Social Security Funds to Run Dry in 8 Years, Prompting 17% Benefits Cut

Social Security’s trust funds are still expected to run out of money by 2034, at which point millions of Americans would see a steep cut in benefits.

If Congress does not act to address the funding shortfall, retirement and disability payments would fall by 17%, according to the latest Social Security Trustees report. The annual report, released Tuesday, provides a glimpse into the financial status of the nation’s two largest safety-net programs, Social Security and Medicare. Last year's report also estimated the funds would deplete in 2034.

"This should be  a wake-up call: Congress needs to act," Myechia Minter-Jordan, CEO of AARP, said in a statement. "Americans have worked hard and paid into Social Security their entire lives, and they deserve to count on it when they retire."

More than 75 million Americans rely on monthly payments from the Social Security Administration. The benefits have two key components: retirement payments and disability payments, each funded by its own trust. For retirement benefits, funds are expected to run out by 2032. Disability payments are expected to pay out for the next 75 years or so.

Assuming the retirement trust first runs out and dips into the disability trust, the combined Social Security coffers could last until 2034.

Earlier this year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the retirement benefit fund could run out by 2032. The trustees came to the same conclusion.

Social Security depletion date: What happens after 2034?

If the trust funds were to run dry, Social Security would go insolvent — but it would not go bankrupt. Because Social Security is mostly funded by taxes in real time through payroll deductions, the majority of benefits would still continue to flow.

It’s expected that benefits payments would be reduced by about 17% if the programs went insolvent. On average, Social Security payments could fall from $1,932.80 to $1,604.23, a decline of nearly $330, Money estimates.

However, experts largely expect insolvency to be a worst-case scenario.

AARP says the narrative that Social Security is going bankrupt is spurring a lot of misinformation. "We're trying to message that Trust Fund insolvency is a solvable issue, but Congress needs to step up to do so," an AARP spokesperson says in an email.

Even if nothing is done, people will continue to receive the bulk of their benefits, according to Alicia Munnell, founder of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

“No one, however, wants to see an immediate ... benefit cut in Social Security retirement benefits," she wrote in report last May.

Despite its current financial woes, Social Security remains strongly popular regardless of political affiliation. And there are several options under consideration to ensure solvency for decades to come.

Some popular fixes with bipartisan support include subjecting wages over $400,000 to the payroll tax, gradually increasing the retirement age and reducing benefits for top earners. In recent years, investment firms like BlackRock have backed fringe proposals to open some of the funds to private investments.

A recent economic projection by Munnell found that equities alone are “not the silver bullet for solving Social Security’s financing problems” and could leave the government with a “big pile of debt," but the strategy could be used in conjunction with some of the other policy reforms to put the program back on sound financial footing.

The silver lining is that lawmakers still have ample time to find the right fix.