GOP Debate: Setting The Record Straight On Social Security

During Thursday's Republican Presidential debate CNN's Dana Bash dishonestly framed a question about Social Security:

Mr. Trump, you don't want to raise the retirement age, and you also don't want to cut benefits even for wealthier Americans. But according to the Social Security Administration, unless adjustments are made, Social Security is projected to run out of money within 20 years.

There were other misleading questions and lots of misleading answers. So here are some facts about Social Security that can help people who are worried by these Republican lies and scare tactics.

1) Social Security is not going to "run out of money" and is not "going broke." The Social Security Trust Fund will rise to approx. $2.9 trillion at the end of 2019. Then it begins to draw on this fund and there is a potential funding shortfall in about 20 years. If nothing is changed the program would be forced to pay a bit less out to recipients. There are many proposals for fixing this, most do not involve future cuts in benefits.

2) This shortfall (like so many of our national problems) is largely the result of income inequality. In 1983 the "Greenspan" Social Security Commission correctly calculated increases in future income but did not anticipate that so much of that income would go to people "at the top." Because income that pays into the fund is "capped" the fund does not collect its share from that upper income, hence the shortfall.

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