About Social Security’s Future - Motley Fool
As we move forward into the 2024 federal election cycle, you can expect to hear a lot of rhetoric about Social Security reform, including promises not to touch it. As most probably know by now, the Trustees of Social Security have, for decades, warned that Social Security’s Trust Funds will be depleted in the early to mid 2030s necessitating an across the board cut to everyone’s Social Security payment, unless Congress acts soon to fix the program’s financial issues. Fact is, incoming revenue has been insufficient to cover program costs for a couple of years now and the reserves in the Trust Fund have been used to pay full benefits, a process that will end if the Trust Fund runs dry. But reform of Social Security is a “hot potato” for politicians, with any hint of reforming the program met by accusations of nefarious intent by the opposing political party. The result? Inaction and political paralysis, which – according to Chuck Seletta in this Motley Fool article – is likely to continue until the issue is so urgent that Congress can simply no longer ignore it.
Actually, restoring Social Security to financial soundness is achievable with relatively modest reform. As an example of the leading thoughts on reforming Social Security, the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC, Inc.) believes Social Security must be preserved and modernized. This can be achieved without tax increases by slight modifications to cost of living adjustments and payments to high income beneficiaries plus gradually increasing the full (but not early) retirement age. AMAC Action, AMAC’s advocacy arm, supports raising the threshold at which benefits are taxed and then indexing for inflation, and calls for eliminating the reduction in people’s benefits for those choosing to work before full retirement age. AMAC is resolute in its mission that Social Security be preserved for current and successive generations and has gotten the attention of lawmakers in D.C., meeting with many congressional offices and staff over the past decade.