Category: Social Security

Eight senators from both parties want to force Congress into a binding vote on Social Security before the retirement trust fund runs dry in roughly six years. The group introduced the Protecting Retirement Opportunities and Maintaining Income Security for Everyone Act, known as the PROMISE Act, designated S. 4979 in the 119th Congress. The bill…

Workers who start collecting Social Security before reaching full retirement age and keep earning above a set annual threshold lose a portion of their benefits automatically. The Social Security Administration withholds $1 in benefits for every $2 earned above the yearly exempt amount, a rule rooted in federal statute and applied to wages and self-employment…

Roughly 70 million Americans who depend on Social Security checks each month now face a fixed deadline: the combined Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance trust funds are projected to run dry in 2034. After that point, incoming payroll taxes would cover only about 78 percent of scheduled benefits, according to the 2026 Trustees…

Retirees collecting Social Security face a tax hit that grows larger each year, not because Congress passed a new law, but because it never updated an old one. A single filer whose provisional income crosses $34,000 can have up to 85% of benefits included in gross income, a formula written into the tax code in…

The Social Security Administration is pushing to cut in-person field office visits roughly in half during fiscal year 2026, redirecting retirees and beneficiaries toward phone lines and online portals. The agency reported a large increase in online transactions for fiscal year 2026 year-to-date, alongside reductions in both field office wait times and phone answer times….

Retirees set to receive a 2.8 percent cost-of-living adjustment in January 2026 could see a far larger boost to their monthly checks if a Senate bill gains traction. The Social Security Expansion Act, filed as S.770 in the 119th Congress, proposes an across-the-board benefit increase that would exceed the standard annual inflation adjustment. With the…

Retirees who owe money to the Social Security Administration could see their entire monthly benefit vanish in a single payment cycle. The SSA announced in March 2025 that it will raise the default overpayment withholding rate to 100% of a person’s monthly benefit for certain new overpayments, reversing a policy that had cut the default…

Millions of Social Security and VA beneficiaries could see an extra $200 added to their monthly checks for six months under a House bill introduced during the 119th Congress. The measure, titled the Social Security Emergency Inflation Relief Act, arrives just months after the Social Security Administration set the 2026 cost-of-living adjustment at 2.8 percent,…

Retirees and disability applicants who depend on the Social Security Administration are now competing for help from a shrinking workforce. The agency announced plans to cut roughly 7,000 positions from a baseline of about 57,000 employees, aiming for a target of 50,000. Some field offices have shifted to phone-only service, and about 1,000 customer-service representatives…

Workers born in 1960 or later who file for Social Security at 62 accept a permanent monthly benefit cut of 30 percent compared with waiting until their full retirement age of 67. That reduction, locked in by federal statute, applies to every check for the rest of the recipient’s life. For someone entitled to $2,000…