Social Security

Paul Ryan's Fiscal Legacy: Lots of Red Ink

By Yuval Rosenberg

House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Wednesday that he won’t seek re-election this year and will retire at the end of his term in January, becoming the most prominent in a wave of Republican lawmakers...
Yellen, Democratic Economists Say Fixing Debt Crisis Isn’t All About Entitlements

By Yuval Rosenberg

Late last month, a quintet of big-name Hoover Institution economists warned in a Washington Post op-ed that a coming “string of perpetually rising trillion-dollar-plus deficits” could soon lead to a...
Which Americans Worry Most About Social Security?

By Yuval Rosenberg

Maybe call it social insecurity? Just over half of American adults between the ages of 50 and 64 say they worry a “great deal” about the Social Security system, according to recent polling by Gallup...
The Old Will Outnumber the Young in the US by 2035

By The Fiscal Times Staff

By 2030, all Baby Boomers will be older than 65, meaning that one in five U.S. residents will be of retirement age, the Census Bureau reports . And by 2035, seniors will outnumber children for the...
The $82 Trillion Problem Washington Has Stopped Talking About

By Yuval Rosenberg

Now that “the anti-deficit hysteria of the Great Recession has given way to a backlash of complacency,” lawmakers and the public are ignoring “an $82 trillion avalanche of Social Security and...

New Budget Projections Show a Rising Tide of Red Ink Ahead

By Michael Rainey

The Congressional Budget Office won’t release new budget projections that include the effects of the President Trump’s tax overhaul until April, but on Friday the deficit hawks at the Committee for a...
Why Trump’s Immigration Plan Could Hurt Social Security

By Michael Rainey

Economists have warned that the Trump administration’s plan to reduce immigration and deport thousands of unauthorized immigrants could impose significant costs in terms of lower growth and lost...
How Trump’s Budget Would Cut the Social Safety Net

By Yuval Rosenberg

As a candidate, President Trump said he would not cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. But his 2019 budget proposal seeks to reduce spending on all three programs and other parts of the social...
Why This Is a Bad Time to Turn a Blind Eye to the Deficit

By Yuval Rosenberg

In a Wall Street Journal column , Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder explains why Washington’s race to increase deficits through a combination of tax cuts and...
What Was Notably Absent from Trump’s State of the Union Address

By Yuval Rosenberg

President Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night lasted an hour and 20 minutes — the third-longest ever, just nine minutes shy of the record . The president touched on a long list of...

Americans Are More Willing to Cut Social Security Than Once Thought

By Eric Pianin

It has long been an axiom in politics that Social Security is politically radioactive, and that politicians court political disaster by pressing for major changes in the nation’s premier retirement...
Here’s a First Draft of the GOP’s Plan to Overhaul Social Security

By Eric Pianin

A senior Republican House chairman has begun circulating a proposal that would make major cuts and changes to the Social Security system in the coming decades, a move to contravene in President-elect...
A New Plan to Save Social Security for Another 75 Years

By Eric Pianin

Amid turmoil over the future of Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid, a bipartisan coalition on Capitol Hill is renewing its call for creation of a blue-ribbon commission to recommend changes in Social...
How Social Security Lifts People Out of Poverty, State by State

By Janna Herron

More than 22 million Americans, young and old, were lifted out of poverty last year because of their Social Security benefits.
This Year’s Social Security Cost of Living Hike Buys a Starbucks Frappuccino

By Eric Pianin

For the third consecutive year, the nation’s 65 million seniors will see virtually no increase in their Social Security benefits, even as premiums for their federally funded health care and...