Category Archives for Congress

Political and Philosophical Compromise Key to Saving Social Security

Published in RINewsToday on August 31, 2026.

Just before the nation celebrated Social Security’s 91st birthday on August 15, the Senate Finance Committee held an August 5 hearing titled “Exploring Process Approaches for Addressing Social Security Solvency.” The hearing put a spotlight on the program’s looming financial challenges.

It explored possible legislative approaches to shore up its finances before the trust fund reaches insolvency in roughly six years, resulting in significant benefit cuts if Congress fails to act. The hearing followed an earlier Senate Finance Committee hearing in June that also examined the future of Social Security.

At both hearings, lawmakers and witnesses warned about the looming fiscal crisis of Social Security, as documented in the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report, released in June.  The latest Trustees’ report projected that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund will become insolvent by 2032. When this occurs, incoming payroll taxes would be sufficient to pay only about 78% of scheduled benefits unless Congress acts.

The Clock is Ticking

Last week, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) joined the Senate Finance Committee in sounding the alarm about the impending insolvency of Social Security.

Against this backdrop, an Aug. 26 CRFB blog posting challenges what the budget watchdog calls a long-held myth about Social Security — that the program works much like a personal retirement account. Under that view, workers contribute money through payroll taxes during their employment years and, when they retire, receive their own money back.

That is not how Social Security works, CRFB argues.

Benefits are calculated using a worker’s earnings history and a benefit formula, rather than an individual account containing that worker’s contributions. Social Security’s progressive benefit formula also provides what CRFB calls “proportionately greater protection” to lower-income workers. While Social Security benefits are earned benefits, CRFB argues that does not mean retirees are simply withdrawing money they personally deposited into the system over their working lives.

“Fixing the system will require putting this myth to bed,” says CRFB.

Citing a 2025 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis comparing lifetime Social Security taxes with benefits, CRFB says the data show that many workers will collect more in benefits than they and their employers paid in payroll taxes, even after adjusting those contributions to their present value.

Simply put, CRFB calculates that, on average, retirees are scheduled to receive back all of their contributions, plus interest, plus an additional 33 cents in benefits for every $1 they and their employers paid into the program. CRFB points out that individual experiences can vary widely. Someone who dies shortly after retirement may collect far less than someone who lives into their 90s. Married couples, surviving spouses, disabled workers and people with different earnings histories can also have very different outcomes.

But CRFB stresses that it is not arguing that Social Security benefits should be cut to match what individual workers contributed. It calls that the wrong conclusion to draw from its analysis. Instead, the organization argues that policymakers should stop treating every dollar of scheduled benefits as “untouchable personal savings.”

With Social Security’s financing deadline rapidly approaching, CRFB says Congress should consider changes on both sides of the ledger — benefits and revenues — as part of any bipartisan effort to ensure the long-term solvency of the program.

“The most important conclusion [of this study] is that there is nothing sacrosanct about the benefit that is directly tied to how much you paid in. And so, as we’re evaluating reform, this idea that, well, I paid for it, therefore you cannot adjust the benefit formula at all, is nonsense,” says Marc Goldwein, CRFB’s senior policy director, who has studied Social Security for more than 20 years.

Unraveling a False Narrative

Goldwein says that the argument that scheduled benefits are “untouchable” has created a “false narrative” used by some Social Security advocacy groups. He compares their unwillingness to consider changes to benefits to the anti-tax position long associated with conservative activist Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform.

Goldwein offers examples of potential Social Security reforms that Congress might consider as it hammers out legislation.  These reforms include: applying the employer payroll tax to all forms of compensation, including health care benefits and stock options; capping benefits at $100,000 per couple; raising the taxable wage maximum; and potentially adjusting the retirement age while protecting lower-income workers.

Goldwein warns Congress not to use general revenues to ensure the long-term financial stability of Social Security.  He estimates that doing so would add more than $190 trillion in borrowing in today’s dollars, potentially leading to skyrocketing debt and a fiscal crisis while fundamentally changing Social Security’s contributory structure.

