When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law 90 years ago this week, he said it would provide economic stability to older people while giving the U.S. “an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.”
Today, the program provides benefits to almost 69 million Americans each month. It’s a major source of income for people older than 65 and is popular across the country and political lines.
It also looks more threatened than ever.
Just as it has for decades, Social Security faces a looming shortfall in money to pay full benefits. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the program has faced more tumult. Agency staffing has been slashed. Unions and advocacy groups concerned about sharing sensitive information have sued. Administration officials, including the president, have falsely claimed that millions of dead people were receiving Social Security benefits. Former top adviser Elon Musk said the program was a potential “Ponzi scheme.”
At an Oval Office event Thursday commemorating the program’s anniversary, Trump said that under his watch “we’re strengthening it.” But the president and Republicans who control Congress have not proposed a long-term solution to shore up the program.
Social Security remains far from the sound economic system that Roosevelt envisioned, due to changes made — and not made — under both Democratic and Republican presidents.
Here’s a look at past and current challenges to Social Security, the proposed solutions and what it could take to shore up the program.
The go-broke date has been moved up
The so-called go-broke date — or the date at which Social Security will no longer have enough funds to pay full benefits — has been moved up to 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035. After that point, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits, according to an annual report released in June. The earlier date came as new legislation affecting Social Security benefits have contributed to earlier projected depletion dates, the report concluded.
The Social Security Fairness Act, signed into law by Democratic President Joe Biden and enacted in January, had an impact. It repealed the Windfall Elimination and Government Pension Offset provisions, increasing Social Security benefit levels for former public workers.
The new tax law signed by Trump in July will accelerate the insolvency of Social Security, said Brendan Duke at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“They haven’t laid out an idea to fix it yet,” he said. Trump on Thursday repeated the claim that his new tax and spending law will eliminate taxes on federal Social Security benefits.
That law has a temporary tax deduction for people 65 and over that applies to all income, not just Social Security. But not all Social Security beneficiaries can claim it; among those who cannot are low-income older adults who do not pay taxes on Social Security.
AARP CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan said the number of beneficiaries is set to increase to 82 million people by the time Social Security turns 100.
“As we look ahead to the next 90 years of Social Security, it’s critical that it remains strong for generations to come,” she said in a statement.
The privatization conversation has been revived
The notion of privatizing Social Security surfaced most recently when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this month said new tax-deferred investment accounts dubbed “ Trump accounts ” may serve as a “ backdoor to privatization,” though Treasury has walked back those comments.
The public has been widely against the idea of privatizing Social Security since Republican President George W. Bush embarked on a campaign to pitch privatization of the program in 2005, through voluntary personal retirement accounts. The plan was not well-received by the public.
Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia University professor and top economist in Bush’s White House, told The Associated Press that Social Security needs to be reduced in size in order to maintain benefits for generations to come. He supports limiting benefits for wealthy retirees.
“We will have to make a choice,” Hubbard said. “If you want Social Security benefits to look like they are today, we’re going to have to raise everyone’s taxes a lot. And if that’s what people want, that’s a menu, and you pay the high price and you move on.”
Another option would be to increase minimum benefits and slow down benefit growth for everyone else, which Hubbard said would right the ship without requiring big tax increases, if it’s done over time.
“It’s really a political choice,” he said, adding “Neither one of those is pain free.”
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for the preservation of Social Security benefits, is more worried that the administration of benefits could be privatized under Trump, rather than a move toward privatized accounts. The agency cut more than 7,000 from its workforce this year as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s effort to reduce the size of the government.
A Social Security Administration representative didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Concerns persist
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in April found that an increasing share of older Americans — particularly Democrats — support the program but aren’t confident the benefit will be available to them when they retire.
“So much of what we hear is that its running out of money,” said Becky Boober, 70, from Rockport, Maine, who recently retired after decades in public service. She relies on Social Security to keep her finances afloat, is grateful for the program and thinks it should be expanded.
“In my mind there are several easy fixes that are not a political stretch,” she said. They include raising the income tax cap on high-income earners and possibly raising the retirement age, which is currently 67 for people born after 1960, though she is less inclined to support that change.
Some call for shrinking the program
Rachel Greszler is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the group behind the Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term. It called for an increase in the retirement age.
Greszler says Social Security no longer serves its intended purpose of being a social safety net for low-income older adults and is far too large. She supports pursuing privatization, which includes allowing retirees to put their Social Security taxes into a personal investment account.
She also argues for shrinking the program to a point where every retiree would receive the same Social Security benefit so long as they worked the same number of years, which she argues would increase benefits for the bottom one-third of earners. How this would impact middle-class earners is unclear.
