By Barbara Burt
On the fourth Wednesday of every month, my husband and I gratefully find Social Security benefit payments have landed in our bank account, just in time to help pay the mortgage. About a fifth of all Georgians receive Social Security benefits: retirees, children of a deceased worker, widows and widowers, and disabled workers and their families.
So you might feel frightened upon hearing the fake news: “Social Security is running out of money!” This is a message long pushed by Wall Street and the wealthy to weaken support for the program. And Republican lawmakers have joined them. In March, the Republican Study Committee, which consists of 80-percent of House Republicans—including our own representative, Michael Collins—proposed a budget that included cutting Social Security.
Since it began in 1935, Social Security has worked like an annuity: you pay Social Security taxes during your working life and, when you retire, you receive a set monthly payment. Experts at the Social Security Administration estimate its future needs by tracking population data. For example, millions of retiring baby boomers were no surprise—experts accounted forboomers at birth.
The 2024 Social Security Trustees Report states the program will pay out benefits at one hundred percent until 2035. By then, additional funds will be needed, or benefits will drop by about 17 percent. According to Social Security’s chief actuary, the major reason for the predicted shortfall is rising inequality, the exploding gulf between the average and highest salaries. Currently, you don’t pay Social Security taxes on income over $168,600, which means almost 20 percent of U.S. wages are not subject to Social Security taxes. (Twenty percent of U.S. wages go to the top six percent of wage earners.) This disparity cost Social Security more than $1.4 trillion over the last decade. Asking the wealthy to pay their fair share would go a long way to fully funding Social Security past 2035.
In contrast, Michael Collins and the Republican Study Committee’s budget calls for $1.5 trillion in cuts to Social Security in the coming ten years. These cuts include raising the retirement age above the current age of 67 and slashing middle-class benefits. They want to convert Social Security into a flat, poverty-level payment instead of an earned benefit.
Polls show that 92 percent of us think cutting Social Security is a terrible idea. Almost two million Georgians receive Social Security, and its modest benefits lift a quarter of those beneficiaries out of poverty. Don’t you think elected officials who care about their constituents’ welfare would look for ways to expand the program, not slash it?
Michael Collins and the Republicans have it backwards.
Barbara Burt is a resident of Athens