Social Security needs reforms to deal with insolvency, say advocates, labor

Americans rely on Social Security; some 62 million U.S. citizens received retirement and survivors benefit at the end of 2025; 8 million Americans received disability benefits. But that’s at risk, and Congress faces a new deadline for overhauling Social Security before benefit cuts may set in for millions of Americans.

Social Security’s annual trustees report, released in June, projects that the program’s trust fund dedicated to paying benefits for retirees, their spouses and children, plus survivors of deceased workers may run out in 2032 — months earlier than previously projected. At that time, just 78% of benefits would be payable, meaning an average benefit cut of $500 per month.

The looming shortfall stems from population changes: more Baby Boomer retiring and a lower birth rate to replace them in the labor force. Also, Republicans’ Big Beautiful Bill had a temporary deduction for seniors that’s expected to deplete the fund faster, according to Richard Johnson, AARP’s senior vice president of financial security. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the BBB will cost Social Security $170 billion over a decade.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in June suggested that he’d release a plan to address ballooning entitlement spending.

“The reason we are in trouble is because over 74% of federal spending is on autopilot, mandatory spending,” Johnson told a Louisiana radio station. “That’s your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and then things like Social Security. They have to be adjusted and fixed.”

(Using the word “entitlement” has been misused. An entitlement is not an undeserved gift; it’s something that’s earned, like veterans’ benefits or interest on a bank account. It’s a transaction.)

Trump’s handpicked Social Security Commissioner, Frank Bisignano, applauded the Big Beautiful Bill as a reaffirmation of Trump’s “promise to protect Social Security.”

Among a range of misinformation about what the new law does is that the law does not protect Social Security. It will actually “hasten Social Security insolvency by a year,” according to Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security at the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) agreed, estimating that the GOP package will accelerate the depletion of Social Security and Medicare’s trust funds.

Americans want Social Security reform – improvements, not change alone. Research from the nonprofit, nonpartisan National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) found that Americans want action now on a long-term funding solution for Social Security. Eighty-seven percent say Congress should act now rather than waiting, and the sentiment holds across gender, age and party affiliation.

NIRS’ “Americans’ Views of Social Security” also found that 87% of Americans agree that Social Security should remain a priority for the nation regardless of budget deficits.

“This crisis exists for two reasons: The rich don’t pay their fair share. And most Republicans – many of them wealthy themselves – look the other way,” said United Steelworkers President Roxanne D. Brown.

“Social Security taxes only the first $184,500 of a person’s income, meaning millionaires and billionaires pay the same into the program as people who work for a living. However, because the rich rake in so much, and at so fast a clip, they finish paying their taxes within hours, weeks or months while most Americans contribute with every paycheck all year long,” she continued. “Removing the so-called cap on Social Security taxes is crucial to addressing the shortfall and preserving benefits for the long term.

“It’s the fix that the USW, other unions and our pro-worker allies continue to demand,” she added. “We fight for Social Security – along with pensions, Medicare and other retiree health care – because workers deserve secure retirements after decades of doing the hard, dangerous jobs that keep this country running. Republicans ignore the obvious remedy of scrapping the cap and instead talk about cutting benefits or raising the retirement age.”

Since 2014, Congressman John Larson (D-Conn.) has repeatedly tried to have Social Security lift its FICA earnings cap. This year, Social Security taxes are deducted at a rate of 6.2% from employees’ first dollar of gross earnings – BUT, as Brown said, only up to $184.500. However, Larson’s measure has been defeated several times, most recently on May 14, 2025, when the House Ways and Means Committee rejected it. The committee members include U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Peoria), who also voted for the Big Beautiful Bill.

 

SIMILAR SUGGESTIONS & OTHER PROPOSALS

* CBS News business analyst Jill Schlesinger says,: “Raise the payroll tax cap: Social Security taxes only apply to income up to $184.500 in 2026. If you make more than that, you stop paying Social Security taxes on the excess. Lifting this cap could solve a big chunk of the problem.”

* Former Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley say that requiring higher-income Americans to pay more into Social Security is the solution to the program’s looming shortfall.

