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.

Opposition Builds Against Elimination of Social Security’s Payroll Tax

Published in the Pawtucket Times on September 28, 2020

With the looming 2020 presidential elections, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) announces its first ever Presidential endorsement, throwing its support to the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris campaign. The Washington, DC-based aging advocacy group, founded by James Roosevelt, Jr., the son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is credited with founding Social Security, fears for the retirement program’s future survival under a second Trump term. NCPSSM’s endorsement breaks the National Committee’s 38-year tradition of steering clear of Presidential campaigns in order to focus its resources on House and Senate races.

NCPSSM support of Biden follows the endorsements of other aging advocacy groups including AARP, Social Security Works, Alliance for Retired Americans, Medicare for All, American Federation of Government Employees and National Treasury Employees Union.

“During the past four years, we’ve seen this president pay lip service to seniors’ needs while actively undermining their best interests, the latest example being his reckless pledge to terminate the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare,” says NCPSSM’s president and CEO Max Richtman. “As the pandemic has worsened, we have seen an abject failure to protect nursing home residents and workers, who represent 40 percent of all COVID deaths. Never in our organization’s history have we seen such a consistent level of threats to the health and retirement security of America’s seniors,” he added, noting that the most effective way to protect the solvency of Social Security is to elect Joe Biden as president,” he said.

Adds, James Roosevelt, Jr., Vice-Chairman of the National Committee’s advisory board, “By enacting Social Security, my grandfather, President Franklin Roosevelt, gave workers the promise of dignity and financial security in retirement. Thirty years later, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law, providing older Americans with affordable, accessible health insurance. There’s a reason Social Security and Medicare have been around for 85 and 55 years, respectively. Americans value and depend on them. My father and grandfather would be outraged that President Trump and his allies want to dismantle both programs. I am 100 percent behind the National Committee’s decision to endorse Joe Biden, the candidate who can be trusted to protect seniors’ earned benefits from any attempts to undermine or privatize them.”

Trump’s Changing Policy Positions on Social Security

On Oct. 4, 2016, at vice presidential debate at Longwood University, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine noted that in 2000, Donald Trump wrote a chapter in a book, The America We Deserve, calling Social Security a” Ponzi scheme” [an investment fraud] and stating that “privatization [of the program] would be good for all of us. ”

One month before Trump formally announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015, with a campaign rally and speech at Trump Tower in New York City, he tweeted, “I am going to save Social Security without any cuts. I know where to get the money from. Nobody else does.”

As a presidential candidate, Trump continued calling for protecting Social Security, long regarded as one of the most successful and popular social programs ever enacted by Congress. During a June political rally in 2016, Trump claimed, “We’re going to save your Social Security without killing it like so many people want to do” and throughout the 2016 presidential campaign repeatedly promised “not to touch” seniors’ earned benefits and to “protect your Social Security and your Medicare.”

Once in the Oval Office, Trump’s views changed. Congress was forced to block his proposed budget cuts and rule changes that would hurt Social Security beneficiaries, says Richtman.

“Trump has betrayed older Americans through his bungled response to the COVID pandemic and by blatantly breaking his promises to protect senior’s cherished social insurance programs. He has proposed more than $1 trillion in cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He has vowed to eliminate the payroll taxes that fund seniors’ retirement and health benefits if re-elected to a second term. He has urged the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act, which improved Medicare benefits and solvency. In short, the President has listened to advisors who want to dismantle the country’s most effective social safety net programs” says NCPSSM’s top official.

A Stark Warning

On August 8, Trump has signed an Executive Order, Deferring Payroll Tax Obligations in Light of the Ongoing COVID-19 Disaster, to authorize a payroll tax holiday/deferral to give American taxpayers extra cash as they deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The president’s action allows employers to stop deducting the 6.2 percent employee payroll contribution toward Social Security for the rest of the year.

An Aug. 28 IRS memo noted that employers who participate in the payroll tax holiday will then have to pay back the taxes starting in 2021. Simply put, more money will take out paychecks from Jan. 1 to April 30 in 2021 to repay the taxes owed.

Richtman warns, don’t count on payroll tax forgiveness. “Unless Congress passes legislation to address this, the workers will ow every cent of that payroll tax deferral in 2021, and employers would have to deduct more from their paychecks starting January to repay it,” her says.

NCPSSM, Democratic lawmakers, and Social Security advocacy groups don’t see Trump’s elimination of the Social Security payroll taxes as an effective economic stimulus especially to unemployed workers. This action could effectively defund the Social Security and Medicare programs could ultimately bankrupt these programs.

In the letter released on Sept. 23 , Nancy A. LeaMond, AARP’s Executive Vice President and Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer said “As AARP raised in letters to Congress back in March and President Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin in August, we believe suspending, reducing, or eliminating contributions to Social Security will interfere with the program’s long-term funding stream… This deferral, along with the President’s recent statements on the permanent elimination of the Social Security payroll tax contribution, are engendering uncertainty among older Americans and the general public about Social Security and its ability to pay promised benefits. As such, AARP supports the resolution of Congressional disapproval.”

Trump counters NCPSSM, AARP and others condemning his Executive Order. He claims that eliminating the Social Security tax would not impact the solvency of Social Security, because the money would be shifted from the government’s general fund. Both continuing his payroll tax cut and shifting funds would require Congressional action. That, also, would require an act of Congress.

