A nonpartisan analysis looks at whether he’d close the coming shortfall
By Richard Eisenberg, Next Avenue Editor Unquestionably, there are plenty of urgent issues in the 2020 presidential election. But there’s one less urgent, yet equally critical one, that hasn’t received much attention: Social Security trust fund to pay retirement benefits is due to be depleted by 2035, perhaps even sooner due to the pandemic. The Congressional Budget Office sets the date as 2031. What would President Donald Trump and Vice President Joe Biden do about it? (To be clear, trust fund insolvency wouldn’t mean Social Security wouldn’t pay any benefits starting in 2035; just that it would only have money to pay 79% of scheduled benefits at that time.) We don’t know much about the answer to the Social Security solvency question for the president, because he hasn’t released specific Social Security reform plans. Biden has laid out a series of Social Security proposals, ranging from payroll tax increases on Americans earning over $400,000 to increased benefits for low-income retirees, widows and widowers, and the oldest Americans. The nonpartisan Urban Institute think tank just analyzed what Biden’s plans would mean for Social Security. Its conclusion: if enacted, they would “close about a quarter of Social Security’s long-term financial shortfall.” And, the researchers say, “Social Security would still run a deficit every year under [Biden’s] plan, but not as much as it would under current law.” Bottom line: “His plan would extend the life of the program’s trust funds by five years, to 2040.” The Urban Institute report notes that Biden would use some of the extra payroll tax revenue to increase Social Security benefits for some Americans. I’ll explain how the authors of the Urban Institute report (Karen E. Smith, Richard W. Johnson and Melissa M. Favreault), “How Would Joe Biden Reform Social Security and Supplemental Security Income?” came to that view shortly. The public is, unsurprisingly, divided about their confidence in the future of Social Security depending on who’s elected, based on a September 2020 poll by Simplywise.