* Republican Senator Bernie Moreno (Ohio) and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) co-authored  commentary calling for Congress to eliminate that Social Security payroll tax cap for high earners.

* Elsewhere, the Washington Post editorialized another option: reduce benefits to the well-to-do. “This year, the Social Security benefits formula gives the very highest-income couples who retire at age 67 over $100,000. [That’s] about one-third of benefits to [all] retirees. There’s no reason that the largest federal spending program should be sending six figures in annual benefits to rich people.”

* Another reform proposal has sparked backlash from AARP. The bipartisan Protecting Retirement Opportunities and Maintaining Income Security for Everyone (PROMISE) Act, aims to break the congressional deadlock on overhauling Social Security. It would have the Social Security Advisory Board –

 an independent, bipartisan advisory committee – send a base bill to Congress seeking to ensure the Social Security trust funds are funded for at least 50 years. It’s meant to create a “procedure to initiate Congressional action on Social Security,” according to a July 14 announcement by Senate sponsors Dick Durbin, the Democratic Whip from Illinois, and Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana.

But despite its intention to head off inaction, AARP in a July 21 letter to Sens. Durbin and Cassidy said the fast-track process could sacrifice openness, deliberation and accountability.

“Your legislation would require an unelected, four-member Advisory Board to put together a 50-year solvency plan in just over a month, with little time for deliberation and limited public input,” AARP Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer Nancy LeaMond wrote. “If they are unsuccessful, any two members of Congress could force votes on their plans in just a few weeks. Members would not be able to amend other Members’ plans once they are filed. The bill would then set up fast-tracked floor debates in the lame-duck session of Congress, just after the November elections, when departing Members are completely unaccountable to voters.”

(Both Durbin’s and Cassidy’s terms will be up in January, when both will leave office.)

 “We strongly object to fast-tracking Social Security changes through Congress, as your bill would do.”

Another AARP voice, its CEO, Myechia Minter-Jordan, added, “This should be a wake-up call: Congress needs to act. Americans have worked hard and paid into Social Security their entire lives, and they deserve to count on it when they retire. No family should see any cuts to what they’ve earned in Social Security.”

Celebrate Labor Day with an in-house union 'film fest'

As Labor Day approaches, one way to celebrate the run-up to (or recovery from) parades might be an in-house “film fest” with a movie or two depicting unions. There ARE good motion pictures, entertaining efforts, that show labor’s struggles, often in a good light.

In “Through Jaundiced Eyes,” a book about how media can depict labor, William Puette writes that media’s image of labor “has been both unrepresentative and virulently negative ... [showing labor to be] by nature violent and mired in corruption.”

More Americans see themselves as working class (47%) than middle class (41%), according to the General Social Survey, so a huge audience is ignored by timid studios.

In fact, when Warners released the Depression-era “Black Fury,” the company released a note: “ ‘Black Fury’ is not a propaganda picture; it offers no solution to labor problems, but presents human beings in a human story.” Nevertheless, it was banned in some states, including Illinois.

Here are 10 excellent films available on video or streaming:

“Black Fury” (1935). This pet project of star Paul Muni was based on a real incident in coal country. Muni plays a friendly miner who’s betrayed, by a woman and strikebreakers. Racketeers seek to control the miners’ union, and Muni’s character finds himself at the center of controversy. Directed by Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca”), it co-stars Ward Bond and Barton MacLane.

“Blue Collar” (1978). Peoria native Richard Pryor co-stars with Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto in a tale about assembly-line culture that can exhaust workers who feel trapped between Big Business and Big Labor. Set in a Detroit-area factory, three co-worker friends find themselves involved in mischief that turns deadly when they try to steal from the union and discover what looks like corruption.

“Bread and Roses” (2000). Ken Loach directed this drama about a group of immigrant janitors who demand their right to organize. The cast is superb, with Adrien Brody as an organizer. Pointedly pro-worker, the film also concedes flaws in everyone.

“Cesar Chavez” (2014). Michael Pena stars in this biopic of the legendary leader of the Farm Workers union, an inspiring figure also active in civil rights and the church. Rosario Dawson and John Malkovich are featured.

