Fortune Columnist Would Rather Cut Social Security Than Make Payroll Wage Cap More Fair
The right-wing barrage of anti-Social Security propaganda continues. In fact, we’re finding ourselves having to shoot down at least one misleading (or misguided) opinion piece every month. Today’s response was provoked by a recent column in Fortune: “Social Security has 6 years left. The fix that sounds cruelest may be the smartest.”
Let’s start with the headline. Social Security does not have six years left. The program will go on indefinitely as long as people are working and paying into the system. It’s accurate to say that Social Security’s trust fund reserves will become depleted in some six years — in the unlikely event that Congress takes no pre-emptive action.
The Fortune piece, written by business editor Nick Lichtenberg, leans on a new study by the Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM), and argues that aggressive benefit cuts — including raising the retirement age to 69 — are the best cure for Social Security’s financial ills.
Lichtenberg acknowledges that public opinion is strongly in favor of revenue side solutions like raising (or even scrapping) the payroll tax cap – so that the wealthy pay their fair share. He even goes as far to call benefit cuts “politically radioactive.” How silly of the public to prefer solutions that favor the average worker over the country’s financial elites!
Despite this, the author insists that “dynamic economic modeling” shows aggressive cuts will produce the most economic growth, as though the resulting gains will inevitably find their way back to seniors. This framing ignores the fact that Social Security contributes $2.6 trillion to the economy on an annual basis and supports over 12 million jobs.
The Wharton model that Lichtenberg loves contains five options, from tax‑heavy (Option A) to cuts‑heavy (Option E). Of those, Lichtenberg all but endorses Option E: No new taxes, deeper benefit‑formula reductions, and a Social Security full retirement age raised to 69.
Dan Adcock, Director of Government Relations and Policy at NCPSSM, says Option E is a non-starter for Social Security advocates:
“Option E is the worst. Raising the retirement age is a benefit cut, plain and simple. Not everyone is living longer, and it ignores the realities of people who retire early or work in physically demanding jobs. Claiming benefits at age 62 already means a 32 percent cut in benefits; raising the full retirement age to 69 would push that reduction up to nearly two‑thirds of a full benefit.” – Dan Adcock, NCPSSM
Dan Adcock, NCPSSM’s Director of Government Relations and Policy
The idea that everyone can simply “live longer and work longer” is a myth. Physical laborers exit the workforce earlier than their white collar counterparts. Some marginalized groups are experiencing declining age expectancies. Many people in their 60s already struggle to find or keep employment, thanks to layoffs and age discrimination.
In what might be the most laughable argument of the whole piece, Lichtenberg asserts that smaller Social Security checks will create an “incentive to save.”
That fairy tale only works if you assume most households can ramp up savings at will. In reality, only about a third of Americans are close to saving enough for retirement. The rest live paycheck to paycheck, grappling with the rising costs of housing, health care, and student debt.
Cutting Social Security benefits will not turn America into a nation of savers, and will certainly not reverse skyrocketing costs of living. Instead, it will push more seniors into poverty, which will deepen their reliance on SNAP, Medicaid, and other safety‑net programs.
“If Social Security benefits are gutted, it will only shift the burden onto other parts of government like SNAP and Medicaid, which means taxpayers will still be on the hook — just in a different, more damaging way.” – Dan Adcock, NCPSSM
Of course, Trump and the Republicans in Congress have already cut those safety net programs by more than $1 trillion.
Meanwhile, the Wharton study shows that slightly adjusting the payroll wage cap would preserve trust fund surpluses until 2058! But Lichtenberg dismisses this as the “wrong” move, arguing that Option A does not deliver as much ‘economic growth’ as deep cuts. (Again, cutting benefits would diminish the stimulus effect of Social Security on the economy at large.)
Democratic lawmakers (including Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Brendan Boyle, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative John Larson, and others) already have proposed lifting the payroll wage cap to bring more revenue into the system – without cutting benefits. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative John Larson (D-CT), for example, have both offered bills that would apply the payroll tax to all wages above $400,000.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has a bill to adjust the Social Security payroll wage cap
The Fortune piece dismisses Option A as politically expedient but economically wrong. But it is morally wrong – or, to borrow from the title of the Fortune piece, downright cruel – to cut the benefits of seniors on fixed incomes in order to spare the wealthy from contributing their fair share.
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Read our CEO Max Richtman’s recent Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post HERE.
