The Liberty Daily 
(The Epoch Times)—Prominent seniors group AARP is calling on Congress to act after it emerged that the trust fund that Social Security uses to pay retirement benefits to tens of millions of Americans could run out by 2032.
An annual report issued on Tuesday from the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund, which Social Security uses, will only be able to cover 78 percent of total scheduled benefits starting in 2032.
Myechia Minter-Jordan, CEO of AARP, which formerly stood for the American Association of Retired Persons, said that the report shows Congress needs to figure out how to keep Social Security solvent.
“This should be a wake-up call: Congress needs to act,” Minter-Jordan said in a statement. “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.”
Noting that around 70 million people rely on Social Security, the AARP head said that “cutting Social Security or Medicare is not an option.”
“This is money Americans have earned over a lifetime of hard work. They planned for retirement, followed the rules, and now Congress must keep its promise by strengthening, not cutting, Social Security,” she added.
“At a time when the future of Social Security is being tested by proposals that would weaken the program, the trustees’ report highlights the need for Congress to protect what people have earned,” she also said.
Congress, her statement continued, needs to “act in a bipartisan way to ensure Social Security can continue to be strong for our children and grandchildren.”
Multiple senators said they are calling for Congress to extend Social Security’s solvency expiration date in response to the report, warning that the House and Senate “shouldn’t delay any longer.”
“We say to our colleagues: join us in doing what we were elected to do—legislate on hard issues and protect this lifeline program for our kids and grandkids,” said a joint statement from Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Wednesday. “Congress has no shortage of ideas, we just need to actually debate them and vote.”
According to the trustees report, the Social Security trust fund’s long-term outlook was lowered in 2026 due to lower fertility rates and lower-than-usual temporary and illegal immigration estimates in the United States.
“The ultimate total fertility rate is 1.75 children per woman for this report,“ the report said, adding that the ”rate is lower than the rate of 1.90 children per woman used in last year’s report.”
Regarding immigration, it projected that the “assumed levels of temporary or unlawfully present immigrants entering the country” from 2022 to 2025 were lowered.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sweeping taxation and spending measure signed into law by President Donald Trump last year, had and impact, according to the report. In part, the law made permanent tax brackets and tax rates that were enacted under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which impacted the trustees’ report projection, it added.
The bill “also adds a temporary additional standard deduction for taxpayers over age 65,” the report said, while adding that it means that “less income tax will be paid on Social Security benefits” that would ultimately be sent to both trust funds.
