The popular Social Security retirement insurance program would run out of money faster if Congress adopted policies promoted by former President Donald Trump, according to a new analysis by an authoritative budget group.
Despite Trump’s promise to protect Social Security, his proposals to cut tax breaks on tips and overtime pay, among other things, would “dramatically worsen” Social Security’s financial position, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said Monday.
“Social Security will be only nine years away from insolvency when the next President takes office,” the CRFB said on its website. “If President Trump’s campaign agenda were enacted in full, we estimate it would shrink that window by one-third, to only six years.”
Social Security’s trust fund has enough money to pay full benefits until 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office, at which point incoming revenue from payroll taxes would cover only 83% of benefits. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which opposes large budget deficits, said Trump’s various proposals would hasten the fund’s depletion to 2031.
The harm to Social Security’s finances under Trump’s agenda results from a combination of proposals, some directly related to Social Security, and others not.
Trump’s idea to cut taxes on tipped income, overtime pay and Social Security benefits, for instance, takes away money that funds benefits. Those proposals would reduce funding by as much as $2 trillion over a decade, per the CRFB.
Trump’s proposals for tariffs on imported goods, plus mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, meanwhile, could reduce trust fund revenue by as much as $750 billion. The former policy would impact Social Security by boosting inflation, thereby forcing Social Security to speed up its annual cost-of-living adjustments. Mass deportations would reduce the number of workers paying into the program.
The former president often claims immigrants are a drain on Social Security, but they help the program’s finances by contributing through automatic payroll deductions even when they are ineligible to receive benefits in the future.
Trump has steered the Republican Party away from its past support of cutting Social Security benefits in order to improve the program’s finances, but his ad hoc campaign promises to cut taxes for various voter groups would make it more difficult to balance the program’s projected revenue and spending. Trump has said he would close the gap with faster economic growth, which is a dubious proposition, while Democrats have suggested improving Social Security solvency entirely through taxes on higher earners.
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“The so-called experts at CRFB have been consistently wrong throughout the years,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement, without pointing to examples of CRFB being wrong.
“The only candidate who poses a threat to the solvency of Social Security is dangerously liberal Kamala Harris — whose mass invasion of millions of illegal aliens will, if they are allowed to stay, cause Social Security to buckle and collapse,” Leavitt said. “By unleashing American energy, slashing job-killing regulations, and adopting pro-growth America First tax and trade policies, President Trump will quickly rebuild the greatest economy in history and put Social Security on a stronger footing for generations to come, all the while eliminating taxes on Social Security for America’s well-deserving seniors.”