Ultimately, Goldwein says neither political party is likely to get everything it wants.

Getting a Social Security reform package through Congress “will take compromise on all parties,” says Goldwein, pointing to the 60 votes generally needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.

“It’s either a deal or there’s a 22% benefit cut,” he adds.

On the Other Side of the Coin

Maria Freese, senior Social Security policy analyst for the Washington, D.C. based National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, stresses that Social Security is not an investment plan but social insurance.

“Like any insurance program, it’s wrong to calculate the worth of the program from the standpoint of a ‘rate of return.’ If you spend your entire life buying fire insurance but your house never burns down, would CRFB argue it’s a ‘bad investment’ and that homeowners should forgo insurance? Of course not. And why should we expect to get a specific ‘rate of return’ on Social Security when we don’t ask the same of any other federal program?” she says.

Workers with low lifetime earnings receive a much higher income replacement rate from Social Security than middle-income workers, who in turn receive a higher replacement rate than higher-income workers, says Freese, noting that Social Security is designed as a progressive benefit program.

“Also, Social Security ‘return’ arguments differ by birth cohort,” adds Freese. Baby Boomers, for instance, will end up receiving a higher income replacement rate than younger generations, she explains, in large part because of the increase in Social Security’s full retirement age enacted in 1983. So even if today’s retirees are getting a 133% “rate of return,” that rate will continue trending downward over time.

Freese says “legacy debt” is another way of looking at intergenerational differences.

“Early beneficiaries got a lot more back in benefits than they paid in payroll taxes, which kept the Trust Funds from building any assets in the first decades of the program. Ida Mae Fuller, the first person to receive a Social Security check (back in 1940), is the best example, as she paid in $22.75 and received almost $23,000 in benefits before she died at age 100,” she says.

CRFB is hiding behind a ‘money’s worth’ smokescreen to cover the truth that Social Security’s benefits, which are too low, are easily affordable if wealthier Americans start paying their fair share,” charges Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, who also chairs the Strengthen Social Security Coalition. “The money’s worth argument is not new. Importantly, it willfully refuses to acknowledge that Social Security is insurance,” she says.

Altman asks: “Do those who do not become so disabled they can no longer support themselves through work get less than their money’s worth from Social Security’s disability insurance? If they don’t die prematurely, do they get less than their money’s worth from Social Security’s survivors’ insurance? Do those who do become disabled and those who die leaving dependents get more than their so-called money’s worth?”

Over the years, Altman has been consistent in her solution for shoring up Social Security’s finances. “As with other insurance, dozens of actuaries project the cost of benefits, and the income needed to finance them. Americans overwhelmingly agree that Social Security’s benefits are too low. They want the wealthiest to start paying their fair share, so the projected shortfall is eliminated, and the cost of increased benefits is covered,” she says.

For Goldwein, the choices facing Congress are clear – but hardly easy. Lawmakers can do “the grown-up thing” — as lawmakers did in passing the landmark 1983 reforms — and make the political compromises necessary to ensure Social Security’s financial stability.  Or they can keep kicking the can down the road, borrowing more and leaving an even bigger problem for the next generation of workers and retirees.

A Final Note…

That’s where the political and philosophical divide comes into clear focus.

CRFB’s Goldwein argues that scheduled benefits cannot be treated as untouchable simply because workers paid payroll taxes throughout their careers. Social Security Advocates Freese and Altman counter that Social Security is social insurance, not a personal investment account, and that its value cannot be measured simply by comparing dollars paid in with dollars received.

However, Goldwein, Freese and Altman agree on this fact: Congress cannot continue to ignore the looming insolvency of Social Security. The real political challenge for both sides is to find common ground between  competing philosophies. Ultimately any legislative reform to Social Security must protect the financial security that this program provides while ensuring the program can keep its promises to future generations yet to come.

