Editorial: Don't delay reforms to shore up Social Security
There is no shortage of proposals that could shore up Social Security and keep its trust funds solvent well into the retirements of those who now are working and contributing to it with every paycheck.
What’s in shorter supply are the years we have to strengthen the 84-year-old program and the resolve in Congress to do so.
Actually, the deadline to fix Social Security was pushed ahead a year in the most recent trustees’ report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute focused on national and state fiscal responsibility. We now have until 2035 — rather than 2034, the date estimated in CBPP’s 2018 report — to adopt reforms before the program’s two trust funds are tapped out.
So, problem solved. Or not.
Not to downplay the very real urgency to adopt reforms, but what would happen to Social Security sometime in the next 15 years or so wouldn’t be the end of Social Security, but a significant reduction in what the retired and other beneficiaries receive.
Currently, the program has $2.9 trillion in two trust fund reserves: Old Age Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance. During the past three decades those reserves grew thanks to the difference between what Social Security’s payroll taxes took in and what was paid out in benefits. But as more baby boomers have aged out of the workforce and started collecting benefits, more is being paid out to beneficiaries than is being contributed by workers. And that trend will accelerate.
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