For most aging workers, Social Security benefits aren’t a luxury. It’s income that retirees would struggle to make do without.
For nearly a quarter century, Gallup has surveyed retirees to gauge their reliance on Social Security income and has found that 80% to 90% of retired workers rely on their monthly payouts, in some capacity, to make ends meet.
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Strengthening the financial foundation of America’s leading retirement program should be of the utmost importance for lawmakers. However, decades of reports show the short- and long-term financial outlook for Social Security is worsening.
While President Donald Trump has vowed to protect this leading social program, the uncomfortable reality is that his actions may have sped up the timeline to sweeping benefit cuts.
President Trump delivering remarks to a joint session of Congress. Image source: Official White House Photo.
Every year since the first Social Security check was mailed in January 1940, the Social Security Board of Trustees has published a report detailing the financial ins and outs of the program. The annual Trustees Report allows anyone to see how Social Security generates income and where those dollars end up.
However, the Trustees Report is best-known for its financial forecasting.
Over the last four decades, the Trustees have cautioned that Social Security’s long-term (75-year) funding would be insufficient to cover its outlays (primarily benefits, but also administrative expenses). As of the 2025 Trustees Report, this long-term unfunded obligation had swelled to $25.1 trillion.
But the greater threat to the monthly checks of Social Security beneficiaries is the projected depletion of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund’s (OASI) asset reserves. The OASI is the fund that doles out monthly benefits to more than 54 million retired workers and 5.8 million survivor beneficiaries.
The 2025 Trustees Report estimates that the OASI’s asset reserves — the excess income built up since inception that’s invested in special-issue, interest-bearing government bonds, as required by law — will be exhausted by 2033.
On the one hand, the OASI doesn’t need a penny in its asset reserves to continue paying benefits to eligible recipients. This means Social Security isn’t going bankrupt and won’t be insolvent.
But a complete depletion of the OASI’s asset reserves would indicate that the existing payout schedule, inclusive of cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), isn’t sustainable. If the OASI’s asset reserves are gone by 2033, sweeping benefit cuts of up to 23% may be necessary to sustain long-term payouts for retired workers and survivors of deceased workers.
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