As this debate continues to unfold, you can see that there is no shortage of policy ideas being floated inside the beltway to fix Social Security. There is no shortage of experts, too.

What is in short supply is time, say CRFB and the Social Security advocates.

With the clock ticking toward 2032, Congress will eventually have to make hard political decisions, determining whether compromise is possible. For millions of Americans who depend on their monthly Social Security check, that decision is not a theoretical exercise. It is about whether the monthly check they count on will be there — and how much it will be.

After more than 90 years, Social Security deserves better than another round of political finger-pointing.  It deserves a bipartisan solution now.

To read CRFB’s Trust Fund Solutions that detail solutions to help improve the solvency of Social Security,  along with promoting economic growth, strengthening retirement security, enabling continued work, improving seniors’ health, and fixing the country’s finances, go to Trust Fund Solutions | Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

To watch the Aug. 5 Senate Finance Committee hearing on approaches for addressing Social Security’s Solvency, go to [2026-08-05] Hearing: Exploring Process Approaches for Addressing Social Security Solvency | The United States Senate Committee on Finance.

Senate Finance Panel Begins Discussion on Fixing Social Security

Published in RINewsToday on August 17, 2026

Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund (OASI) is projected to reach insolvency by late 2032, triggering an automatic 22% across-the-board benefit cut if Congress fails to act, according to the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report released June 9. The clock is ticking — fewer than 2,300 days remain.

What would that mean for older Americans? Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), put a dollar figure on the potential impact in his August 5 testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. Acomparable benefit reduction imposed today, he said, would mean an average loss of about $500 a month for beneficiaries.

For a typical newly retired couple, that could translate into an annual loss of roughly $12,000 in Social Security income — a substantial hit for households that depend on the program to pay for housing, food, utilities, health care and other basic expenses. Goldwein’s testimony underscores what the Trustees’ numbers mean beyond the percentages: a future across-the-board cut could have a very real impact on retirees’ daily lives.

Senate Finance Panel Takes Up Social Security’s Future

Just nine days before Social Security’s 91st birthday on Aug. 15, the Senate Committee on Finance held an Aug. 5 hearing, “Exploring Process Approaches for Addressing Social Security Solvency,” to spotlight the program’s looming financial challenges and explore possible legislative approaches. The hearing brought together policy experts and advocacy organizations to discuss how Congress might move toward a solution.

The more than two-hour hearing examined the merits of using a commission versus the regular legislative process. Senators and witnesses also discussed increasing revenue from higher earners, raising or eliminating the payroll tax cap, adjusting benefits, and changing the retirement age.

Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) opened the hearing by warning that Social Security’s OASI Trust Fund is projected to be exhausted in late 2032. If Congress fails to act, incoming program revenues would be sufficient to pay only about 78% of scheduled benefits, he said.

The last comprehensive congressional effort to address Social Security’s solvency took place more than 40 years ago, culminating in the Social Security Amendments of 1983. Signed by President Ronald Reagan, the bipartisan legislation gradually raised the full retirement age, subjected some higher-income Social Security benefits to federal income taxation and increased payroll taxes to strengthen the program’s finances.

Crapo pointed to the 1983 reforms as an example of how an outside commission might help break legislative gridlock. He also cited his participation in a later bipartisan fiscal commission, commonly known as the Greenspan Commission, whose recommendations ultimately failed to win the support needed to move forward.

Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) challenged the idea of creating another commission, arguing that Congress should take responsibility for solving the problem rather than sending it to an outside panel.

“Instead of ‘talking about talking,’ this body should get to work on finding a resolution to the Social Security solvency challenge and having that debate in public view,” Wyden said.

Crapo responded that the hearing was not intended to promote a specific proposal but to examine a broad range of ideas.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) pushed back against Democratic criticism that Republicans were seeking to cut benefits, saying Congress needs to be willing to consider different approaches to the problem.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) took a much harsher view of the program, calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and arguing that money collected from taxpayers has already been spent.

Rhode Island’s Whitehouse Calls for Answers

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse pressed Republicans for a specific plan to address Social Security’s finances.