Listen to our podcast HERE
Medicare Advantage Is Costing Traditional Medicare Patients Even More Money
It’s more than a little ironic that the for-profit Medicare Advantage program – which was supposed to save taxpayers’ money – is actually increasing costs for people in traditional Medicare. Congressional investigators blame this year’s spike in Medicare Part B premiums on Medicare Advantage overbilling the government by billions of dollars.
Fresh reporting from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) details how those overpayments translated into an estimated $13.4 billion in Part B premium costs in 2025 alone. In other words, every person with traditional Medicare Part B medical insurance is effectively subsidizing excess payments to private insurers. This revelation is only the latest in a series of Medicare Advantage scandals.
Once a darling of conservatives who championed a privatized version of Medicare, MA now faces bipartisan scrutiny. The Joint Economic Committee affirmed that MA insurers are bilking the government using a practice known as “systemic upcoding.” This sketchy and misleading tactic involves exaggerating patients’ diagnoses so that insurers can bill for higher payments. 
We have been sounding the alarm on upcoding for years. Our senior health policy expert, Anne Montgomery, laid out how insurers go about it in a 2023 edition of our “You Earned This” podcast:
“Medicare Advantage plans encourage providers to find every chronic condition and billable diagnosis for each enrollee — far more aggressively than doctors do in traditional Medicare. This upcoding lets them extract higher payments from the government per patient, adding up to massive overpayments.” – Anne Montgomery, NCPSSM
MA’s shady practices extend beyond overbilling. Older TV viewers would be hard-pressed to go 30 minutes without being bombarded by relentless Medicare Advantage ads. These misleading ads have featured mainstays of mid-20th century culture, including Joe Namath, William Shatner, and Jimmy Walker, extolling the ‘benefits’ of Medicare “Part C” (as MA is officially known).
Historically, these TV ads have conflated Medicare Advantage with traditional Medicare, so that viewers may not even know that the traditional version still is an option. They promise low-to-no premiums and extra goodies like gym memberships and free rides to the doctor, without disclosing that MA is like an HMO with limited networks of doctors, onerous ‘prior authorizations’ for care, and hidden out-of-pocket costs.
The Biden administration began cracking down on MA insurers, issuing rules demanding greater transparency and accuracy in advertising. More recently, Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI), Ro Khanna (D-CA), and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) re-introduced the “Save Medicare Act,” with similar aims.
“Private, so-called ‘Medicare’ plans run by private insurers undermine traditional Medicare and create confusion. They often leave patients without the benefits they need while overcharging the federal government for corporate profit. This bill makes clear what is – and what is not – Medicare, and ensures this essential program will continue to serve seniors and other Americans for generations to come.” – Rep. Mark Pocan, 3/4/2026
As John Oliver said in his 33 minute takedown of MA last fall: “Honestly, it probably shouldn’t have the word Medicare anywhere near it, because it’s misleading. It’s kind of like the mountain chicken. Picture what a mountain chicken looks like in your head right now. You’re wrong, because it’s this. It’s a ****ing frog!”
While scrutiny intensifies, Medicare Advantage is capturing a growing share of market enrollment, even as Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposes stricter guardrails. With overpayments estimated at $76 billion this year alone and major insurers subject to federal investigation, Medicare Advantage faces mounting pressure from both parties to begin putting patients ahead of profits.
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Listen to our podcast episode on Medicare Advantage with NCPSSM senior health policy expert Anne Montgomery HERE
‘Re-Arranging Deck Chairs at Social Security’: Bisignano’s Fake Fix for Staffing Crisis
There’s been an uncanny amount of re-shuffling of workers and resources at the Social Security Administration lately – in a feeble attempt to paper over Trump’s reckless cuts in staffing. The latest example of this game of whack-a-mole unfolded last week.
Commissioner Frank Bisignano announced a shiny, new plan to “centralize” medical reviews for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits — which could impact nearly 9 million Americans. (Disabled workers can lose their benefits if they do not pass these periodic reviews.)
This shift yanks the review process away from experienced state Disability Determination Services (DDS) offices, supposedly to boost “accountability.” These medical reviews will now fall under the purview of SSA’s federal Disability Case Review (DCR) team.
We suspect that this move has nothing to do with “accountability,” and really is about “re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” as our senior Social Security expert, Maria Freese, puts it. She points out that Trump’s SSA, after recklessly cutting more than 7,000 jobs when the agency already was understaffed, now finds itself falling short in key areas — and is furiously trying to plug holes.
“The agency has way too much work, with too few people. So they shift around the workload (in this case, SSDI reviews), so that overburdened staff in other areas have to do that work. That ultimately leaves SSA with a deficit somewhere else.” Freese explains. “Eventually, everyone who is reliant on the agency suffers.”
