We blogged earlier this week about the inaccuracy of media reports about Social Security’s financial future. Some mainstream media journalists seemed to rely on old tropes when covering the recent Social Security trustees report. A prime example: a news story from the Associated Press (AP) with the alarmist headline, Medicare and Social Security go-broke dates pushed up.
We asked our director of government relations and policy, Dan Adcock, to correct some of the inaccuracies in the AP piece…
Dan Adcock: Let’s start with the headline. It’s completely misleading. Neither program is “going broke.” In the case of Social Security, the combined trust fund is projected to become depleted in 2034 if Congress takes no action, at which time the system still could pay 81% of benefits. Social Security itself is not going broke or bankrupt. The only way that could happen is if we had 100% unemployment and no one was paying into the program.
AP: Social Security’s trust funds — which cover old age and disability recipients — will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035.
Adcock: The reporter omits that that Social Security also pays benefits to spouses and survivors (upon the death of a family breadwinner), including millions of children. Social Security is a retirement program for sure — but it is also so much more than that.
AP: The trustees say the latest findings show the urgency of needed changes to the programs, but… lawmakers have repeatedly kicked Social Security and Medicare’s troubling math to the next generation.
Adcock: This is a media trope that insists no one in Washington is thinking about Social Security’s future — or willing to take action. In fact, both parties have proposed solutions to ‘fix’ Social Security. The problem is that the Republicans focus exclusively on cutting benefits. Democrats have put forward proposals to bring more revenue into the program by demanding that the wealthy contribute their fair share. Opinion polling suggests that the public favors the approach of raising revenue rather than cutting benefits, regardless of party affiliation.
AP: President Donald Trump and other Republicans have vowed not to make any cuts to Medicare or Social Security, even as they seek to shrink the federal government’s expenditures.
Adcock: Those vows to protect Social Security have turned out to be quite hollow. The House Republican Study Committee has proposed cuts to Social Security (including raising the retirement age) in its budget blueprints. House and Senate Republicans have favored a fiscal commission that could fast-track cuts to the program through Congress. But more immediately, Trump unleashed Elon Musk & DOGE to wreak havoc on the Social Security Administration. The result has been severe cuts in staffing, mounting difficulty for customers accessing their benefits, multiple website crashes, and people being wrongly declared dead and having their benefits cut off. While these are not benefit cuts per se, they represent unprecedented interference in the delivery of Social Security — and break the President’s promise “not to touch” it.
AP: The report states that the Social Security Social Security Fairness Act (SSFA), enacted in January, which repealed the Windfall Elimination and Government Pension Offset provisions of the Social Security Act and increased Social Security benefit levels for some workers, had an impact on the depletion date of SSA’s trust funds.
Dan Adcock: The beneficiaries of the SSFA were not just “some workers.” They’re public sector employees like teachers, firefighters, and police officers who were denied full Social Security benefits until the Social Security Fairness Act was passed last year. The impact on the depletion date of the trust funds was only six months.
AP: Congressional Budget Office reporting has stated that the biggest drivers of debt rising in relation to GDP are increasing interest costs and spending for Medicare and Social Security. An aging population drives those numbers.
Dan Adcock: According to the nonpartisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the biggest driver of the debt is TAX EXPENDITURES, including Trump’s huge tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. Social Security and Medicare Part A are completely self-funded by workers’ payroll contributions and DO NOT CONTRIBUTE to the debt. As Ronald Reagan said, “Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit.”
Many of the inaccuracies in the AP story reinforce, wittingly or not, the conservative narrative that Social Security is going broke and must be cut in order to survive. That can undermine public support for the program and pave the way for benefit reductions and privatization. We urge the mainstream media not to default to this narrative and at the least balance its coverage, which would acknowledge that some of our leaders in Washington have positive ideas for strengthening Social Security without cutting benefits — with the public squarely behind them.
Visit our website to view some common Social Security Myths!