“Where’s the Republican proposal? Where is it? It doesn’t exist,”

Whitehouse charged, arguing that Republicans were unwilling to publicly embrace proposals that could result in benefit reductions.

Whitehouse said Democrats have legislation that would make Social Security solvent “for as far as the actuarial eye can see” without cutting benefits.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) focused on raising more revenue from higher-income Americans by increasing the amount of earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax.

Warren noted that the payroll tax currently applies only up to a certain level of earnings, meaning high-income workers pay Social Security taxes on a smaller percentage of their total income than most middle-income workers.

Sanders framed the issue in simpler terms, asking whether wealthy Americans should pay the same percentage of their income into Social Security as firefighters and nurses.

But not every senator framed the debate in partisan terms.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) observed that conversations about Social Security often “immediately” become fear-mongering, with the discussion centered on taking benefits away.

“We’re actually trying to be able to get to a point where no one loses benefits,” Lankford said, noting that the goal should be long-term stabilization.

Lankford acknowledged that having a “grown-up conversation” about stabilizing Social Security’s finances and resolving the problem remains a real challenge.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) also called for bipartisan action.  “We’ve got to fix this and that means working together. There’s a lot of great ideas out there. If we would just make this a focus and a priority, we can get something done,” she said.

Their comments underscored a central question facing Congress: Can lawmakers move beyond the political rhetoric surrounding Social Security and find enough common ground to actually fix the program?

AARP: Keep Social Security at the Table

Nancy A. LeaMond, AARP’s executive vice president and chief advocacy and engagement officer, questioned whether another special commission is the best way forward.

“The history of special commissions is littered with very good intentions and failed results,” LeaMond told the committee. She argued that Social Security’s future should be addressed directly by Congress, which has jurisdiction over the program and a long history of tackling difficult Social Security issues.

LeaMond reminded senators that Social Security remains the foundation of retirement security for millions of Americans. She noted that it provides more than half of household income for 43% of older American households and provides at least 90% of income for nearly 12 million Americans age 65 and older.

Social Security’s impact also extends beyond individual beneficiaries, LeaMond said. “Every dollar paid in Social Security benefits generates two dollars of economic activity, supporting 12.2 million jobs and $2 trillion in economic output each year,” she said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) acknowledged AARP’s efforts to protect Social Security, including its television advertising campaign warning against benefit cuts. But Grassley urged AARP and other organizations to do more to educate the public about the looming automatic reductions.

“We’ve got to wake this entire nation up to the fact that there’s going to be 22% cuts if we don’t do something right now,” Grassley said.

Goldwein told the committee that Social Security’s financial problems can be addressed if Congress begins the process rather than continuing to delay action.

In his testimony, Goldwein described CRFB’s Trust Fund Solutions initiative, which offers potential approaches for restoring Social Security’s solvency. Among the ideas discussed are changes to the taxation of benefits, expanding the payroll tax base, limiting benefits for some high earners, and encouraging longer workforce participation.

The dollar figure Goldwein cited — an average reduction of about $500 a month under a comparable benefit cut — puts the Trustees’ warning into perspective. For retirees already struggling to keep pace with rising housing, food and health care costs, losing another $500 a month would not be an abstract budget number. It could mean difficult choices between paying bills, buying groceries or filling a prescription.

Charles Blahous of the Mercatus Center also called for Congress to move quickly, arguing that the most important part of Social Security reform may simply be getting the process started before continued delays make the problem harder and more expensive to solve.

Rebecca D. Vallas, CEO of the National Academy of Social Insurance, told the committee that the decisions Congress makes about Social Security will rank among the most important work lawmakers undertake in generations.

Vallas cited a survey of more than 2,200 Americans conducted by NASI in partnership with AARP, the National Institute on Retirement Security and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The survey found that 85% of respondents favored preventing benefit reductions or increasing benefits, even if that would require raising taxes on some or all Americans. Only 15% preferred benefit reductions to tax increases.

