim that his new tax and spending law will eliminate taxes on federal Social Security benefits.<\/p>\n

That law has a temporary tax deduction for people 65 and over that applies to all income, not just Social Security. But not all Social Security beneficiaries can claim it; among those who cannot are low-income older adults who do not pay taxes on Social Security.<\/p>\n

AARP CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan said the number of beneficiaries is set to increase to 82 million people by the time Social Security turns 100.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we look ahead to the next 90 years of Social Security, it\u2019s critical that it remains strong for generations to come,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The privatization conversation has been revived<\/p>\n

The notion of privatizing Social Security surfaced most recently when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this month said new tax-deferred investment accounts dubbed \u201c\u00a0Trump accounts<\/a>\u00a0\u201d may serve as a \u201c\u00a0backdoor to privatization<\/a>,\u201d though Treasury has walked back those comments.<\/p>\n

The public has been widely against the idea of privatizing Social Security since Republican President George W. Bush embarked on a campaign to pitch privatization of the program in 2005, through voluntary personal retirement accounts. The plan was not well-received by the public.<\/p>\n

Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia University professor and top economist in Bush\u2019s White House, told The Associated Press that Social Security needs to be reduced in size in order to maintain benefits for generations to come. He supports limiting benefits for wealthy retirees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have to make a choice,\u201d Hubbard said. \u201cIf you want Social Security benefits to look like they are today, we\u2019re going to have to raise everyone\u2019s taxes a lot. And if that\u2019s what people want, that\u2019s a menu, and you pay the high price and you move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another option would be to increase minimum benefits and slow down benefit growth for everyone else, which Hubbard said would right the ship without requiring big tax increases, if it\u2019s done over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a political choice,\u201d he said, adding \u201cNeither one of those is pain free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for the preservation of Social Security benefits, is more worried that the administration of benefits could be privatized under Trump, rather than a move toward privatized accounts. The agency cut more than 7,000 from its workforce this year as part of the Department of Government Efficiency\u2019s effort to reduce the size of the government.<\/p>\n

A Social Security Administration representative didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Concerns persist<\/p>\n

An\u00a0Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research<\/a>\u00a0poll\u00a0conducted in April<\/a>\u00a0found that an increasing share of older Americans \u2014 particularly Democrats \u2014 support the program but aren\u2019t confident the benefit will be available to them when they retire.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo much of what we hear is that its running out of money,\u201d said Becky Boober, 70, from Rockport, Maine, who recently retired after decades in public service. She relies on Social Security to keep her finances afloat, is grateful for the program and thinks it should be expanded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my mind there are several easy fixes that are not a political stretch,\u201d she said. They include raising the income tax cap on high-income earners and possibly raising the retirement age, which is currently 67 for people born after 1960, though she is less inclined to support that change.<\/p>\n

Some call for shrinking the program<\/p>\n

Rachel Greszler is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the group behind the Project 2025 blueprint for Trump\u2019s second term. It called for an increase in the retirement age.<\/p>\n

Greszler says Social Security no longer serves its intended purpose of being a social safety net for low-income older adults and is far too large. She supports pursuing privatization, which includes allowing retirees to put their Social Security taxes into a personal investment account.<\/p>\n

She also argues for shrinking the program to a point where every retiree would receive the same Social Security benefit so long as they worked the same number of years, which she argues would increase benefits for the bottom one-third of earners. How this would impact middle-class earners is unclear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When\u00a0President Franklin D. Roosevelt\u00a0signed the Social Security Act into law 90 years ago this week, he said it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,184,185,2310],"class_list":{"0":"post-68804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance","14":"tag-social-security"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}