“Hoffa” (1992). Starring Jack Nicholson in the title role, this is compelling. However, working people appear just a few times: early in Teamsters history (when workers were weak) and in a mob scene (where strikers confront scabs). Nevertheless, Hoffa, who vanished in 1975, is shown organizing, leading strikes and improving lives, but also making deals with organized crime. Its superb cast includes Armand Assante, John C. Reilly and Danny DeVito, who also directed.

“The Killing Floor” (1984). Produced for PBS, this award-wining drama is a grim glimpse of early 20th century meatpacking and racial strife in Chicago. Damiene Leake stars as a Southern sharecropper who moves north for work. Hired at the stockyards, he finds organizers for a union of African Americans, immigrants and locals, all trying to bargain with powerful packinghouses. Moses Gunn, Alfre Woodard, Dennis Farina and  John Mahoney are featured.

“Matewan” (1987). Filmmaker John Sayles’ vivid account of West Virginia coal miners in the 1920s focuses on what’s remembered as the Alamo of coal-field wars. Chris Cooper stars as a union man organizing miners and overcoming racial divisions. The film is narrated by an adult version of an adolescent miner, preacher and union man who recalls, at film’s end, that “it’s just one big union, the whole world over. That’s what I preached. That was my religion.” James Earl Jones, David Strathairn and Mary McDonnell co-star.

“Norma Rae” (1979). Sally Field won an Oscar for her portrayal of the title role in Martin Ritt’s movie about a working wife and mother who rises to the challenges of organizing her workplace. A plain-spoken, 31-year-old Southern textile worker, Norma Rae shows little interest in the arrival of a union organizer (Ron Liebman) then slowly changes, realizing her priorities and risking her job, marriage and family to do what’s right. Beau Bridges and Pat Hingle co-star.

“Silkwood” (1983). Likeable Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep) joins union organizers in improving working conditions in this biography directed by Mike Nichols. The story traces most of the circumstances that led to the still-unsolved death of the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant worker – en route to deliver incriminating documents to a reporter. It co-stars Kurt Russell, Cher and Craig T. Nelson.

“10,000 Black Men Named George” (2002). This made-for-cable film stars Andre Braugher as Asa Philip Randolph, the organizer who led the Pullman sleeping-car porters union for decades before becoming an AFL-CIO and civil rights leader. Directed by Robert Townshend, the picture co-stars Mario Van Peebles, Brock Peters and Charles S. Dutton. Often overlooked, the 90-minute film is splendid.

PICTURED: Filmed by acclaimed cinematographer Haskell Wexler, filmmaker John Sayles’ “Matewan” is based on the 1920 West Virginia Mine War, here focusing on a rural coal town, where the bosses conspire to sow disunity among workers by pitting newly arrived Black migrants and Italian immigrants against the mineworkers and community.

Election interference - from Trump: What's going on & how it could happen

When an unrepentant man cheats at golf, business and marriage, it’s not unreasonable to consider he’d also try to cheat at anything.

Like an election.

Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, whose new book is titled “Why Fascists Fear Teachers,” said, “I don’t actually care what you call it, but I care very much about what Trump is doing. He is using the presidency for his own benefit and to enrich himself and his family. He is trying to obstruct free and fair elections to maintain power.

“Donald Trump keeps trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” continued the labor leader, who teaches civics and earned a law degree. “He urged on the Jan. 6 rioters and pardoned even those who brutally attacked officers bravely protecting the Capitol. He is aggressively testing the legal and constitutional limits of presidential power.”

 

Why is this happening in the runup to November’s election?

Trump’s approval ratings are in the toilet, according to multiple polls, from CNN to Fox News. Trump has the support of just 34% of Americans in CNN’s latest poll, matching his lowest point just after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He had the approval of 33% in an AP-NORC survey, tying his lowest since 2017, and 32% in Quinnipiac University data, falling to an all-time low in that poll.

 

What exactly is going on?

Here are some concerning developments:

* Trump on March 25 issued an Executive Order essentially trying to take control of voting and elections despite the Constitution reserving that responsibility to the states and Congress.