Support for raising revenue rather than cutting benefits crossed party, income, education, and generational lines, Vallas said.

A Final Note…

“Social Security is too important to millions of Americans for Congress to take shortcuts or empower fast-track commissions to do their job. This is an opportunity to show that Washington can work, that it can deliver the results that the American people are demanding, and that it can achieve this goal without waiting until the very last minute to act,” says submitted testimony by Max Richtman, President & CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

The message from the hearing was clear: Social Security’s financial problems are real, the clock is ticking, and Congress has no shortage of policy ideas.

What remains uncertain is whether Democrats and Republicans can put aside their philosophical differences long enough to agree on a bipartisan solution.

After 43 years and 4 months since the enactment of Social Security reforms in 1983, the stakes are simply too high for millions of older Americans to wait much longer.  Lawmakers must roll up their sleeves and get the work done.

US Senate Aging Panel Tackles AI Scams 

Published in RINewsToday on August 3, 2026

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer just changing how we work and communicate. It is rapidly transforming how criminals steal money from older Americans. Last week, the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging examined how AI-generated scams—from cloned audio to realistic deepfake videos—are creating an alarming new wave of fraud powered by artificial intelligence.

The afternoon hearing in room SD-562 dealt with AI-driven scams and financial exploitation. Since AI was introduced, the world of scams has changed significantly because criminals can now produce highly convincing deepfake videos and imitate voices with very little effort or technical knowledge, making them even harder to detect.

Taking a Closer Look at Computer-Generated Scams

The 83-minute hearing, held on Wednesday, July 29, featured testimony from victims who experienced devastating voice-cloning and deepfake fraud, medical professionals whose identities were weaponized, and experts from banking, cybersecurity, and consumer protection sectors who offered suggestions on combating it.

Scams have advanced far beyond annoying phone calls and deceiving emails,” says Chairman Rick Scott (R-FL) in his opening remarks.  “AI can also be used to clone someone’s voice, a terrifying development that has been used in heartbreaking and evil ways to impersonate a loved one and deceive their family,” he says.

The Florida senator cautions that scams, fraud, and financial exploitation are now the main problem confronting seniors across the country. “With the development of AI, scammers have obtained new tools for carrying out their criminal activities, and we need to adjust our response to these emerging threats,” he stated.

Like Scott, Ranking Member Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) expressed concern about the use of AI in scamming older adults.  “By making it easier for bad actors to clone voices, fabricate images, and deceive targets, AI has facilitated an alarming rise in financial scams that rob our seniors of their hard-earned savings and personal information,” she said.

To combat the growing threat of technology-assisted fraud and scams, Senators Smith and Gillibrand called for strengthening the federal government’s ability to crack down on scammers and for Congress to pass legislation to promote the responsible development of AI.

 Personal Stories, Calls on Congress to Tackle Issue

Dr. David Amron, the founder and medical director of the Roxbury Institute in Los Angeles, California, and founder and chair of the Lipedema, told lawmakers how he discovered that scammers in the summer of 2025 had taken real footage from his YouTube channel and combined it with digitally fabricated likenesses and the voice of a colleague as well as AI generated celebrity images and stolen media logos, to create a polished advertisement that appeared to be entirely legitimate.

Dr. Amron, who has treated patients with lipedema for more than three decades, testified that his office began receiving calls from people who watched a convincing video showing him endorsing a so-called “miracle” lipedema cream. Several had already purchased the product before realizing it was fraudulent.

Even after an 11-day battle with Meta, a Today Show investigation ultimately led to the removal of the fraudulent video. Dr. Amron’s frustration was that it kept resurfacing, underscoring how persistent and difficult it is to remove AI-enabled fraud schemes.

“The consequences extend far beyond financial loss,” remarked Dr. Amron, noting that patients may delay getting needed medical care to treat a progressive disease (like lipedema), placing their trust in unproven products and fraudulent services.

