Social Security benefits face big cuts in 2033, unless Congress acts

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NPR

June 18, 2025 12:00 PM ET


The Social Security trust fund is expected to run out of cash in eight years, according to a report released Wednesday by the program's trustees. Unless Congress acts before then, benefits for more than 60 million retirees and family members will automatically be cut by 23%.

The deadline is about nine months earlier than trustees were predicting a year ago. The change was primarily caused by a new law that increased benefits for nearly 3 million former public-sector workers who had pensions for jobs not covered by Social Security. Trustees also lowered their assumptions about future wages (and resulting payroll taxes) and birth rates.

More Americans have started drawing Social Security benefits at a younger age, partly out of fear that benefits could be lower in the future.

The popular program's most basic challenge is demographic. The population of the United States is aging, with more than 11,000 baby boomers reaching retirement age daily.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/06/18/nx-s1-5436828/social-security-benefits-cut-congress

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Link to Social Security Administration PRESS RELEASE - Social Security Board of Trustees: Projection for Combined Trust Funds One Year Sooner than Last Year

Link to SSA REPORT page - https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2025/

Link to SSA REPORT (PDF) - https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2025/tr2025.pdf

[Scrivener7]

1. SS will face big cuts in '33 unless we tax the rich at the same rate as the rest of us.

[Miguelito Loveless]

5. Simply remove the cap on earning subject to tax

I think it is $140K right now, then you don't pay anything over that.

[slightlv]

7. Not only that but the year in which it will "run out of money"

has been changed SO many times, no one knows who speaks truth. I absolutely do not trust this administration to speak the truth about anything. What about all the extra money taken from our paychecks just for the "Boomer Retirements." Millions and millions of dollars, earmarked only for when our generation retired. Did the republicans find a way to backdoor steal all that money?

We need to demand accounting measures! AND we need to demand that the rich pay their fair share. For sure, their checks will be among the highest when they start drawing, although they will have paid the lowest, especially percentage wise, than any of the rest of us. Raise the Cap!!

Frankly, I think this is a planted article and that there will be many more in the coming days ir order to make stealing all that sweet SS money, which they have slobbered over for decades, easier for them.

[Silent Type]

2. That prediction has been in every SS Trustee's report since at least 2010. Obama tried to do something, but was bashed

by everyone including Democrats.

Now here we are, dependent upon GOPers -- and trump -- to do something about it. Wonder how that'll go?

[Arger68]

3. Well, Republicans certainly won't

fix this. We will also need at least 60 Dems in the senate (probably closer to 62-65 - there always seems to be a Manchin, Lieberman, Sinema, or Fetterman to stop anything really good from happening), control of the house, and a Democratic president to do anything about it. I guess a bunch of us will just have to die on the job in our 70's and 80's, provided AI doesn't take that away as well. At 57 years old I was looking forward to retiring in 10 years, but that may not work out so well as I had hoped.

[sakabatou]

4. As if repukes give a fuck

They'd rather have people die than do something good for the "little guy".

[delisen]

6. Public sector Retirees were NOT defeatist. They won.

They had paid into the system but were denied their benefit. After many years They recently won.

No matter how resilient we are the pervasive Republican propaganda takes a toll.

Let’s plow ahead and remind each other that we have the right to set up a comprehensive aging worker retirement program, and we have the right to make it work.

It should be a no-brainer. It is a worker insurance program. Insurance is not welfare. If businesses did not pay into the program, thy would have to pay each worker more money because each worker would have ro set up more private accounts to build up a nest egg to carry them through retirement to the end of their lives. Some would not see aside enough and we would all be living in a Victorian horror show. Kids in the street begging for slices o read, aged folks dying in the gutters,
Republicanism does not work. Privatizing everything does not work. Getting together as a society to plan for our needs and
Build our social infrastructure works.