A new budget report pulling the insolvency date for Social Security to within a decade is prompting a lot of unease in Congress.
In its latest outlook report, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund, which pays out retirement and survivors’ benefits, would be exhausted in 2032.
Experts are saying this latest projection brings the insolvency date within the nation’s 10-year budget window for the first time in decades, reports The Hill.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Thursday expressed concern about the development, saying it raises the stakes for Congress to act sooner on shoring up solvency for the program.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) also said he thinks the annual report provides a “push” to ongoing talks around possible fixes, though he’s not raising his hopes just yet.
“I don’t know that I’m predicting success on this in the next few months, but there are good discussions going on,” he said, adding that he’s involved in bipartisan talks looking at the program’s funding issues.
However, as public attention around the program’s funds has risen in recent weeks, so too has partisan feuding. Last year, before the midterm elections, Senator Rick Scott, Republican and previous two-term governor of Florida, issued a campaign manifesto calling for the sunsetting of every federal program – not leaving Social Security and Medicare off the list.
According to the New York Times, this left members of his party squirming as Democrats zeroing in on it as proof that Republicans want to gut federal programs for seniors jumped on it like a duck on a June bug.
Needless to say, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to reiterate once again this week that, no matter what Mr. Scott once said, Republicans want to do no such thing.
“Let me say one more time,” he told reporters, “there is no agenda on the part of Senate Republicans to revisit Medicare or Social Security. Period.”
But Social Security and its shortfall will have to be addressed, despite no one wanting to take the bull by the horns, lest they get gored. Recent figures from the CBO estimated a sharp rise in funding for Social Security over the next 10 years.
Experts say Congress is losing time to make less painful changes to ensure eligible recipients will still be able to receive their full benefits in the coming years.
“We’ve actually known about the need to make reforms for decades, plural,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in an interview. “And every year that we’ve waited means that those ultimate spending reductions and tax increases are going to have to be larger and more painful, hitting people who can afford them less because we waited.”
