Nobody stole or misused the Social Security taxes (trust fund) money, nobody‼️
Here is the current status
The following is text from the last Social Security Trustee Report.
Based on the Trustees’ intermediate assumptions, Social Security’s cost exceeds total income in 2025, as it has since 2021, and remains higher than income throughout the remainder of the 75-year projection period.
The OASI Trust Fund is projected to have sufficient reserves to pay full benefits on time until 2033. The DI Trust Fund is projected to have sufficient reserves to pay full benefits throughout the 75-year projection period ending in 2099. Legislative action will be needed to prevent OASI reserve depletion.
In the absence of such legislation, continuing income to the trust funds at the time of reserve depletion would be sufficient to pay 77 percent of OASI benefits.
Social Security’s combined trust funds are projected to cover full payment of scheduled benefits on a timely basis until the trust fund reserves become depleted in 2034.
Full payment of benefits until the hypothetical combined reserves are depleted in 2034 implicitly assumes that the law will have been changed to permit the transfer of funds between OASI and DI as needed. At the time of reserve depletion, projected continuing income to the combined trust funds equals about 81 percent of the program cost.
By 2099, continuing income equals about 72 percent of the program cost.
The actuarial deficit for the combined trust funds under the intermediate assumptions is 3.82 percent of taxable payroll for the 75-year period 2025-99
In 2025 the median weekly earnings were $1,204. That means a 1.91% increase in payroll taxes would average $23, less for half of workers. That’s a small price to pay for better long-term financial security. The impact could be less if a bit more of the increase was on employers, say 1.5% and 2.32.
The best way to think of these taxes is as an insurance premium. It buys protection for disability, retirement income, survivor and family benefits.
Here is why the trust reserves are being depleted and why incoming revenue is insufficient to pay full benefits.
Primary Reasons for Depletion
1. Demographic Shifts (Aging Population and Baby Boomers):
The biggest driver is the large wave of baby boomers retiring. In 1960, there were over 5 workers paying taxes per beneficiary; today it’s about 2.7 workers per beneficiary, projected to drop below 2.5. More retirees are drawing benefits while fewer workers support the system.
2. Eroding Taxable Payroll Base Due to Wage Inequality:
Payroll taxes (12.4% split between employee/employer) apply only up to a cap adjusted annually. As income growth has concentrated at the top, a smaller share of total earnings is taxed—down from ~90% in 1983 to ~83% today. High earners’ wages above the cap escape taxation, reducing revenue growth (but they also are not counted for benefit liability.
3. Recent Policy Changes Increasing Costs:
Laws like the Social Security Fairness Act (2025) expanded benefits for certain public sector workers (e.g., teachers, police), accelerating depletion. Reducing the portion of SS benefits subject to income tax also reduces trust income.
4. Economic Factors and Legacy Effects:
The Great Recession reduced payroll tax revenue and accelerated some retirements. Slower fertility rates and labor force growth also play roles. The 1983 reforms anticipated some aging but not the full extent of inequality and economic shocks.
Social Security is largely a pay-as-you-go system: Current workers’ taxes mostly fund current beneficiaries. The trust funds were built up as a buffer during years when there were more workers, but that buffer is now being spent down.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
There is no reason the top end of earners couldn’t be touched, up to say the 90% of wage earner base. That’s where it was back in the day. Also reduce the formula on the higher earners or adjust the COLA down for them. That would reduce pressure to increase 1.91% on median and lower earnings. A tax bite that large won’t fly legislatively.
Benefit Jack makes some salient points, especially about the ongoing deficits that Congress sees as no problem. We need some changes in more than just Social Security.
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There is no reason the top end of earners couldn’t be touched, up to say the 90% of wage earner base.
The FICA Wage caps out at $184,500. The 90th percentile for individuals is $208,152. At current rates of escalation, we will be there in two years.
I have my own ideas regarding reform. Since they require Congress and President Trump to confirm that they have been lying pretty much every year since 1977, I doubt anyone will approve those changes.
Trump Recommendation
With respect to Trump, here is what I think he should do. Once the Republican nominee for president is known, September 1 2028, I would direct Congress that the President would not sign any budget bill unless it included:
A cap on FICA wages of $100,000, applied prospectively starting January 1, 2030, and
A cap on earnings used in the benefit calculation of $100,000, applied to all who commence Social Security benefits on or after January 1, 2030, and
A 4% increase (from 6.2% to 10.2%) in the employer contribution to Social Security effective January 1, 2030.
