Hiltzik: Can Social Security survive the Trump years?

The annual reports of the Social Security and Medicare trustees provide yearly opportunities for misunderstandings by politicians, the media, and the general public about the health of these programs. This year is no exception.

A case in point is the response by House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.) to the Social Security and Medicare trustees’ projections about the depletion of the programs’ reserves: “Doing nothing to address the solvency of these programs will result in an immediate, automatic, and catastrophic cut to benefits for the nearly 70 million seniors who rely on them.”

The reports say nothing about an “immediate” cut to benefits. They talk about cuts that might happen in 2034 and 2033, when there still would be enough money coming in to pay 89% of scheduled Medicare benefits and 81% of scheduled Social Security benefits.

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) used the release of the reports to plump for the budget resolution that the House narrowly passed on orders from President Trump and that is currently being masticated by several Senate committees.

The reports, Smith said, make clear “how much we need pro-growth tax and economic policies that unleash our nation’s growth, increase wages, and create new jobs.” The budget bill “would do just that,” he said.

Neither Arrington nor Smith mentioned the leading threats to the programs coming from the White House. In Social Security’s case, that’s Trump’s immigration, taxation and tariff policies, which work directly against the program’s solvency. For Medicare, the major threat is a rise in healthcare costs.

But those have flattened out as a percentage of gross domestic product since 2010, when the enactment of the Affordable Care Act brought better access to medical care to millions of Americans.

That trend is jeopardized by Republican healthcare proposals, which encompass throwing millions of Americans off Medicaid. Policy proposals by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. such as discouraging vaccinations can only drive healthcare costs higher.

Let’s take a closer look. (The Social Security trustees are Kennedy, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and newly confirmed Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, all of whom serve ex officio; two seats for public trustees are vacant. The Medicare trustees are the same, plus Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.)

The trust funds are built up from payroll taxes paid by workers and employers, along with interest paid on the treasury bonds the programs hold.

At the end of this year, the Medicare trust fund will hold about $245 billion, and the Social Security fund — actually two funds, consisting of reserves for the old-age and disability programs, but typically considered as one — more than $2.3 trillion.

Trump has consistently promised that he won’t touch Social Security and Medicare, but actions speak louder than words. “Trump’s tariffs and mass deportation program will accelerate the depletion of the trust fund,” Kathleen Romig of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities observed after the release of the trustees’ reports this week. “The Trump administration’s actions are weakening the country’s economic outlook and Social Security’s financial footing.”

Immigration benefits the program in several ways. Because “benefits paid out today are funded from payroll taxes collected from today’s workers,” notes CBPP’s Kiran Rachamallu, “more workers paying into the system benefits the program’s finances.” In the U.S., he writes, “immigrants are more likely to be of working age and have higher rates of labor force participation, compared to U.S.-born individuals.”

The Social Security trustees’ fiscal projections are based on average net immigration of about 1.2 million people per year. Higher immigration will help build the trust fund balances, and immigration lower than that will “increase the funding shortfall.” All told, “the Trump administration’s plans to drastically cut immigration and increase deportations would significantly worsen Social Security’s financial outlook.”

A less uplifting aspect of immigration involves undocumented workers. To get jobs, they often submit false Social Security numbers to employers — so payroll taxes are deducted from their paychecks, but they’re unlikely ever to be able to collect benefits. In 2022, Rachamallu noted, undocumented workers paid about $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes.

Trump’s tariffs, meanwhile, could affect Social Security by generating inflation and slowing the economy. Higher inflation means larger annual cost-of-living increases on benefits, raising the program’s costs. If they provoke a recession, that would weigh further on Social Security’s fiscal condition.

Trump also has talked about eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits. But since at least half of those tax revenues flow directly into Social Security’s reserves, they would need to be replaced somehow. Trump has never stated where the substitute revenues could be found.

Major news organizations tend to focus on the depletion date of the trust funds without delving too deeply into their significance or, more important, their cause. It’s not unusual for otherwise responsible news organizations to parrot right-wing tropes about Social Security running out of money or “going broke” in the near future, which is untrue but can unnecessarily unnerve workers and retirees.

The question raised but largely unaddressed by the trustee reports is how to reduce the shortfall. The Republican answer generally involves cutting benefits, either by outright reductions or such options as raising the full retirement age, which is currently set between 66 and 67 for those born in 1952-1959 and 67 for everyone born in 1960 or later.

As I’ve reported, raising the retirement age is a benefit cut by another name. It’s also discriminatory, for average life expectancy is lower for some racial and ethnic groups than for others.

For all Americans, average life expectancy at age 65 has risen since the 1930s by about 6.6 years, to about 84 and a half. The increase has been about the same for white workers. But for Black people in general, the gain is just over five years, to an average of a bit over 83, and for Black men it’s less than four years and two months, to an average of about 81 and four months.

Life expectancy is also related to income: Better-paid workers have longer average lifespans than lower-income workers.

The other option, obviously, is to leave benefits alone but increase the programs’ revenues. This is almost invariably dismissed by the GOP, but its power is compelling.

The revenue shortfall experienced by Social Security is almost entirely the product of rising economic inequality in the U.S. At Social Security’s inception, the payroll tax was set at a rate that would cover about 92% of taxable wage earnings. Today, rising income among the rich has reduced that ratio to only about 82%. That could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenues.

The payroll tax is highly regressive. Those earning up to $176,100 this year pay the full tax of 12.4% on wage earnings (half deducted directly from their paychecks and half paid by their employers).

Those earning more than that sum in wages pay nothing on the excess. To put it in perspective, the payroll tax bite on someone earning $500,000 in wages this year would pay not 12.4% in payroll tax (counting both halves of the levy), but about 4.4%.

Eliminating the cap on wages, according to the Social Security actuaries, would eliminate half to three-quarters of the expected shortfall in revenues over the next 75 years, depending on whether benefits were raised for the highest earners. Taxing investment income — the source of at least half the income collected by the wealthiest Americans — at the 12.4% level rather than leaving it entirely untaxed for Social Security would reduce the shortfall by an additional 38%. Combining these two options would eliminate the entire shortfall.

Social Security has already been hobbled by the Trump administration, Trump’s promises notwithstanding. Elon Musk’s DOGE vandals ran roughshod through the program, cutting staff and closing field offices, and generally instilling fears among workers and retirees that the program might not be around long enough to serve them. In moral terms, that’s a crime.

Those are the choices facing America: Cutting benefits is a dagger pointed directly at the neediest Americans. Social Security benefits account for 50% or more of the income nearly 42% of all beneficiaries, and 90% or more of the income of nearly 15% of beneficiaries.

The wealthiest Americans, on the other hand, have been coasting along without paying their fair share of the program. Could the equities be any clearer than that?