With this first time political endorsement, NCPSSM hopes to see a Democratic administration take over the White House to strengthen and expand Social Security, not weaken it by eliminating the program’s payroll taxes. “After nearly four decades of fighting to protect American seniors, the National Committee has determined that many older Americans cannot afford – let alone survive – another four years of President Trump. By endorsing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris today, we will work tirelessly to help voters of all ages understand that Trump’s promises are empty. He offers seniors a one-way ticket to nowhere. Americans deserve a President who will protect and strengthen the federal government’s commitment to older Americans.”

This article was updated on Sept. 24.

GOP Trial Balloon Called “Trojan Horse”

Published in Woonsocket Call on April 16, 2017

In previous years, the GOP leadership, now controlling both chambers of Congress, pushed legislative proposals to eliminate Social Security and Medicare by privatizing these programs. These attempts were clearly visible for all to see. But, we are in new political times with a GOP White House seeking the destruction of these programs, too, but as some say through the back door.

According to an Associated Press story, published on April 10, 2017, as the Trump Administration begins to learn from its failed attempt to repeal Obamacare, tax code reform is now on its agenda. One trial balloon, being floated by a GOP lobbyist with close ties to the Trump Administration, would eliminate the mandated payroll tax that all American workers pay to fund Social Security and Medicare.

“This approach would give a worker earning $60,000 a year an additional $3,720 in take-home pay, a possible win that lawmakers could highlight back in their districts even though it would involve changing the funding mechanism for Social Security, according to a lobbyist, who asked for anonymity to discuss the proposal without disrupting early negotiations,” says Writers Josh Boak and Stephen Ohlemacher in their Associated Press story.

Currently, about 163 million American workers pay Social Security taxes and 59 million retired and/or disabled persons collect monthly benefits. About one family in four receive income from Social Security. The nation’s social insurance and welfare program is a “pay-as-you-go-program.” Today’s workers support the program by paying their taxes into the program and the money flows back out to the program’s current beneficiaries.

GOP Stealth Attack on Social Security

Responding to the GOP trial balloon, in her blog post published last Tuesday on the Huffington Post, a politically liberal American online news web site, Contributor Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works called the GOP trial balloon “a Trojan horse”, noting that “It appears to be a gift, in the form of middle class tax relief, but would, if enacted, lead to the destruction of working Americans’ fundamental economic security.”

If President Trump proposes “the Trojan horse, it would be the newest shot in the ongoing Republican war against Social Security. That war has failed so far. The American people overwhelmingly support Social Security because they appreciate that it provides working families with basic economic security when wages are lost as the result of death, disability, or old age. And it does so extremely efficiently, securely, fairly, and universally,” says Altman in her April 11, 2017 blog post.

According to Altman’s blog posting, after Trump and GOP lawmaker have suffered legislative defeats in their “frontal attacks” against Social Security to eliminate the programs “it appears they are contemplating a “stealth attack instead.” She noted, “In the 1980s, Republicans, who had long tried but failed to cut government programs directly, discovered a new tactic. They realized that they could undermine government and eventually force cuts to spending by cutting taxes and, in their words, starve the beast. Now, Trump is making plans to use that same tactic against Social Security.”

“Not only would the Trump proposal starve Social Security of dedicated revenue, it would ultimately destroy it. Social Security is not a government handout. It is wage insurance that the American people earn, as part of their compensation, and, indeed, pay for with deductions from their pay,” observed Altman.

Altman warns that GOP lobbyist’s proposal to eliminate the payroll tax to fund Social Security is consistent with Trump’s previous actions. “No one should be fooled by Trump’s campaign promise not to cut Social Security. Before he became a candidate, he called it a Ponzi scheme and advocated privatizing it. He chose, as his vice president, Mike Pence, who complained that the Bush privatization proposal didn’t go far enough, fast enough. As President, he has chosen a staunch opponent of Social Security, Mick Muvaney, as his budget director, and another staunch opponent, Tom Price, as Secretary of Health and Human Services (one of Social Security’s trustees.), she said.

In an email urging recipients to sign a petition to protect Social Security’s funding [the payroll tax], Michael Phelan, Deputy Director of Social Security Works noted, “For decades, Republicans in Washington and Wall Street bankers have told us that Social Security is going broke―even though Social Security has a $2.8 trillion surplus and can pay out 100% of benefits for the next 17 years and over 75% of benefits owed after that.” He warns the “Republican’s tax plans might be a self-fulfilling prophecy. By starving Social Security of funding, they could finally receive their wish―replacing Social Security’s guaranteed benefit with unstable Wall Street retirement plans.”

The “Great Wisdom” of a Payroll Contribution Tax

Max Richtman, President & CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, says, “It’s no surprise that the GOP lobbyist who suggested this dangerous idea and remained anonymous. After all, who would want to own up to an idea that would trigger the collapse of the most successful government program in U.S. history?”

Richtman adds, “Peddling this kind of scheme reminds me of President George W. Bush’s 2005 privatization proposal. Only in this case, the risk factor shifts from the uncertainty of Wall Street to benefit cuts that will almost certainly occur when Social Security is forced to compete for government funding with other discretionary programs. There was great wisdom in President Roosevelt’s plan for funding Social Security through a dedicated payroll tax. As President Roosevelt said, ‘We put those payroll contributions there to give the contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their pensions…No damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”

Darrell West, Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Washington, D.C.-based the Brookings Institution, sees an uphill battle to formalize the tax policy to eliminate the payroll contribution to fund Social Security. “I don’t think Trump will be able to eliminate or reduce the Social Security tax because of its dire consequences for the program itself. The program is very popular with the general public and many recipients count it as their sole support. Republicans will get killed if they try to do this. It is not a viable option now or anytime in the near future.”

When Trump releases his tax code reform proposal, aging advocates must remember that the devil is in the details. Read the proposal thoroughly with a fine-tooth comb