Social Security is still fending off myths

The concept of retirement as we know it was born 90 years ago this month.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law on Aug. 14, 1935, ushering in the idea of a time of independence from work.

At that time, Americans had no meaningful way to plan for an income after work ended — large-scale pensions and retirement savings programs did not exist. When most people stopped working, they either relied on their families or became impoverished.

Some wound up in poorhouses — government-run facilities that provided support, such as shelter and food, often in exchange for work. “Almost every state had them, and they mainly housed old people,” said Nancy Altman, a Social Security advocate who has written several books about the history of the program.

It was the depths of the Great Depression, and roughly half of America’s older population lived in poverty.

In the decades since, Social Security has played a key role in improving the economic security of older adults — it prevented an additional 16.3 million adults age 65 and older from living below the poverty line in 2023, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Without Social Security, that would have meant a poverty rate of 37.3%, compared with the rate of 10% that year.

Roosevelt was also inaugurating a new era of social insurance in the United States — the concept of national programs sponsored by the government that pool contributions by employers and workers to protect Americans. Today, social insurance programs include not only Social Security, but also Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment insurance.

Nearly all American workers contribute to Social Security and can expect to receive a benefit — and the program distributes not only retirement benefits but also protection against disability and the death of a spouse or parent. By contrast, roughly half of private sector workers participate in a workplace retirement plan, and many reach retirement with inadequate savings, reports by the Center for Retirement Research show.

But as it turns 90, Social Security is at a crossroads. The program’s retirement trust fund is forecast to be depleted in 2033, which would lead to large benefit cuts if Congress fails to act. And the Social Security Administration is under pressure from the Trump administration, which has pushed out about 7,000 employees at a time when its workforce already was spread thin. The new Republican leadership of the agency has begun overhauling its systems, asserting that the organization is rife with waste, fraud and abuse.

Getting Social Security back on track requires sorting truth from fiction. Here are six often-repeated myths about Social Security — and the realities.

1. It’s running out of money

The program’s benefit payments, which are made from payroll taxes and interest on bonds, have exceeded that income since 2021. The difference is made up by drawing down the program’s reserves from the trust fund, which are now projected to be exhausted in 2033. Enough payroll tax revenue would be coming in at that point to pay 77% of benefits. That would be a huge cut, especially for middle- and lower-income households that rely on Social Security for most of their income. But many experts see little or no chance that Congress will allow cuts of that magnitude to occur.

“The question will be what to do — allow a 23% cut, add enough new funding to make sure we keep 100% of benefits, or some sort of compromise?” said Alicia Munnell, senior adviser at the Center for Retirement Research.

One possibility: Congress could decide to inject general revenue until a longer-term fix can be found. “It’s not the ideal solution, but I’m certainly hearing it raised by people in both political parties,” said Rebecca Vallas, CEO of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

2. Aging boomers are to blame

An aging population has accelerated the drawdown of the trust fund, but that was always anticipated. The largest factor is technical — the trustee forecast looks 75 years into the future; every year, the forecast picks up a year with a large negative balance between payments and revenue, and drops a year with a positive balance.

Lower birthrates also play a role, translating into fewer new workers coming into the system. And income inequality has pushed a greater share of national wages above the cap on the amount of pay subject to the payroll tax: $176,100 this year. In 1983, 90% of earnings were subject to the payroll tax — a figure that has dropped to just 83%.

“A greater share of wages is going to the wealthiest among us, and that is eroding Social Security’s tax base,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Progressives prefer raising new revenue by raising or eliminating the payroll tax cap, and often propose raising benefit levels. Centrist solutions usually include a mixture of tax increases and benefit cuts. Conservatives prefer higher retirement ages and trimming benefits for more affluent retirees — although most experts say it’s too late to restore solvency through cuts. Public opinion surveys have found strong consensus across party lines, age groups and income levels for eliminating the cap on payroll tax contributions, and gradually increasing their own payroll contributions.

3. It helps drive the deficit

Social Security is self-funded mainly by the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, or FICA, better known as the payroll tax. The FICA rate for Social Security is 12.4%, split between employers and employees. A smaller share of revenue comes from interest on trust fund reserves and taxation of benefits.

By law, Social Security cannot borrow money to pay benefits or tap the federal government’s general coffers — one reason the shortfall is projected for 2033.

4. The trust fund is just IOUs

There are two trust funds, one for retirement and the other for disability insurance. They act as a sort of checking account — revenue flows in, and payments flow out.

The two funds have held large surpluses over the past few decades after the last major reform legislation in 1983; the combined reserves stood at $2.72 trillion in 2024.

The surplus funds are invested in special issue Treasury bonds. When benefits exceed incoming revenue, the bonds are redeemed. That structure hasn’t prevented politicians from undermining confidence — perhaps most famously when President George W. Bush, proposing to partly privatize the program, falsely claimed in 2005 that there was no trust fund, just IOUs.

“The bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government, just like any other federal bond,” said Richard W. Johnson, director of the program on retirement policy at the Urban Institute. “It’s hard to say they are imaginary, since they’ve been used to pay benefits for a number of years now.”

5. Benefits need to be cut now

Politicians sometimes argue that cutting benefits is the only way to preserve the program for younger generations. Very often, that involves a call to raise the full retirement age, when you can claim 100% of your earned benefit.

The 1983 reforms cut benefits by gradually raising the full retirement age from 65 to 67 — and that change falls most heavily on workers born after 1960. The higher retirement age cut benefits 12% to 14%, on average, Johnson said. And we haven’t yet seen the full effect of the cuts on older adults. The “higher retirement age” argument often rests on the proposition that “we’re all living longer.” But higher longevity isn’t distributed equally — the gains have been achieved almost exclusively by higher-income, better-educated people.

Johnson said future generations would benefit from the way Social Security adjusts benefits to reflect wage growth in the economy. People born in the first decade of this century will receive nearly twice as much in lifetime Social Security benefits in real (inflation-adjusted) terms compared with those born in the 1950s, he said.

But raising the retirement age, Johnson said, “would harm many low-income retirees who wouldn’t be able to work longer.”

6. Waste and fraud abound

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began a shake-up and lightning restructuring of the Social Security Administration this year that caused the departures of thousands of employees, thinning an already overstretched workforce. Musk also claimed, falsely, that Social Security was a “Ponzi scheme.”

But less than 1% of the more than $1 trillion in benefits the agency pays out each year is considered improper.

Since the layoffs, remaining workers have been reassigned to fill gaps in its customer service operation. But customer service continues to struggle, said Tracey Gronniger, a managing director at Justice in Aging, an advocacy group focused on older adult poverty.

“The field office staff is so overwhelmed that they’re having trouble providing the services that people need,” Gronniger said.

The Social Security Administration has said customer service is improving, but it has stopped publishing detailed metrics, such as benefit processing times and waiting time on the toll-free phone line.

Barton Mackey, a press officer for Social Security, pointed to data it reports online: “We are publishing metrics to our website that better reflect the real customer service experiences of the people we serve and highlight the fastest ways our beneficiaries can get service.”

What’s next?

At the signing ceremony for Social Security in 1935, Roosevelt said, “We can never insure 100% of the population against 100% of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.”

Roosevelt also noted that the law “is by no means complete.” Congress has amended, expanded and improved Social Security many times since the program was created — and more will be required.

“The architects of Social Security always intended it to be expanded and strengthened across generations,” Vallas said. “It’s really important to reflect on history, but also to look ourselves in the eye and ask how we’re doing when it comes to keeping that promise that we made 90 years ago.”