{"id":2331,"date":"2025-06-21T12:27:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T12:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/2331\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T12:27:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T12:27:09","slug":"social-securitys-budget-shortfall-runs-into-a-congress-struggling-to-compromise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/2331\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Security\u2019s budget shortfall runs into a Congress struggling to compromise"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 Congress\u2019 time to shore up Social Security\u2019s finances is running out even faster than anticipated with just eight years left to figure out a solution<\/a> to address a looming budget shortfall that would lead to the slashing of benefits for tens of millions of retirees that rely on the program for income.<\/p>\n

An annual trustees report released Wednesday said Social Security is now expected to run out of money nine months earlier than expected<\/a>, pushing the timeframe Congress needs to implement a solution up to 2033 or risk a 23% benefit cut to the roughly 61 million Americans who collect the payments. Without any changes, today\u2019s 59-year-old workers will only receive 77% of their scheduled benefits.<\/p>\n

Both parties have declared they will not let the popular entitlement programs fall into insolvency and would be protected but have rarely taken up legislative proposals to address the problem. GOP-led proposals to shore up the program generally revolve around increasing the retirement age, while Democrats have pushed to increase the payroll tax that finances benefits.<\/p>\n

The issues with the program\u2019s long-term solvency have been known for decades but have not created enough urgency among lawmakers to act. All the remedies to shore up its budget shortfalls \u2014 raising taxes, increasing the retirement age and lowering benefits \u2014 are political losers that are quickly targeted for criticisms as both parties accuse each other of damaging the popular entitlement program.<\/p>\n

The response to this week\u2019s outlook on their finances followed a familiar pattern with lawmakers vowing to protect the programs while blaming the opposing party for their dire circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis week\u2019s report makes clear how much we need pro-growth tax and economic policies that unleash our nation\u2019s growth, increase wages, and create new jobs to help strengthen these Trust Funds for those who rely on them and to protect them for generations to come. The One, Big, Beautiful Bill would do just that and also provide much-needed additional relief to America\u2019s seniors who struggled for four years in the Biden economy,\u201d said Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee that runs oversight of Social Security.<\/p>\n

Democrats have claimed Republicans are seeking to damage Social Security by slashing the agency\u2019s workforce in broader government workforce cuts and pointed to proposals to raise the retirement age or privatize the fund<\/a> \u2014 ideas that have not taken off as consensus within the GOP \u2014 as evidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicans have made their goals clear: undermine trust in Social Security, sabotage its administration, and hand it over to their Wall Street allies for profit. But Democrats won\u2019t let that happen. We will never stop fighting to defend and strengthen Social Security and Medicare for every worker, every retiree, and every generation to come,\u201d Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The finger-pointing is reminiscent to the long-running partisan dispute that has been part of the struggle to repair the declining financial status of the programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s very little room for negotiation, period. There’s virtually no cross-party negotiation. There’s not a lot of real searches for solutions and that’s problematic. A lot of searches for blame, not a lot of searching for solutions,\u201d said Rob Alexander, a political science professor at Bowling Green.<\/p>\n

The main issue threatening its solvency is changing demographics with lower birthrates meaning less workers to pay into Social Security and Medicare while an increasing share of the baby boomer generation retires and collects benefits. Trustees are expecting birthrates to remain lower for longer, limiting the amount of future revenue that will be taken in to help finance it.<\/p>\n

The amount of payroll taxes, the main source of revenue to finance Social Security, is also limited and only applied up to $176,100 in income. There have been proposals in recent years to expand the cap to collect more revenue to finance benefits, but none have been passed into law.<\/p>\n

The longer Congress waits to act, the more severe the consequences to shore up the finances will be. Analysts have also said it will make it more likely they will need to dip into general funds to keep the programs whole, which would be a significant change from how Social Security has operated since its inception.<\/p>\n

Social Security and Medicare are also deeply popular with the American public among voters of all partisan makeups. Older Americans, who collect on benefits and are also most likely to cast a ballot, place it highest on their list of priorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not one of those topics that slip through the cracks for people, and they will put a lot of pressure on legislators if they fear there’s any sense that their entitlements will be gone in some way,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cWhen you throw an entitlement out there, it’s something that somebody has and it’s really hard to take away something that already exists. It’s much harder to get rid of something once they have it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 Congress\u2019 time to shore up Social Security\u2019s finances is running out even faster than anticipated…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[3231,3232,64,327,3230,3235,255,3234,3233,711,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-2331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-benefits","9":"tag-budget","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-congress","12":"tag-lawmakers","13":"tag-medicare","14":"tag-personal-finance","15":"tag-political","16":"tag-retirement-age","17":"tag-social-security","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114721354328507408","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}