{"id":367050,"date":"2025-12-24T06:53:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T06:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/367050\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T06:53:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T06:53:15","slug":"president-donald-trump-made-changes-to-social-security-in-2025-but-they-fell-short-of-what-he-promised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/367050\/","title":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump Made Changes to Social Security in 2025, but They Fell Short of What He Promised"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Trump administration has made several changes to Social Security, but rather than fixing the program&#8217;s financial problems, they leave Congress with less time to avoid benefit cuts.<\/p>\n<p>The Social Security Administration has run a deficit in four straight years, and cash outflows will exceed cash inflows indefinitely unless Congress finds a solution. Consequently, the trust fund &#8212; the account that holds tax contributions for future benefit payments &#8212; is likely to be depleted in 2034. If we reach that point, benefit cuts will happen automatically<\/p>\n<p>President Trump promised to make numerous changes to the retirement program during his recent campaign. &#8220;I will not cut one penny from Social Security,&#8221; he pledged last year. Trump also vowed to end the federal taxation of benefits, and he even said he could &#8220;save&#8221; the program without cuts by eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how Social Security has changed under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"President Donald J. Trump stands at a podium with an American flag in the background.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"880\" height=\"587\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"h-auto max-w-full rounded object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1766559195_763_\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration has cut Social Security costs, but the changes come nowhere close to eliminating the deficit<\/p>\n<p>The Social Security Administration (SSA), with help from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/d\/department-of-government-efficiency\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Department of Government Efficiency<\/a> (DOGE), has made a several changes to reduce wasteful spending and prevent fraud since President Trump took office.<\/p>\n<p>Cost reductions: The SSA identified over $1 billion in cost savings with &#8220;common-sense approaches in areas such as payroll, information technology, contracts and grants, printing, travel, and purchase card policies.&#8221; That represents about 16% of administrative expenses in fiscal 2024.<br \/>\nOverpayment recovery: In March, the SSA raised its default overpayment withholding rate to 100%, up from 10% under the Biden Administration. The agency estimated the annual cost savings at $700 million. However, the overpayment recovery rate was subsequently cut to 50%, which means the cost savings will be less substantial.<br \/>\nFraud prevention: In April, the SSA introduced new fraud prevention technology that allows beneficiaries to complete claims by telephone. Improper payments averaged $9 billion annually between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the big picture: The changes listed above will undoubtedly reduce costs, but even in the best-case scenario, they will cover a small fraction of the $175 billion deficit the Social Security Administration was projected to run in fiscal 2025. That means the Social Security Trust Fund is still on pace to be depleted around 2034.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration introduced a new senior deduction, but it does not entirely eliminate taxes on benefits<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/retirement\/2025\/12\/21\/trump-fail-to-keep-social-security-promise-seniors\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">did not eliminated taxes on Social Security<\/a> with the budget reconciliation bill passed earlier this year. Instead, the legislation introduced a new senior deduction (for individuals aged 65 and older) that is additive with the existing senior deduction and the standard deduction, as shown in the chart below:<\/p>\n<p>Deduction<\/p>\n<p>Single Seniors<\/p>\n<p>Married Seniors<\/p>\n<p>New senior deduction<\/p>\n<p>$6,000<\/p>\n<p>$12,000<\/p>\n<p>Existing senior deduction<\/p>\n<p>$2,000<\/p>\n<p>$3,200<\/p>\n<p>Standard deduction<\/p>\n<p>$15,750<\/p>\n<p>$31,500<\/p>\n<p>Total<\/p>\n<p>$23,750<\/p>\n<p>$46,700<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Source: The White House.<\/p>\n<p>Importantly, the new senior deduction is gradually phased out for single taxpayers with income over $75,000 and married taxpayers with income over $150,000. in addition, the deduction is currently temporary because the &#8220;big, beautiful bill&#8221; allows the tax break to expire after 2028 unless Congress extends it.<\/p>\n<p>The good news: 88% of seniors on Social Security will not owe tax on benefits with the new deduction in place, up from 64% before the legislation was passed. The bad news: Social Security is partially funded by taxes collected on benefits. The new senior deduction (by eliminating some of that funding) will accelerate trust fund depletion by about six months.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the big picture: While the new senior deduction means fewer seniors will pay tax on Social Security benefits, the &#8220;big, beautiful bill&#8221; does not actually end federal taxation of Social Security. in addition, by effectively cutting the program&#8217;s funding, the new senior deduction leaves Congress with less time to fix the financial shortfall and avoid substantial benefit cuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration has made several changes to Social Security, but rather than fixing the program&#8217;s financial problems,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":{"0":"post-367050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-personal-finance","10":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}