During the hearing, Dr. Amron urged lawmakers to strengthen protections against computer-generated impersonations, improve accountability for those who create and distribute them, and ensure laws keep pace with AI technology.  He argued that pressure must be placed on platforms that host fraudulent content, stating they “have to have consequences.”

While Dr. Amron described how criminals easily use technology-assisted fraud to exploit public trust in medical professionals, the next witness described how voice cloning took a devastating emotional toll on her family.

Deborah Del Mastro, a Martinez, California resident, recounted a phone call she received last May during breakfast.  This cloned call of her daughter crying and apologizing, from an unrecognized phone number, began a five-and-a-half-hour ordeal.

“I am usually very, very calm and collected in the face of crisis,” Mastro  told the Senators, noting that she is always the person who “runs to the fire, now away from it.” She was totally convinced that she heard her daughter’s voice.

The veteran, living on a Social Security check and performance income made from acting and singing, with Mastro and her husband pulling a total of $ 5,400 cash from four separate transactions from MoneyGram and Western Union to send to Mexico.

Local police told Mastro that the “ransom” funds are unrecoverable.  A detective told her that he “sees these by the hundreds.”

Education is key to protecting people from AI scams, asserts Mastro, telling the Senate panel that there is an absence of publicly available resources on how to protect yourself from AI-driven scams as opposed to the abundance of resources on how to use the emerging technology.

Financial institutions are also witnessing the rapid evolution of AI-driven scams.  Paul Benda, the Executive Vice President for Risk, Fraud, and Cybersecurity of the American Bankers Association (ABA), describes how criminals are using AI to expand the scale and sophistication of traditional scams.

Benda, who chairs the ABA Fraud Coordination Group, reframes the new, evolving  AI-driven scams not as a story of misused technology but as an industrial one.

 “Generative AI is not replacing traditional scams. It is industrializing,” Benda asserts.

 Benda explained that criminals are now using chatbots to initiate conversations before seamlessly handing victims off to human scammers once they become engaged. A survey of 14 large banks found that bank impersonation scams rose 150% from 2024 to 2025, Banta said, illustrating this growing threat.

Benda encouraged Congress to establish a national office for scams and fraud prevention, describing it as necessary to provide clear and national leadership to attack this problem.  He also called for stronger telecom safeguards to keep criminals off calling networks and to restore trust in caller ID. He argued that if a name and number appear on caller ID, the telecom provider should be held accountable if it is accurate.

At this point, the hearing turned from personal and industry experiences to the broader cybersecurity challenges posed by this rapidly advancing technology.

Cybersecurity expert Matthew F. Ferraro, a Partner at Crowell & Moring LLP and a former official at the Department of Human Services, personally testified at this hearing, noting that his views do not represent his firm or clients.

Ferraro argued that “deepfakes can supercharge scams and cyber frauds, especially targeting senior citizens.”  According to an industry report, financial losses from deepfake-enabled fraud exceeded $200 million in the first quarter of 2025.

Citing another study, Ferraro further illustrated the cost of AI-generated fraud. Consulting firm Deloitte expects that generative AI could enable fraud losses to reach $40 billion in the United States by 2027, he said.

In his testimony, Ferraro pointed out a successful national educational model to combat AI scams.  Finland has integrated media literacy and AI-media spotting training into educational programs for both young and old.

Ferraro urged lawmakers to promote AI detection tools and provenance technology that tags media as human-created or AI-generated, comparing the potential to email spam filters operating in the background.

Ferraro concluded that stronger coordination among federal and state governments, law enforcement, and the private sector is essential for policymakers to successfully attack this problem and stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated fraud operations.

Holding Big Tech Accountable

While several witnesses focused on prevention and consumer education, another argued that Congress must also hold technology companies more accountable.

“I want to be clear that the devastating deception we’re seeing is not a result of technological ineptitude for older users…but rather a crisis emboldened by the biggest tech companies we know paired with a failure to rein them in,” charges Ben Winters, Director of AI and Privacy at the Consumer Federation of America.