Social Security Commissioner Bisignano has been playing ‘whack-a-mole’ to cover for staffing cuts
Case-in-point: When staffing cuts began to hobble customer service on SSA’s 1-800 phone line, leadership hastily re-assigned other workers (who had little-to-no experience in that area) to fill the gap – rushing them through an insufficient training process.
In a letter to Commissioner Bisignano, twelve Senate Democrats have demanded more information about the rationale for these hasty re-assignments. The letter quotes demoralized and concerned SSA employees:
“We [are] being forced onto the phones to take calls from people wondering what the status of their claim is and where their back benefits are… [when] WE are the workers who process the claims they are waiting for.”
As the Senators point out, “This action is akin to a restaurant manager firing its entire wait staff and forcing its cooks to wait tables as well.”
The Senators worry that Bisignano’s forced re-assignments are “harming Social Security beneficiaries, endangering the accuracy of claims, and wasting taxpayer dollars.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren is one of 12 Democrats demanding answers from SSA (Getty)
Advocates and experts warn SSDI beneficiaries to expect delays, errors, and potential chaos in the claims appeals process. Retirement planner Kevin Thompson, CEO of 9i Capital Group, told Newsweek: “For beneficiaries, this likely means more initial denials and a longer fight to receive benefits, even as the agency (claims to have) improved efficiency.”
Meanwhile, Freese says that these problems were fully preventable – and could be remediated by hiring more staff. “But they don’t want to hire new people, because that would be admitting that they shouldn’t have fired all those workers in the first place.”
As SSA whistleblower Laura Haltzel said of Trump, DOGE, and SSA leadership: “Mayhem is their M.O.” She added, “This is too big. It’s too important. I didn’t dedicate 27 years of my career to the Social Security Administration to watch it dismantled.”
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Listen to our full podcast interview with SSA whistleblower Laura Haltzel here.
Read the letter to Commissioner Bisignano from Senate Democrats here.
Trump Admin. to Blame for Social Security Data Abuse (Not Just Rogue DOGE Bro’s)
New reporting in the Washington Post indicates that a former DOGE software engineer allegedly copied Americans’ personal information from two Social Security databases onto a thumb drive, with the intention of uploading the data onto the servers of a company where he had recently obtained employment.
These two databases include the records of approximately 500 million living and dead beneficiaries, risking exposure of Social Security numbers, birthplaces, dates, citizenship, race, ethnicity, and parents’ names.
“The Post reporting details the latest in a series of serious data breaches on the part of DOGE staff, enabled by an administration apparently more interested in leveraging Americans’ personal data to advance political and personal agendas — rather than serving the public,” said NCPSSM President and CEO Max Richtman in a press statement Thursday.
Richtman says the alleged breach was a “direct consequence” of last year’s ill-advised Supreme Court ruling that granted DOGE “unfettered access” to sensitive Social Security data.
The newly reported breach clearly is part of a pattern. Recall last year’s allegations that DOGE uploaded personal Social Security data to an unsecured cloud server — and that DOGE employees offered to share Americans’ data with a third-party political operative to “overturn election results.” A federal judge found that the IRS had provided taxpayers’ personal data to ICE as part of Trump’s brutal crackdown on immigrants. Trump appointed Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano to the dual role of “IRS CEO” last year in what advocates worry is a move to facilitate consolidation of Americans’ data for inappropriate (and illegal) purposes.
Our senior Social Security expert, Maria Freese, lays the blame not just on ‘rogue’ DOGE employees, but on the Trump administration itself.
“From the very beginning, the Administration has been decimating the federal workforce and undermining the government’s ability to serve the public. A lot of this has been couched in terms of searching for ‘waste and fraud,’ even though the Social Security Administration has an extremely low fraud rate and has always been one of the most efficient agencies in the federal government.” – Maria Freese, Senior Policy Expert, NCPSSM
Advocates fear that these breaches are part of a larger agenda, which Freese believes is intended to “undermine public confidence in the program,” so that Social Security can eventually be “privatized and sold to the highest bidder.”
NCPSSM Social Security expert Maria Freese (right) on the latest episode of “Capital Quick Takes”
Democratic lawmakers have been increasingly agitated by reports of continued DOGE abuse of Americans’ personal data. Reps. John Larson (D-CT) and Richard Neal (D-MA) responded immediately to the allegations in the Washington Post:
“These continued revelations demand a full investigation with accountability if wrongdoing is confirmed. This is criminal, and the result of a year of lawlessness and mismanaging the people’s data that Republicans have insisted wasn’t happening.” – Reps John Larson (D-CT) and Richard Neal (D-MA)
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert also demanded accountability. “This massive, illegal, and horrific breach of Americans’ most sensitive data has confirmed… that the Trump administration allowing DOGE to infiltrate our government without oversight created fertile ground for abuse, and in this case of an exceptionally egregious kind.”
