Bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate this week aims to force Congress to act quickly before massive Social Security cuts hit within the next seven years.
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill., announced this week the Protecting Retirement Opportunities and Maintaining Income Security for Everyone, or PROMISE, Act. The act itself doesn’t offer specific solutions to address the looming Social Security shortfall. Instead, it directs the seven-member Social Security Advisory Board to draft a bill that would keep the program’s trust funds solvent for at least the next 50 years, CBS News reported.
“If Congress sits on its hands and does nothing to respond to this looming crisis, millions of Americans will be expected to make ends meet with fewer-and-fewer dollars each month,” Durbin said in a statement. “The fact of the matter is that Congress has known about this issue of insolvency for quite some time.
“But year-after-year, Congress has avoided confronting the question, instead kicking the can down the road for a future Congress to step up and save the program.”
The latest projections from the Social Security Board of Trustees show that the reserves of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund are set to run out in the fourth quarter of 2032. After that point, Social Security would only be able to pay 78% of promised benefits, slashing the average benefit by about $500 a month.
The bulk of Social Security is funded through dedicated payroll taxes and taxes on benefits. Any shortfall, however, is covered by the trust funds. For the past 16 years, Social Security payments have exceeded its cash income, forcing it to dip into fund reserves to pay benefits. By law, it can’t pay out more in benefits than it receives in revenue, so once the trust fund is gone, cuts will follow.
Durbin introduced the bill with U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-Maryland, Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, Angus King, Independent, Maine, John Cornyn, T-Texas, Chris Coons, D-Delaware and Alan Armstrong, R-Oklahoma.
PROMISE is the most recent effort to address the shortfall. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio recently penned an op-ed calling for Congress to lift the Social Security payroll tax cap.
“Since the vast majority of Americans make less than that, most people are paying Social Security taxes on 100 percent of their earnings while the highest earners are paying on only part of theirs,” the lawmakers wrote. “Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck than a wealthy corporate lawyer? This is doubly unfair in an economy in which top earners’ wages, over time, have pulled far ahead of those of the average worker.”
In 2026, the payroll tax cap, or taxable minimum, is $184,500. Workers and employers each pay 6.2% of wages up to that amount, the lawmakers said. The most paid into Social Security for one worker is $22,878, or 12.4% of $184,500 – even if an individual’s salary far exceeds that amount.
Social Security provides benefits to more than 70 million retired workers and people with disabilities.
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