 “This is not an issue of personal responsibility, but something Congress is uniquely positioned to address,” says Winters.

Winters urged Congress to reject any legislative proposals that would prohibit states from regulating technology or limit tech company liability – characterizing such proposals as being “pushed by tech companies right now.”

Winters also recommended passing comprehensive data privacy laws with data minimization requirements and bans on the sale of sensitive data – specifically citing the practice of selling lists of people battling Alzheimer’s for targeting purposes as something that must be prohibited.

Winters supported the other witnesses’ call for sustained oversight of enforcement agencies to ensure that the federal government remains totally focused on upstream prevention of scams – “choking out the scam upstream, not just chasing individual scammers after the fact.”

The hearing also underscored that no family, not even a U.S. Senator’s family, is immune from these increasingly convincing scams.

Senate Aging Committee Member, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) disclosed that his mother-in-law was scammed by a voice clone impersonating his granddaughter, sending $10,000 to someone claiming to be stranded in Europe.

Report Sheds Light on AI-Driven Scams, Impact

At this hearing, Chairman Scott (R-FL) and Ranking Member Gillibrand released a joint report: Artificial Intelligence & Older Americans: Confronting New Threats, Unlocking New Opportunities. The document details both the potential benefits of AI and the unique financial risks it poses to older Americans.

The 25-page report cited research, shedding light on the negatives of this emerging technology. Americans reported nearly $21 billion in cybercrime losses in 2026, with $893 million tied to AI-enabled scams across more than 22,000 complaints. More than 82 percent of phishing emails are now created with the help of AI.

Recognizing warning signs early can potentially prevent huge financial losses from AI-enabled fraud. Any unsolicited contact by phone, text, email, or social media should be treated with immediate skepticism, regardless of how professional it looks or how urgent its message appears, the report warns.

Slow down and pause before acting, the report recommends. Review your financial accounts regularly for unauthorized transactions and set up transaction alerts through your financial institution.  For protection, the report notes that the Federal Trade Commission recommends placing a free credit freeze on all three major credit card bureaus.

Any payment requests can be a red flag for a scam. Any request for payment by gift card, wire transfer, cryptocurrency, or cash is a clear indicator of fraud, the report notes.

AI-simulated threats using deepfakes and voice cloning can replicate a loved one’s voice or image to perpetrate financial fraud.  The report suggests that a family code word or verbal safe phrase be used to verify the identity when a family member appears to be calling in.  AI voice cloning or deepfakes.

Finally, the Senate Aging Committee report stresses the importance of reporting fraud, recommending that victims contact the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-336.

On a positive note, older persons using AI company devices experienced a 95 percent drop in feelings of loneliness, along with substantial gains in overall well-being. This technology can also potentially reduce preventable adverse drug reactions, lower hospitalization costs, and improve the quality of life of millions of older persons managing multiple chronic conditions.

Increased efficiency through the use of AI scribes saves physicians time on administrative paperwork, increasing productivity and allowing them to spend more quality time with their older patients.

Meanwhile, AI use in clinical decision-making can improve sepsis detection, improve cancer diagnosis, and help the physician understand multiple drug interactions, all of which have a significant impact on providing care to older adults.

Finally, the report notes that AI use to reduce falls, to track vital signs, medication adherence, sleep patterns, and activity levels can help older adults age in place.

As lawmakers continue debating how best to regulate AI, one message clearly emerged repeatedly during the hearing: technology will continue evolving, but awareness remains the strongest defense. For older Americans, taking a moment to verify an unexpected phone call, text, or email may well be the simplest—and most effective—way to avoid becoming the next victim.

To watch the Senate Aging Committee AI hearing, go to https://www.aging.senate.gov/hearings/the-ai-deception-machine-deepfakes-chatbots-and-the-new-frontier-of-senior-fraud

To read the Joint Senate Aging Committee AI report, go to FINAL VERSION AI Report.