Biden failed to meaningfully extend Social Security’s solvency

President Joe Biden did not fulfill his campaign promise to make Social Security more fiscally solvent. After Biden's four years in office, Social Security's fiscal concerns remain grim.

In 2021, the year Biden took office, the Social Security trustees' report projected that the program's trust fund would be depleted by 2033; moving funds from a related disability program trust fund could extend that date to 2034.

In its 2024 report, the trustees projected insolvency dates of 2033 and 2035, respectively — a minimal increase in solvency.

Once insolvency hits, current law mandates a 23% cut in benefits.

And due to the declining number of working Americans compared with retirees, establishing long-term fiscal balance will not be easy. 

"Restoring solvency over the next 75 years would require the equivalent of reducing all future benefits by 24% or increasing revenue by 35%," according to a report by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on federal fiscal policy.

When he was running for reelection, Biden promised not to touch Social Security benefits or raise the retirement age. When Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden as the presidential nominee, she continued that pledge; former President Donald Trump did, too.

To extend solvency, Biden and Harris proposed changes to require higher-income Americans to pay Social Security taxes on all of their earnings, which they currently do not. But even this proposal would not have done much to push back the insolvency date and could have added to the longer-term challenge "by delaying the types of benefit changes that for all practical purposes must be phased in over time" to achieve long-term solvency, said Eugene Steuerle, a fellow at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

In any case, Biden was unable to get this legislation passed.

We rate this a Promise Broken.