So, instead of an employer contribution of $3,100 for someone with $50,000 of earnings or $6,200 for someone with $100,000 in FICA wages, the new amounts would be $5,100 or $10,200.
Those who have been paying FICA taxes on income > $100,000, every year since 2008, would have their benefits limited in the calculation.
Trump would be able to claim he saved social security for all future generations, and everyone else, especially Democrats would be able to blame him for increased taxes, a la George H. W. Bush “read my lips no new taxes.”
That would return Social Security to a program designed to minimize poverty in old age.
If We Do Another Iteration of 1983 changes
To match life expectancy, I would change the Normal Retirement Age. So, the early retirement factor at age 62 would no longer be a 30% reduction, but would gradually increase to a 48% reduction, 6% a year, up to 8 years early. So, if the individual was entitled to $1,000 a month at age 70, they could elect $520 a month at age 62. I would increase the initial benefit 8% per year up to age 75. So, an individual who was entitled to $1,000 a month at age 70, could delay commencement to age 75 and receive ~$1,470 a month. And, to match the difference from age 18 (age of majority) and the Normal Retirement Age (67), I would increase the number of years in the denominator from 35 to 50.
Here is how: To change the Normal Retirement Age, 67 for people born after 1960, I would add three months per year, starting in 2028 (67 and 3 months for people born in 1961), and three months for every subsequent year until fully phased in of age 70 for those born in 1972. To change the number of years of earnings in the denominator from 35 to 50, I would add one year to the denominator of the benefit calculation for each year starting in 2028, for 15 years, fully phased in at 50 years in 2042.
And, to sell it, I would change the taxation so that a worker receives his/her contributions, dollar for dollar, or penny for penny, tax free first. Then, the employer contribution, taxable (as if it were a pension). And, then, once every dollar paid in on the worker’s behalf has been received, the worker would receive a confirmation of that fact, and, that they are now being funded by other people’s contributions. And, I would make the same communication changes (not tax) for Medicare Part A.
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Misuse: The incorrect, improper, or dishonest use of something, such as applying a tool, resource, or substance in a way that was not intended. It refers to using something wrongly, carelessly, or for the wrong purpose.
The assets were misused when Congress decided to concurrently run $1 – $2 Trillion deficits. Perhaps you can justify using the monies to reduce other debt, but, not the drunken sailor spending Congress engaged in.
With respect to the long term issues, no, it wasn’t limited to:
Demographic shifts,
Eroding taxable payroll wage base,
Recent policy changes,
Economic factors.
It was about a history of vote buying that goes back to the FDR Administration, with the first set of changes to the original design, and massively screwed up by changes in the Carter Administration in response to double digit inflation.
Even the original Social Security beneficiary, Ida Mae Fuller, ended up receiving benefits she was not entitled to under the initial Social Security Act.
This vote buying scheme has been underway since 1940.
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‘Vote buying scheme’… Is that like, when people vote for you, you pass the legislation the majority wants?
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No. Vote buying is when you pass legislation with added benefits today and send the bill to people too young to vote, and generations yet unborn.
I suppose it can also be when you pass legislation like Health Reform or the Social Security Fairness Act. As Donald Berwick, CMS director selected by President Obama once said: “… any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must — must — redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poor and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is, by definition, redistribution.”
But that is not what our Health Reform accomplished.
Unfortunately for America’s children, grandchildren and future generations of America, both Health Reform and the Social Security Fairness Act are unfunded spending. Since we got the first, 3/23/10, profligate, unfunded spending has added $29+ Trillion to our national debt (increasing it from $10 Trillion to $39+ Trillion) in just 16 years! Worse, we seem to have no ability to change this spending habit, running $1.5 – $2 Trillion a year in annual deficits for as far as the eye can see, or the CBO cares to predict. And, now that we got the second, that has shortened the time frame where the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted by almost a full year – as President Biden awarded Social Security benefits to state government workers by removing offsets and limits.
There are lots of other examples of paying off your political constituency with specific spending – such as the union penion bailout (a modest spend of $90+ Billion dollars). I might not poke at that except the legislation DID NOT prospectively resolve the funding problems – problems that have been evident since the CARTER Administration (where President Carter signed into law, 46 years ago, the Multiemployer Pension Protection Act of 1980 – 1980! 1980!)
And, yes, since 1940, other than the Reagan stopgap changes in 1983, almost every change to Social Security expanded benefits without appropriate additional funding that would have ensured the promises were sustainable. They were nothing more than vote buying schemes.
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