As we all saw at the recent Republican National Convention the Republicans tend to take a doom and gloom approach to America and FOX tends to be the party’s top cheerleader, but sometimes it’s difficult to deny the facts.
As you can see by this recent story from FOX Business, the panic about Social Security running out of money has seemed to subside a bit. A major reason is that through a simple adjustment late last year the Social Security Trust Fund was strengthened to ensure that 100 percent of benefits would be paid up to 2034 even without any changes made to Social Security. This doesn’t mean that there is nothing to worry about because that is just 18 short years away, but a lot can get done in 18 years especially when you are talking about saving one of the most popular government programs in the country’s history.
Despite popular opinion, Social Security is not currently bleeding money. In fact, the Social Security Trust Fund actually has reserves of more than $2.8 trillion and reserves are expected to surpass total costs through 2019. This is when Social Security is expected to be paying out more than it is bringing in and then will have to dip into reserves to pay 100 percent of benefits until it is no longer able to in 2034. As we have discussed in previous blog posts, it’s not like there are not solutions to solving Social Security’s funding gaps in the future, it’s more about which solutions our government representatives choose. Fundamentally, Republicans and Democrats differ on how to solve Social Security’s future funding problems. Most Republicans favor cutting Social Security benefits rather than increasing revenue and Democrats favor increasing revenue and no cuts, in fact, many Democrats favor increasing Social Security benefits as most of America does.