* In a related move, the Trump regime sent written demands to states to get their list of registered voters containing private personal data such as Social Security numbers and other confidential information.

* After federal Judge Indira Talwani of Boston stopped the March Executive Order, the administration on July 27 appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn that ruling and grab unilateral power over elections. Dozens of states on Aug. 3 filed briefs supporting Talwani’s decision, objecting to the EO’s creating a federal list of voters the administration deems eligible, explicitly threatening election officials, and using the Postal Service to block mail-in ballots to registered voters the feds decide shouldn’t vote.

The attorneys general said his EO is “an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program.”

* Earlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court June 29, approved mail-in balloting in a separate case involving Mississippi.

* The Illinois State Board of Elections on July 15 said it had received threats of prosecution from the U.S. Department of Justice if the state refused to comply with Trump’s demands, and two days later received a separate threat from the Department of Homeland Security.

* On July 31, federal Judge Colleen Lawless of Springfield, Ill., dismissed Trump’s lawsuit demanding Illinois’ voter data, ruling that Illinois does not have to hand over unredacted, sensitive voter registration data to the U.S. Department of Justice.

* Previously, Trump on July 17 delivered a prime-time speech and declassified material he claimed showed fraud in the 2020 election. Instead, analyses of those documents didn’t verify his claims of China’s interference or other assertions. In fact, more than 60 lawsuits Trump filed about the 2020 election were dismissed or dropped, and Republican election attorney Ben Ginsberg said, “There is no substantive evidence to back up the charges that our elections aren’t accurate and certainly not that they're fraudulent.”

* Trump continues to insist the Senate pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of citizenship through verifiable documents. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said that “45 states do not issue the kind of enhanced driver’s license indicating citizenship status that would be needed to verify voting eligibility. An estimated 9% of eligible voters, or 21.3 million Americans, either do not have documents that prove their citizenship, such as passports and birth certificates, or cannot retrieve them in a day or less, according a study by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at University of Maryland.”

Still, the compliant House approved it in February by a 218-213 vote and also last month added its provisions to a defense and budget measure that passed 216-214. Nevertheless, the day after Trump’s prime-time speech, Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she’ll oppose it, joining GOP Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), so the Senate doesn’t have to 60 votes needed to override a veto.

* The Washington Post and other journalists reported the existence of a 17-page EO draft to undermine November’s midterms, a plan that the Brennan Center for Justice reports included trying to rewrite election rules to gain control of election systems, attempting to intimidate election officials, defunding agencies Congress established to safeguard voting, and giving tacit approval of violence to overturn elections by pardoning Jan. 6 insurrectionists and unleashing ICE on communities.

 

How it could happen

Trump sought to set the stage in his speech last month, casting doubts in the minds of his base and maybe other Americans. So some see the possibility that select polling places could see federal agents present Election Day, and late that night the president could claim foreign interference, or say without proof that noncitizens used mail-in ballots or say voting machines were unreliable and order some ballot boxes seized – all illegal but beyond the power of courts to prevent on Nov. 3.

Seeing masked government agents or even National Guard units deployed at polling places is grim, said Virginia Burger, senior defense policy analyst at the Project for Government Oversight.

“The structural divisions between military operations and civil law enforcement – societal norms foundational to our democracy – are eroded, and the potential for violent conflict between Americans and their own military escalates,” Burger said. “Our apolitical military is a cornerstone of our democracy, and the domestic deployment of our troops raises concerns because it shatters that cornerstone.”

Trump’s had decades of being pampered by family or cowering colleagues, or of using bully tactics to get what he wants, so maybe he’s surprised when he loses. But whether Trump is viewed as delusional or dishonest, he’s becoming more dangerous and destructive.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said, “This is escalating quickly. Every single American should be alarmed.”

Dan Vicuña, a senior policy director at Common Cause, a national voting-rights watchdog group, said, “This is an unprecedented power grab that no administration has asked for before, and no court has ever authorized. They’re claiming legal authority to do this, but there really is none there. It’s very important for voting-rights groups on the ground to make clear to voters what the actual rules are and what the limits of the president’s authority is to make changes.”