WASHINGTON — Social Security will be able to pay full benefits until 2034, when it will face a modest gap in funding, the social insurance program’s trustees reported on Wednesday.
Although the findings of the annual report on Social Security’s finances are not surprising, the Obama administration and progressive groups are already seizing on it to support their claims that Social Security’s shortfall is infinitely manageable. In fact, they argue, the distinctly non-apocalyptic assessment from Social Security’s nonpartisan actuaries shows that the country can easily afford to both restore the program’s solvency and expand benefits.
The report’s release isn’t normally an occasion for policy pronouncements. But in a sign of how much attention the White House is giving the issue, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a trustee of Social Security’s trust funds, reiterated President Barack Obama’s call for increasing Social Security benefits at a press conference announcing the release of the trustees report.
“The first challenge is to ensure solvency for future generations of Americans,” Lew said. “At the same time, we should expand and finance improved Social Security benefits, particularly for the most vulnerable.”
Carolyn Colvin, acting Social Security Administration commissioner and another one of the Social Security trust funds’ trustees, also spoke at the press conference, where she quoted from an Obama speech earlier this month in which the president revealed his support for increasing benefits.
Social Security is under some financial strain from the retirement of the large “baby boomer” generation. Starting in 2034, Social Security will only be able to pay 79 percent of promised benefits, unless Congress acts to increase the program’s revenues or reduce spending. (Congress has never failed to address the program’s funding gaps in the past.)
That shortfall will likely be a cause for concern in the coming years, but it is hardly the crisis that many prominent Republicans have made it out to be.
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