IIRC, it is draining funds to cover disability that is causing the problem. And “disability” is, IMHO, mostly a scam. Not always...but more often than not!
Remove all the illegals off from SS.
Move the disability program back to the General Fund where it belongs
THEN check the SSA account’s solvency and report back to us.
Cutting retiree’s benefits while there is double digit inflation is a recipe for disaster.
Oh I see, it’s on purpose
5.56mm
The concept of a “Trust Fund” is laughable.
Fed.gov spent that money LOOONG ago. Present payments to SS recipients come from present SS taxpayers and the general Fed.gov budget.
If this happened anywhere else in the economy, it would be called a Ponzi scheme.
But the US has a hundred billion for Ukraine.
Good luck with that. Congressional Repukes aid and abet the RATS to spend even more of our tax dollars.
Take SS as soon as possible before they reduce benefits or increase age requirements. It’s not like they’ll borrow Trillions to keep it afloat 😉
Lawyers turned professional government politicians destroyed the country.
We needed leaders. We got lawyers.
But, but, but...what about the “Lock Box”?
There are NEVER any articles about welfare running out of money, or food stamps or WIC or any of the other hundreds of programs available to the welfare leaches.
Social Security is money that is “PAID IN” damn it. /spit
Quit paying illegals! Oh, sorry, New comers. That’s the new woke word for them.
***The latest Trustees Report projects the Social Security retirement trust fund will run out of money by 2033. ***
but,, but we were promised in 1964 it would NEVER run out of money!
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssa/usa1964-2.html
Self-Supporting
“The program is designed so that contributions plus interest on the investments of the social security trust funds will be sufficient to meet all of the costs of benefits and administration, now and into the indefinite future—without any subsidy from the general funds of the Government. Both the Congress and the Executive Branch, regardless of political party in power, have scrupulously provided in advance for full financing of all liberalizations in the program.”
About 20 or so years ago AARP magazine had an article on how the SS system was set up and it was NOT a Ponzi Scheme. All Ponzi schemes collapse when no new investors can be found. The SS had not collapsed, therefore it was not a Ponzi Scheme.
A few pages farther in was an article by Jane Briant Quinn on how the SS system was set up. Without saying the word “PONZI” it was setup the same way except it made it compulsory to join in.
The original SS system said you could retire at 62 years of age. Problem was back then was that the average life span was 57 years meaning most people would never get to retire.
Then came penicillin.
I can remember when they came up with Medicare that it wasn’t going to work if they didn’t raise the pay in to 8% from 7.65 %.
Absolutely right! It should be that if you are in the country illegally you can never receive SS. Of course if you are in the country illegally there are already laws on the books that make it illegal to receive any government aid or to be employed. Democrats don’t care about laws and republicans have been castrated for decades.
The original social security act said that when it hit pay as you go everyone would take a 22% cut.
The best solution will take an “all oxen mush be gored a bit” approach, to minimize the change to each group - A. Current payroll tax payers, B. General income tax payers, C. Current cola increases every year, D. Retirement age for full benefits for anyone not yet retired, E. Benefit calculation for maximum benfit for anyone not yet retired.
Making more modest adjustments that Biden proposes, with A, as well as adjustments with B., C., D. and E., can minimize the impact that would otherwise be felt by any one group.
Unfortunately Congress and their refusal to fully invest - oustide the government - all the payroll taxes for future beneifts, from the beginnning, and instead them having used the payroll tax “excess” (payroll tax receipts above needed benefit expenditures) and given the “trust fund” IOUs as the “investment”, the funding shortfall is made more dire as the trust fund has no choice but to start asking the treasury to make good on all those IOUs - compounding the payroll tax revenue shortfall with a demand that general taxes will have to meet.
Privatize it. Each individual should have a separate fund in which they, and their employer, pay into and accumulate retirement wealth. A fund that is theirs and theirs alone, and cannot be stolen by the government, even when they die.
This is nonsense. SS needs to be the iron clad contract with the American people that was promised. They took our money out of our paychecks all our lives, with a promise of funding our life when we can no longer work. So first reform has to be to put all government employees on social security and get rid of the public pensions. Watch how fast this gets fixed. They can cut other programs. They must stop talking about cutting it or changing the age. If they can’t reform it - which they can if they were thoughtful about it, they could privatize SS with a program similar to the IRA program where money is locked up, it can have certain allocation requirements and the like and include limited withdrawals etc, but at least the people would have it secured. At the very least Congress can simply order the Treasury to print the money to keep retirement benefits whole. Inflationary? Maybe a bit, at the margins. Just cover the shortfalls. But make up for that inflation too with COLA increases. This is the mess they created, they forced upon us, and they must honor their commitment or just give everyone their money back with interest.
Medicare Spending is the elephant in the room, and will lead us into bankruptcy, SS can be fixed.
If Biden et al want to do this , they will