A shorter Social Security timeline spells serious trouble for millennials and Gen Z
By Michael Jones
The American public received some bleak news last week: The trust funds that Social Security uses to ensure recipients get their full benefits are projected to run out of money by 2034, one year earlier than the Social Security Board of Trustees estimated in their report last year. If federal lawmakers take no action, beneficiaries would receive 81 cents for every dollar that they currently receive once the trust funds are depleted.
Even before the trustees’ 2025 annual report was released, younger Americans were already growing more skeptical that Social Security—a New Deal-era, pay-as-you-go system that uses current workers’ payroll taxes—will be there for them when they retire.
“The people that stand to lose the most are younger workers who paid in, not just for 10 years, sometimes for 20 years or more, depending on how you want to label young, who will see none of their money come back to them,” Martin O’Malley, former Social Security Commissioner during the Biden administration, told me in an interview. “It’s people who worked on the promise that our generation would make them part of this risk pool [and] ensure them against the same poverty that our parents were insured against by their parents.”
O’Malley now chairs Win Back Our Country, a new PAC focused on countering misinformation about Social Security and pushing back against efforts to privatize the program. He argued that one of the most straightforward ways to strengthen the program is simply to require the ultra-wealthy to pay their fair share.
“Most Americans believe it is a grave injustice that a family of four who earns $170,000 and pays, therefore, $10,000 into Social Security is paying the same amount that a man who makes $170 million pays into Social Security—namely, that same $10,000,” he added. “Why? Because no dollars earned above $170,000 have anything taken out and put into Social Security.” (Payroll taxes are only applied to earnings up to the Social Security wage cap of $168,600 for 2025.)
He also challenged a common GOP talking point: Rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse is enough to save the program.
“That would be great if all that were required was for Social Security to take three-tenths of one percent of improper payments down to two-tenths and then we call it a ball game and it’s good for the next 75 years,” he said. “It’s because of fiscally irresponsible acts that benefit the super-wealthy that led to income inequality and fewer dollars being paid into Social Security because the people [who] experienced increased earnings in the 40 years from the 1980s forward were actually the super wealthy.”
One reason the Social Security trust funds are projected to run out of money sooner than expected is a new law passed by Congress earlier this year. The Social Security Fairness Act, signed into law by former President Biden in January before he left office, repealed two long-criticized provisions—the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP)—that had been reducing benefits for public workers who also qualified for Social Security.
Roughly 2.8 million people were affected by the old rules, including retired teachers, police officers, and firefighters who worked jobs that didn’t pay into Social Security but who also held private-sector or other qualifying jobs that did. For decades, the GPO and WEP had penalized these workers, often slashing their monthly checks by hundreds of dollars.
The new law restored full Social Security benefits to those affected and sent retroactive lump-sum payments to cover what had been withheld in 2024. While many advocates celebrated the move as long overdue, it also placed new financial pressure on the trust fund, contributing to the depletion date being moved up by one year in the latest trustee report.
The Social Security Fairness Act had been introduced in multiple sessions of Congress for decades, but always stalled. What changed this year was a rare alignment of bipartisan pressure and sustained grassroots organizing. Retired teachers, police officers, and firefighters—many now living on sharply reduced benefits—launched a national campaign to spotlight the financial hardship caused by the two offset provisions. Their advocacy and growing bipartisan concern about fairness for public workers finally broke through.
The bill passed overwhelmingly in both chambers, by a vote of 327–75–1 in the House and 76–20 in the Senate. That kind of margin is increasingly rare in today’s Congress and was a sign that both parties felt the political urgency to correct what many viewed as a deeply unpopular and outdated policy.
At the same time, the bill’s passage came with real fiscal consequences. By expanding benefits and issuing retroactive payments, the law created new, permanent obligations for the trust fund. It’s a clear example of how bipartisan wins on fairness and equity can reshape the broader solvency conversation now facing Congress.
When Trump took office and Republicans began drafting their sweeping tax, immigration, energy, and defense megabill, the Trump administration encouraged congressional Republicans to include a provision that fulfilled the president’s campaign promise to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits.
The pledge strongly resonated with older voters but carried a massive cost. According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, fully exempting Social Security benefits from taxation would reduce federal revenues by about $950 billion over the next decade and shave roughly $650 billion from Medicare funding, pushing Social Security’s projected insolvency even earlier, by as much as two years. Meanwhile, revenue estimates from U.S. News and the Tax Policy Center estimated that losses would run front-loaded into the trillions alongside only modest relief for middle-income retirees.
In the House-passed tax, immigration, energy, and defense megabill, GOP leaders pivoted to a compromise. Rather than eliminating the tax on benefits, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act introduced a temporary senior standard deduction—$4,000 per filer in the House version, upped to $6,000 in the Senate—effective 2025 through 2028. The deduction provides modest middle-income relief but doesn’t fulfill Trump’s broader promise. And because it expires in just four years, it offers no long-term clarity, which is why Democrats argue the proposal is a weak substitute that underscores the reality that fully exempting benefits demands actual structural reform.
Combined with other provisions in the GOP megabill that would slash billions from Medicaid, SNAP, and Pell Grants to make the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, the president’s unfulfilled promise to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits gives Democrats a clear opportunity to go on offense ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“My message to Democrats is that there is no program that provides a sharper contrast to—and is essential to so many Americans—as Social Security,” O’Malley said. “It’s the clearest contrast with the Donald Trump and Elon Musk worldview. Social Security should be the hill we are prepared to fight, and if necessary, die on for this country’s future.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