Social Security Commissioner Fails to Reassure Lawmakers About Data Breaches
In a befuddling appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee, Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano failed to reassure lawmakers of both parties that he has a handle on a range of issues in his purview — including the mishandling of Americans’ personal data. Bisignano disappointed lawmakers (and seniors’ advocates alike) with seemingly unprepared responses to important questions. His performance seemed to confirm what critics have suspected — that Trump’s naming Bisignano to the twin roles of Social Security chief and “CEO” of the IRS (a title the Trump administration hastily concocted) has left the commissioner in over his head.
“Bisignano’s responses to lawmakers’ questions on a range of issues were often vague and repetitive,” reported Politico. “He (also) appeared to be unfamiliar with the tax implications of President Donald Trump’s 2025 megabill.” It probably doesn’t help that before Trump appointed him, Bisignano had no experience in government or public policy, and joked that he had to Google the job of Social Security Commissioner when offered the post.
While the hearing was focused on Bisignano’s “side job” with the IRS, Rep. John Larson (D-CT) took the opportunity to raise some urgent questions regarding Social Security data breaches committed by DOGE that have dominated headlines. “(Americans’) personal data and information are being pored over by outside groups that are unaccountable, have never been vetted, and are in these agencies,” Larson warned. Bisignano declined to address the issue — and invited Larson to discuss the data breaches some other time.
From @RepJohnLarson on X
Some of the dissatisfaction with the commissioner’s testimony was bipartisan. Republican congressman Max Miller (OH) excoriated Bisignano for evading questions about tax policy. “This is unacceptable… I am very embarrassed right now for my side,” Miller snapped, blasting Bisignano’s advisors: “You need to do a better job of educating the commissioner. I would never let them walk into a hearing like this.” Ouch.
Bisignano’s self-own in front of the committee underscores advocates’ objections to the recklessness — and contempt for competent governance — that is the hallmark of Trump 2.0. We have observed that the Trump administration appears to be running the Social Security Administration as if it were a tech company to be sold and gutted by private equity. This is not altogether surprising as the commissioner was formerly CEO of a Wall Street financial services firm that saw its stock prices and market capitalization take a nosedive last year.
Bisignano’s tenure at the Social Security Administration has been marked by trauma and chaos. As Commissioner, he has done nothing to impede DOGE-driven staffing cuts, advocated raising the retirement age, forced a clunky Login.gov/ID.me overhaul, and witnessed repeated crashes of the My Social Security website. His “technology agenda,” aims to force customer service online (instead of by phone or in person at field offices), leaving some tech-challenged seniors in the cold.
In an episode of our podcast from 2025, Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley said he believes Bisignano has “approved every decision that’s been made so far to crater (SSA) and to gut it.” O’Malley also noted that the commissioner “comes out of an industry that was bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars during the 2008 financial crisis.”
Former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley
Now in charge of both SSA and the IRS, Bisignano’s status as a “two-for-one” commissioner is dangerous and unprecedented. As NCPSSM President Max Richtman warned last fall:
“Naming Bisignano CEO of another crucial federal agency while he serves as SSA commissioner demonstrates the Trump administration’s indifference… Seniors deserve a full-time Social Security Commissioner. Full stop.” – Max Richtman, President and CEO, NCPSSM
Advocates fear that Bisignano’s appointment to both IRS and SSA puts the Trump administration in a position to consolidate – and abuse – the agencies’ massive troves of personal data. Trump’s DOGE squad already is in hot water for not only copying Americans’ Social Security data onto an unsecured cloud server, but offering to share data with a third-party political operative to “overturn election results.” In February, a federal judge found that the IRS had illegally shared “thousands of people’s information” with ICE as part of the administration’s brutal crackdown on immigrants.
Bisignano’s testimony last week did nothing to quell concerns that this administration is prepared to continue misusing federal agencies for its own nefarious purposes, instead of truly serving the public. The 70 million customers of the Social Security Administration and anyone whose personal data has been compromised by Trump and DOGE deserve so much better.
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Read our fact-check of Bisignano’s 2025 letter to the public HERE.
Listen to our podcast with Former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley HERE.