For most Americans, Social Security is more than just a check that’ll show up in their mailbox or be deposited in their bank account once they retire. It represents a financial foundation that keeps retirees afloat and out of poverty.

In each of the last 23 years, Gallup has surveyed retirees to gauge how important Social Security income is to their financial well-being. Consistently, 80% to 90% of respondents have relied on their monthly check, to some varied degree, to make ends meet.

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Ensuring the longevity of Social Security should be a top priority for our elected officials in Washington, D.C., which includes President Donald Trump. Yet for the last four decades, the financial outlook of America’s leading social program has deteriorated.

For his part, Trump has repeatedly claimed that neither he nor his administration will touch Social Security. But did President Trump renege on this stance? Interestingly, the answer isn’t as straightforward as you might think.

President Trump delivering remarks. Image source: Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks, courtesy of the National Archives.

What’s wrong with Social Security?

Before digging into the details of Donald Trump’s Social Security promise and addressing whether he skirted his pledge, it’s important to have the proper background of how we got to this point.

In January 1940, the very first retired-worker benefit check was mailed out. Every year since then, the Social Security Board of Trustees has published a report that examines the financial health of the program. This report provides detailed information on how every dollar in income is collected, as well as allows anyone to see where those dollars are spent. Think of it as a way to look at Social Security’s balance sheet each year.

But what’s potentially more valuable within these annual Trustees Reports is their forward-looking forecasts. Specifically, the Trustees account for changes in fiscal and monetary policy, as well as an assortment of demographic shifts — these demographic changes are primarily responsible for the program’s issues — to project how financially sound Social Security will be over the long term, defined as the 75 years following the release of a report.

Since 1985, the Trustees have cautioned of a long-term funding obligation shortfall. In easy-to-understand terms, forecast income over the coming 75 years won’t be sufficient to fully cover benefits, including cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs). As of the 2024 Trustees Report, this cash shortfall stood at a staggering $23.2 trillion.

The more unnerving scenario is the forecast depletion of the Old-Age and Survivors Trust Fund’s (OASI) asset reserves by 2033. The OASI is responsible for making monthly payments to retired workers and survivor beneficiaries. Although an exhaustion of the OASI’s asset reserves doesn’t mean Social Security is bankrupt or insolvent, it does firmly imply the existing payout schedule, including COLAs, isn’t sustainable. If the OASI’s asset reserves are gone in eight years, as forecast, Social Security checks for retired workers and survivors could be slashed by 21%.

The OASI’s asset reserves are expected to run dry by 2033. US Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund Assets at End of Year data by YCharts.

Did Donald Trump break his Social Security promise? Yes and no…

With a more thorough understanding of the challenges that lie ahead, let’s circle back to the question at hand: Did President Donald Trump break his promise about Social Security?

The answer, which is based on context, is both yes and no.

In one respect, the president has, thus far, held up his end of the bargain to not touch Social Security, with respect to existing payouts.

The prevailing concern for some current and future beneficiaries is that a unified Republican government might enact sweeping benefit cuts that reduce Social Security outlays. GOP lawmakers have long favored gradually increasing the full retirement age, which would reduce lifetime benefits collected for future generations of retirees. Trump has been adamant that raising the full retirement age is off the table, which would mean no chance of any direct cuts to Social Security checks.

Additionally, there are currently no proposals to directly cut Social Security benefits from the president or members of his party that have advanced in either house of Congress. Plainly, Trump isn’t coming for your Social Security check, and he’s held firm to that commitment through his first two-plus months of his second term.

However, President Trump has left the door wide open for efficiency-based cost reductions, which is a way of saying that he has reneged on his promise to not touch Social Security.

For example, Trump’s Feb. 11 executive order, which is designed to support the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in its workforce optimization initiatives, requires federal agencies to reduce their costs. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is responding by reducing its workforce by 7,000 jobs and shuttering some of its offices.

Furthermore, all four annual budget proposals released by Trump during his first term in the White House called for efficiency-based reductions to Social Security. The cumulative cost savings of these proposals ranged from a low of $24 billion to a peak of $72 billion over 10-year periods.

One way the president attempted to make Social Security more efficient is by calling for a reduction in retroactive benefits for workers with disabilities to six months from the current 12 months.

While Donald Trump hasn’t broken his promise about Social Security in the sense that he’s not directly reducing benefit checks, he has broken a line-in-the-sand pledge not to touch the program through his efforts to cut administrative costs and make it more efficient.

Image source: Getty Images.

Tough choices will need to be made sooner than later

Moving beyond the semantics of whether Trump hasn’t been true to his own words about Social Security exposes a bigger problem. Even if DOGE oversees the optimization of the SSA’s workforce and President Trump implements some modest efficiency-based changes, the cost reductions associated with these moves are a veritable drop in the bucket compared to the $23.2 trillion (and growing) long-term funding deficit. These changes also do next to nothing to avert the OASI’s forthcoming asset reserve depletion.

Strengthening Social Security for current and future generations will require some tough and potentially unpopular choices from our elected officials.

Frequently, people on social media message boards call for high earners to pay more into the system. In 2025, earned income (wages and salary, but not investment income) between $0.01 and $176,100 is subject to the 12.4% payroll tax that’s primarily responsible for funding Social Security. Approximately 6% of all workers earn above the maximum taxable cap ($176,100), meaning at least some of their income will be exempt from the payroll tax.

Most Democrats have favored raising the payroll tax earnings cap, including former President Joe Biden, as well as recent presidential candidate Kamala Harris. While raising the tax cap would generate immediate income for the program and potentially kick the can on the OASI’s asset reserve depletion date years or decades down the road, taxing the well-to-do, by itself, doesn’t close the aforementioned $23.2 trillion long-term funding shortfall.

Conversely, Republicans’ preference for raising the full retirement age would be successful in reducing outlays for future generations. However, going this route would take quite some time before cost savings are recognized. This means it does nothing to thwart the OASI’s forecast asset reserve depletion by 2033.

But if the core proposals for Democrats and Republicans are combined into one plan, it would, collectively, do a much better job of strengthening Social Security than the unilateral proposals. Given that 60 votes are required to amend the Social Security Act in the Senate, bipartisan cooperation is going to be a necessity.

With well over three years left in Donald Trump’s second term, it’s simply a question of whether he or a successor leads the charge to meaningful reform.

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