Social Security After COVID-19: An Improved Outlook?

Although the 2035 timeframe for full depletion of the Social Security Trust Fund reserves remains the current projection of record, and since the Social Security trustees have not yet released an update for 2021, it’s starting to look like the much-feared acceleration of the solvency issue might be reversing…just a bit anyway. As Wall Street Journal Reporter Kate Davidson puts it, “…the near-term finances of the federal government’s retirement and disability programs appear to have weathered the storm better than many policy analysts had predicted.” Her article cites current thinking that the 2035 depletion date is expected to be advanced only a year or two, although that projection is hedged by thoughts of increased inflation pressure on Social Security costs. Even this, though, may be offset by decreases seen in disability filings in recent months, so it really is a moving target at this point.

The lessening of Social Security’s financial doom projections since the pandemic arrived is the good news, but there’s bad news traveling right along with it. Ms. Davidson offers this quote from the Bipartisan Policy Center’s director of economic policy, Shai Akabas, “With lawmakers facing re-election in 2022, Congress is unlikely to do much with the programs until at least 2023,” and that’s the bad news. As we’ve commented frequently on this site, the Social Security solvency dilemma is not a self-correcting problem, and the longer it takes to get congressional attention to program reform, the more severe the impact on beneficiaries will be. WSJ subscribers can view Ms. Davidson’s article here…

So, while we wait for corrective action on Social Security’s long-term financing problem,there will likely be many viewpoints hitting the media channels. Stay tuned to this site for updates. In the meantime, know that the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) has been deeply engaged in the fight to address Social Security’s long-term solvency problem. Indeed, the opening paragraph of AMAC’s Social Security Guarantee, a proposed framework for legislative action, affirms this commitment: “The promise to guarantee Social Security for all Americans must be kept. AMAC has examined the many proposed solutions presented in the Intermediate Assumptions portion of recent Trustees Reports and selected the alternatives we feel are best suited to save Social Security’s retirement trust fund. We have combined these selected assumptions with several other recommendations to achieve what is the best path to long-term trust fund solvency without raising taxes.” Learn more about AMAC’s position on Social Security here

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