Washington Monthly - How Democrats Can Save Social Security—and Win Elections
Policy director Phil Longman gives a riveting argument about how America can save Social Security and strengthen retirement security by making the system fairer—taxing the wealthy more, expanding benefits for working- and middle-class Americans, and addressing decades of policy failures that fueled inequality.
The infamous Project 2025 document contains 900-plus pages of ideas for strangling the federal government, many of which Donald Trump’s administration has already implemented. But one huge policy area, accounting for roughly one-quarter of all federal spending, is barely mentioned: Social Security.
Perhaps that’s because its Heritage Foundation authors knew that Social Security is one of the waning policy points on which the right and left still agree. In 2024, 77 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats said Social Security benefits should not be reduced in any way.
Yet how to avoid this is likely to be a major issue in the next presidential election. Already, Social Security’s mounting negative cash flow is adding significantly to the federal government’s overall deficits and need to borrow money from the public but worse is yet to come. In June, the Social Security Administration (SSA) projected that the system’s main trust fund, responsible for financing retirement benefits, will run out of money entirely in little more than seven years, which under current law will force steep, across-the-board benefit cuts.
Since the SSA’s June forecast, Republican policies have worsened the fiscal outlook for Social Security. Contrary to Trump’s claim that immigrants threaten the program, his clampdown on immigration will cost the trust funds. In 2022, undocumented immigrants contributed an estimated $25.7 billion toward Social Security, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, while typically collecting no benefits. And then there’s the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by the Republicans in Congress and signed by Trump in July. That bill drains an additional $168 billion in revenue from the main Social Security trust fund by reducing the amount of federal income taxes that affluent Social Security recipients pay on their benefits. Because of this loss of revenue, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates, future benefits will have to be cut even more than was already in the cards—to a full 24 percent. This amounts to benefit cuts of about $18,100 for a typical dual-earning couple retiring at the start of 2033. Still deeper cuts will be needed in the future. “Policymakers pledging not to touch Social Security are implicitly endorsing these deep benefit cuts,” the committee concluded in its report.
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