The financial challenges facing Social Security should be a much bigger part of the midterm election debate.
That’s because the candidates running in the 33 Senate elections this November will have to address those problems.
The winners will have six years in office, ending in January 2033. That also happens to be the year the main Social Security trust fund runs out, according to the Social Security trustees.
Once the trust fund is depleted, seniors’ monthly benefits will decline to about 77% of their payout, according to current estimates. And that would create a political tsunami!
That’s not something most Senate candidates — or the president or other members of Congress, for that matter — want to discuss because most of them don’t have a solution. But the country will need one.
Trust Fund Broke
You will frequently hear the media and elected officials predict the Social Security trust fund — currently estimated to have about $2.5 trillion — will be depleted by 2033. But the trust fund was effectively depleted years ago — by Congress.
Social Security is based on a pay-as-you-go system. The money workers pay in through their payroll taxes goes right back out to cover current retirees’ benefits.
For decades, workers paid in more than was needed to cover retirement benefits, creating a surplus.
But Congress has borrowed that money, replacing it with non-negotiable, interest-bearing IOUs.
Social Security started spending more than it received around 2009. It’s been drawing down the trust fund ever since.
If the government had a budget surplus, it could just transfer money from the general fund to the trust fund to cover the annual shortfall. But the federal budget keeps racking up annual deficits, about $1.8 trillion in 2025.
So, the government must borrow the money to pay back the money it borrowed from the Social Security trust fund so it can cover its expenses.
The trustees predict that over the next 75 years, Social Security will spend between $25.1 trillion and $28 trillion more than it receives in payroll taxes.
To pay those benefits, Congress will be forced to borrow the money, adding to the current $38.6 trillion federal debt.
Raising Retirement Age
Several Republicans have suggested raising Social Security’s “full retirement age,” which is currently 67 (for those born in 1960 or later), to 69 or 70.
They correctly point out that life expectancy is much longer today than when the Social Security Act passed in 1935. However, without other changes, just raising the retirement age won’t help much.
Currently, seniors can begin taking Social Security benefits as early as age 62, or any time after that up to the age of 70.
For each year seniors wait to enroll, their annual benefits increase by about 8%.
A person who is waiting to enroll at 70 but dies at 69 receives essentially nothing after 40 or 50 years of paying into the system. A person who lives to 95 makes out like a bandit.
Since seniors can retire anytime between the ages of 62 and 70, raising the full retirement age to, say, 69 really doesn’t change much.
It would push the earnings test penalty imposed on those taking Social Security while still working back by two years, to 69, but millions of seniors would still enroll when it seemed best for them.
If Congress pushed back the early enrollment age from 62 to, say, 65, along with raising the full retirement age, that would save Social Security money.
The Bigger Issue
The only real solution to Social Security’s financial challenges is to transition to personal retirement accounts funded by the payroll tax.
But the problem has always been how to fund current retirees’ benefits if part or all of workers’ payroll taxes are going into their personal retirement accounts.
Congress has repeatedly put off addressing Social Security’s ticking time bomb because of the political peril of doing anything.
But 2033 is only seven years away, and time is running out.
Source: Newsmax | April 2026