The Social Security Trustees released their 2026 annual report this month. The headline number is that the Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund is projected to be depleted in 2033, one year earlier than last year’s estimate. Once the trust fund is empty, the program does not stop. It continues to pay benefits out of ongoing payroll tax receipts. Those receipts, however, only cover about 79 percent of scheduled benefits. So under current law, in 2033, every retiree on the program takes an automatic 21 percent cut.
This is not a partisan claim. The 2033 depletion date comes from the Trustees themselves, three of whom are statutorily nonpartisan and two of whom are political appointees from the current administration. AARP has been pressing this issue for two years. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which leans conservative, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which leans liberal, both publish materials saying essentially the same thing about the math. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have both run lead editorials in the last month urging Congress to act. The reporting consensus is rare and clean.
So what would fix it? There are basically three levers. You can raise the payroll tax. You can raise the income cap, which currently exempts earnings above $168,600 from the Social Security tax entirely. You can cut benefits, either across the board or for higher earners. Every serious proposal is some combination of those three. Most plans floated by Democrats lean on raising the cap; most plans floated by Republicans lean on changing the retirement age for younger workers. None of the proposals are politically painless. All of them are politically less painful than letting the cliff arrive on schedule.
The trustees have flagged the depletion date in each annual report since 2010, when it was projected to occur in 2037. The intervening years saw three serious bipartisan proposals: the 2010 Simpson-Bowles framework, the 2016 Bipartisan Policy Center plan, and the 2023 Social Security 2100 Act. None reached a floor vote in both chambers. The 2025 Social Security Expansion Act, introduced by Senate Democrats, would raise the cap to $250,000 and extend solvency to 2096 per SSA actuarial scoring. The House Republican Study Committee FY26 budget includes a gradual retirement-age increase to 70 for workers currently under 40, extending solvency to 2057 per CRFB scoring. Neither proposal has cleared committee.
The pre-2033 timeline matters for any benefit recalibration. Phased changes implemented now spread the adjustment over eight years; changes implemented in 2032 would have to take effect almost immediately. Every member of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees has a position on Social Security on record from the FY26 markup. Constituents asking which lever a member would pull will not get a vague answer if they ask in committee correspondence rather than at a town hall.